Sea Dog

At Sunflower Bakery and Cafe. This place must be very popular. 45 minute wait to an hour.

On another note. Here is a time lapse of 6 hours of driving in thirty seconds. It ends at a Buc-ee's in Texas where the Go Pro got hot sitting behind the windshield in the sun.

Thanks for your comments OB. I could not remember if he said tendon or ligament. The bump annoys me more than anything else. I guess I may have to live with it. I think you should send me a bill for your consultation. Payment in Kraken???

Yes I’m sure that was a factor even though I asked my wife if I was drunk and she said no. I only had two drinks. Not drinking enough water and not taking my meds caused this. Live and learn.

That’s what the ER doc said. He also said some Orthopedic surgeons want to do surgery to repair the tendon (I think) that keeps the bone down. He did not think I necessarily needed that even though I can feel a raised ridge there on my shoulder. Will that reduce over time? My pain is tolerable and I can still move my arm around a little bit. I forgot to ask how long should I wear the sling? He also said I could take it off from time to time if I wasn’t in too much pain. I wasn’t even going to report on it on my review because I feel stupid but in an effort to be open and transparent I felt all of you should know.

Well I feel stupid and NO I was not drunk. So because of the long drive I did not take my blood pressure medicine because it has a diuretic in it and did not want to have to go to the bathroom every 30 minutes. I also did not drink any water. So when I got up to go to the bathroom I got up too quickly felt dizzy and fell. I must have hit my head because I asked Linda where were we. So a trip to the ER for a Cat Scan, blood work, and shoulder x-ray. Needless to say everything looked good except to have a hairline fracture in my collarbone. So I guess slings are sexy looking on a cruise ship. I feel stupid that it happened. Doc said make sure you take your meds.

Dinner at the spot! Great place great food and drinks. A multi level bar with a tiki bar, rum bar and tequila bar. The king burger with sautéed mushrooms, Swiss cheese, grilled onions and a homemade bun. Dark-n-Stormy. Shouldn’t it be in a taller glass???? Pina Colada with a Kraken Floater. Very good. Time for night night. Tomorrow exploring Galveston. Cheers!!

I looked for them but could not find them. That place is huge! I’ll look going back home. Thank you.

We are here! 13 hours and 20 minutes with 4 gas stops and a Buc-ee’s lunch. We hit Houston right at rush hour so that was slow going but on I-45 from Dallas to Houston it was like NASCAR Sunday. Bumper to bumper 85-90 mph. I was getting a good draft but the problem is all the trucks stay on right lane. All the cars usually stay in the left lane going like a bat out of hell. EXCEPT for the people that try and leap frog but going into the slow lane and passing a bunch of cars in between semi’s then cutting in causing everyone in the fast lane to slam on the brakes. I white knuckled it a couple times but otherwise came out without a scratch. We checked into the Beachfront Palms Hotel. And immediately ran into some issues. First toilet didn’t work but got hotel personal to fix it. Stains on the bed sheet and floor. Not pictured, smoke detector hanging from the ceiling and safe not working. Linda asked for another room but we were denied saying they had none. Oh well at this point I just need something to eat and drink. I did the whole drive myself. Linda kept asking me if I wanted her to take over but I was feeling good and awake. I’m surprised I did it. Good news was that my surgical knee did pretty good. Now let’s find something to eat.

You are correct!!!!!!!

A virgin no more! I’ve heard about it for years but never made it. My first Buc-ee’s experience . This place is wild and even has stuff out for Christmas. I got their famous BBQ sandwich and it was good. Plus their chips and a cinnamon roll to split. I’ll have to come back when I have more time. This place is a hoot.

On the Road! Stopped for gas in Oklahoma and they even have a Casino. Should I see if I can win my gas? More later.

Surprise One thing that I did not know about this cruise and only found out a couple of months ago that this cruise is also home to the Texas Country Music Cruise with over 10 artists. They are suppose to have most of the concerts in Studio B but I have no idea if the ship will be full of country fans or not. I am not a fan of country music but respect it and I’ve never heard of any of the artists. I hope as long as they are nice and don't get too crazy we will be good. Here is a video from their 2019 cruise. All of the concert goers paid an admission fee to get into the concerts. I am told that none of their concerts will affect the rest of the entertainment on the ship.

Yes they have October 21st. Will be their birthday. We already got them birthday hats and when we get back we will have a little party. Going to get a doggie cake too.

