The Ultimate Work Break - Parts 3 & 4 - Michigan, Vegas, Home

---

Between Contracts Part 3 & 4 - Michigan, Vegas, Home

Part 3 - Michigan and The Wedding

I headed out to Michigan for a few days to visit my sister Emily and my friend Emily, who lived one floor below me in college for two years (we used to spend nights in - she cooked, I did the dishes - and I fostered her obsession with bad prime time tv programming, an addiction that lasted her well past college). I purposely timed my work-break to coincide with my friend Emily’s wedding, since she’s been engaged for as many years as I’ve known her, I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I also enjoy visiting my sister because it provides us both with an excuse to spend all day on the couch watching movies, shopping, and basically just hanging out in a lazy way that we couldn’t justify doing during a normal week.

I took a red-eye into town and landed before breakfast Friday morning. My friend Emily picked up me and her maid-of-honor Holly at the airport and we went for a bite to eat. We helped Emily with a few last minute details, then Holly and I snuck off to plan final details for her Bachelorette party. My friend Emily has always been a very laidback mellow girl - in other words a stripper and tequila shots would not be the right route for her big night out. We decided that a luau theme and some dancing with her best girlfriends would be perfect so we picked up a bunch of leis, a few flowered bikini tops, some table decorations, and supplies for her “dare-box”.

That night we met up with a bunch of my friend Emily’s friends at an outdoor bar. Lauren, also a college friend, flew out from Boston with some custom-made cupcakes from the dirty-dessert store on Mass Ave - no bachelorette party is complete without tiny chocolate man-parts. We then headed to a club for some dancing and introduced Emily to her “dare-box”. Holly and I had spent the day compiling a series of slightly embarrassing but mostly empowering dares that she would have to complete before the night was up. These included writing her new name in lipstick on some guy’s back, getting strangers to buy her drinks, starting a conga line on the dance floor, and other harmless but fun tasks that kept the evening interesting.

On Saturday my sister and I watched about a dozen episodes of The Office. That night we went out to a Hibachi restaurant with some of her friends from her Israel trip, who I instantly loved and got along with really easily. We were out until the wee hours of the morning, but still managed to squeeze in an episode of The Office before calling it a night.

Sunday morning I went to the wedding location to help set up the place - my friend Emily’s wedding was a beautiful but low-key event, with many of the details carried out by friends and family. A bunch of us gathered to set the tables, and I was tasked to manage the arrangement of centerpieces - personalized glasses with floating candles. Paired with glittering fairy lights around the ceiling, the vintage Barn was transformed into a romantic and ethereal place, worthy of such an exciting event.

After setting up, my sister and I lounged around for the rest of the afternoon, taking naps before the wedding. We woke up with only 20 minutes to get dressed before we had to leave, but managed to get there in time to wish the bride luck and grab seats outside where the chairs has been set up.

The wedding was slightly late starting because they were waiting for her grandma to show up - they were all standing around the parking lot for her arrival because she was the first one to walk down the aisle. After about 15 minutes someone noticed her grandma was actually sitting amongst the guests oblivious to the search going on around her. They were finally able to proceed with the wedding, but the moment Emily started down the aisle the wind picked up and the sky flashed ominously with lightning. Emily’s veil danced and leaves swirled as her father escorted her to the flowered trellis where Trevor was waiting. The pastor welcomed everyone but just at that moment the sky opened up and rain powered down, guests scrambling for cover in the Barn. As we resettled at our tables, Emily got a second grand entrance with a warm applause and the wedding continued without any other complications. We ate way too much food and boogied down on the dance floor - Emily’s mom is surprisingly limber, busting out the splits as everyone clapped and cheered. I was so excited for Emily to finally be married - she is just one of those people who is designed for marriage - selfless and caring and devoted and ultimately reasonable. She’s been with Trevor since highschool, sticking by him through years of him stationed abroad in Iraq, and they are the ultimate highschool sweetheart lovestory.

The rest of my Michigan visit was a gloriously leisurely time of chilling at my sister’s apartment, getting pedicures with her roomie Sammy who turned 21 while I was in town, hanging out with her Israel friends, and walking around the downtown area. We went late-night bowling and bought Sammy’s first legal drink at a classy Cuban place with the best mojoitos in town (and mmmmm limeade!!). It was great as always to get some time with my sister on our own terms, and I went home feeling more relaxed than when I left.

Part 4 - Vegas

Morgana is one of my favorite people from the Carnival Inspiration. Whenever we hang out there are guaranteed laughs, so when she asked me if I would go with her to Vegas on her workbreak I absolutely couldn’t say no. We met at the hotel just after midnight, as both of our flights were slightly delayed. Exhausted from a long day of travel, Morgana wasn’t up for hitting the casinos but we rallied to wander the strip. We must have walked a few miles up and down admiring the sights. She had never been to Vegas before and the monstrosities that are Vegas hotels left her in awe. After a few hours of walking we called it a night.

We made a list of things we wanted to see and do, and organized our few days based on where things were located on the strip. On the first day we walked around the mall (sweet glorious A/C was much needed in the 109 degree F heat) and took a gondola ride at the Venetian. We also checked out some of the casinos, winning a couple bucks at the blackjack tables, then we booked it home to change for Spamalot. We underestimated how much time it would take to get there and ended up having to skip all-you-can-eat-sushi (probably a good thing), sprinting with to-go bags of sandwiches from some cheap casino café and just making it to the show as the lights dimmed. The show was hilarious, including many of our favorite clips from Monty Python, along with a few new numbers.

Afterwards we met up with a friend of hers from Australia, and a friend of mine from Austin, and got a table at the most unique bar outside of the Wynn. Patio tables sat on the edge of a large smooth lake, broken only by the splashing of a calm waterfall with beautiful multicolored lights playing across the surface. Every half hour a totally bizarre show would project across the waterfall, surely designed by someone on a very expensive hallucinajin of some sort - for one show a giant mechanical frog climbed up to the edge of the waterfall and sang Low Rider with such perfect animation I almost believed he was real. After an hour at the bar we went to catch the Bellagio dancing water show, which was a sight beyond description.

As if this wasn’t already the perfect evening, we then went into Caesar’s Palace, where Joel knew the bouncer at Vegas’s hottest nightclub, Pure. Morgana’s friends left since they were tired and had early flights, but Joel, Morgana and I gladly skipped the half-mile line and graciously accepted the handful of free-drink comps, then went to the rooftop bar. After navigating a slew of random boys who came up to Morgana and I, we ducked under the VIP only rope to hang out with some of the winners from that day’s World Series Poker. One of the guys had just won $550,000!! So when the tab for their bottle service came to $6,000 he handed over wads of cash without even blinking an eye. The boys from the VIP table offered to teach us how to play blackjack, so they took us to some tables and played openhanded while explaining their strategy for a few hours. One guy started with $200 and only half hour later, cashed out at $900!! Watching this made Morgana and I hungry for some gambling, but before we had the chance, we realized the sun was coming up and it was past 5am so we went back to our hotel and crashed. Not bad for only the first day!!

The next day we decided to check out some of the hotels and casinos, and put our lessons on blackjack to work. We walked around the MGM, Luxor, Excaliber, amazingly winning some money at the tables. We took our winnings and did the rollercoaster at New York New York. We also decided to make up for missing dinner the night before, and went to an all you can eat buffet at Paris, where we stuffed our faces with so much shrimp, crabs legs and pastries that we barely rollout ourselves out the door in time for the shows we had planned. That night we booked two shows - The Follies Bergere, Vegas’s longest running Showgirl Show, and Cirque’s Ka. The first show was a feathers-n’beads performance with lots of interesting costumes and dancing, much like the shows we have on Carnival ships but a bit more over-the-top. Cirque’s Ka left our imaginations swimming, with its mystical stunts, eerie music, and inspiring characters. Quite tired after two back to back shows, we decided not to go to any clubs, but rather hit up O’Shae’s, a casino on the strip with $5 blackjack tables - yes, Morgana and I were totally hooked. We meant to only play for a short while but 2 hours later we were up on our money. We kept playing until we just about broke even, then called it a night again as the sun came up.

The last day we intended to simply lay by the pool at the Mirage, where their outdoor area was designed to look like the beach. But we spent so long walking down the strip and stopping in various stores that we didn’t get to the Mirage until almost dinner time. Instead we bought a package deal that got us into the Shark Reef experience and also got us into the all you can eat buffet at the hotel. This buffet, while less superior in the seafood department, boasted gargantuan bowls of berries, and we literally filled 4 bowls with blackberries, blueberries and strawberries, barely paying attention to the rest of the food, though I did manage to make room for the create your own pasta bar and the incredible crème-brule.

We cabbed back to the hotel in time to pick up our bags and head to the airport for our evening flights. We both had really delayed flights, I found out my delay was because of a tornado that blew through Houston - the stewardess told me that they spent an hour bunkered down in the bathroom stalls waiting for it to pass.

I only had a few days at home before heading to ships but I used this time to relax with mom, pack my bags, and we also had a big backyard party in honor of the start of summer. I was in charge of decorations so I hung candle-lanterns in the trees and lights around the table’s canopy and served food in beautiful hand-woven straw bowls. We had many friends over and enjoyed our selves immensely. I was especially happy to see the Garcia’s, parents of my ex-boyfriend of 5 years. I missed them more than I can say in these past few years when they used to be such a big part of my life. I was so pleased that they came to the party and we had a chance to catch up. They also invited me to the twins’ graduation party, where I got to catch up with Suzanne and Jeff. I also got to touch base with some great friends from the past - Christy, my best friend in Junior High, came with me salsa dancing a few times which was a total blast! And John, my prom date Junior Year is back in town and hung out with me a few days as well.

So I am back on ships for the next 6 months…in just 2 weeks I head to Europe to work on the Carnival Freedom out of Rome with 12-day cruises to France, Italy, Greece, Spain, Turkey and Croatia. I will be moving back to the Bay Area in December, with a visit to Austin just after Christmas to collect my stuff from storage. I am thinking of going back to Vegas for New Years so if anyone wants to join me let me know!!

Oh and if you want to come cruise in Europe, I’d love to host you!!

---