I'm Bringing New Toys!!!! Ha, I know what you were thinking, no not that kind. You may have followed my last review where my Go Pro had an unfortunate accident. Let’s revisit. My camera was out of warranty and I did not have the “no questions asked” replacement subscription but figured I would call the company and see if they would do anything. Nope. They did give me 30% off on a new one so I took them up on it. I hope to do some good time lapses with it and give you my thoughts on it. Unfortunately with the slow internet on board I may have to wait until I get home to upload the footage because of the high file sizes. And I did not think this was going to happen but Merry Christmas To Me!! A brand new iPhone 14 Pro Max with 1TB of storage. It's got a new 48mp camera that I am very interested in trying out. Once again since I will be on a crappy internet on board I don't know how well I will be able to upload the Apple ProRaw files since they will be very large. I probably will down convert in Lightroom and save as simple JPEG. I will give you my impressions. This camera may put my DSLR to bed or maybe not we shall see. Right now I'm waiting on cellular from T-mobile to kick in. There was a problem activating the eSim so I had to take it to T-Mobile. They did some things and said I would have to wait about two hours before it activates. Very frustrating. We are all packed. Oh how I love those packing cubes. two of them for Sea Dog shirts alone. When Lizzy saw the suitcases she was like oh no not this again. Charlie not so much. Gotta run, Dog sitter coming over to get the keys. She was great with the pups on our last trip three weeks ago. She had her hands full. Charlie and Lizzy like to play tug of war. I'll check back in the morning after we start driving. Tomorrow will be a long dayThanks everyone for coming alone. I think it will be a blast.

So what's the plan Dog? What: Liberty of the Seas Western Caribbean Where: Western Caribbean from Galveston, TX Day 1 Depart Galveston, TX Day 2 Cruising Day 3 Cozumel Day 4 Grand Cayman Day 5 Falmouth Jamaica Day 6 Cruising Day 7 Cruising Day 8 Arrive Galveston, TX When: October 16-23, 2022 Who: Sea Dog (Greg) and Mrs. Sea Dog (Linda) Why: Because we love cruising. No really, why the short turnaround from Symphony 3 weeks ago to now? Well we are playing the double points game. Since Royal’s double point promotion during the pandemic we have tried to take advantage of it since we were low life’s at Gold. So we booked my retirement cruise last November in a Junior Suite. BAM a quick 28 points moving us to Platinum. Then several weeks ago on Symphony in a balcony for 16 points and BAM we are Emerald. So for this sailing my genius TA (Thank you KH) suggested going as solos. We got a great price for Linda in a Balcony and me across the hall in a double occupancy inside room. So after this cruise another 28 points and BAM we are Diamond and can play with the big boys. Another thing that makes this cruise different is that we are driving not flying. Galveston is only 12 hours away from Kansas City for the plan is to drive down Friday morning (O' Dark Thirty) and stay that night and Saturday night and then board on Sunday. This way we will not be too tired and we have a day to enjoy the sights of Galveston.

I’m going to do it ! Thanks to everyone for your fantastic comments on my Symphony review. You have encouraged me to take it one step further, a live review. We are going on Liberty of the Seas out from Galveston. I'll have more details on that later. Since we focused on UDP on Symphony I decided on something different, the Main Dining Room. How does it compare? Is the food good? Can I get more than 1 entree. Inquiring minds want to know. So with out further ado, It wouldn’t be a Sea Dog review without a hype video to get you all fired up.

You are probably right but I was hoping for more especially uploading high resolution pics and videos. I probably mentioned it a while back that we were to set sail on Saturday but I got my days mixed up (as retired life will do that to you) But we do seat sail on Sunday. We will be leaving early Friday since we are staying two nights Galveston pre cruise. I'm excited to see your pics from Curacao and Aruba. We want to go back there. And no stop in PR, this will be Cozumel, Grand Cayman and Falmouth.

Yes go ahead and make all your reservations on Day 1 when you board. Now that's not too say if a restaurant has an opening they could accommodate you but you never know how many people bought the UDP or people bought that particular restaurant on any even night.

I think I missed it or forgot, which ship and which itinerary are you going on? Liberty starts on Sunday. Agreed. That figure from the website was general speaking and I know no way we can expect that. Give me at least 20-25mbps and I would be happy. Yes there is no way this will be provided for free. It will be an up charge.

No you will need to make your reservations once you board. Pick any restaurant and the manager on duty can make all your reservations except for ships with Izumi and Hibachi. You may need to make those reservations at the restaurant.

I can now answer when asked why I enhanced the photo I can say "artistic license." 😉

I've heard that even on ships that have it installed and up and running that Royal is throttling back data on the users. Not sure why or when they will open up the flow (so to speak) but I wish they would increase the speeds. Starlink site says users can expect 50-200 mbps.

They were out in full force on our Symphony cruise three weeks ago in Costa Maya.

I totally understand that. I hate that Adobe does that. I’m sure there are other programs out there for your phone that can achieve the same result.