It's a Party in the USA

I am back in the United States of America! It is weird to be back in a place where everyone speaks English and I understand the currency.  It is also wicked cold!  I haven’t had to wear more than one layer of clothing since I left Maine back in February 2012.  But I am so thankful to be able to see my family and friends during this holiday season.

I am a Time Traveler.  I woke up Sunday, December 9^th at 5am to watch the ship sail into Sydney Harbor.  Thankfully I was able to see the Sydney Opera House right out of the port hole!  The morning was full of returning linens to the laundry room, getting my final pay check and medical back, saying tearful goodbyes and riding a bus to the Sydney Airport.  My flight wasn’t until 4pm, so I got free internet and wandered around the airport.  On the plane I was lucky enough to have an aisle seat, which made the 13 hour flight bearable.  I watched 3 movies, drank a lot of Cran-Apple juice, ate dinner and tried to sleep.  When I woke up I felt like Bill Murray in Ground Hog’s Day.  There I was living Sunday all over again, except this time I was not able to see Maarten, landing in San Francisco at 11am and seeing my parents at 11:30pm.  When I finally made it home, I was exhausted after 35+ hours of traveling.  It was such a wonderful feeling seeing my parents there to greet me.  My dad had a sign saying “Around the World in 280 days!”  

Sydney Opera House out of the port hole

Promotional Pictures of the Solstice docking in Sydney Harbor

Jessica arriving in Boston

 

"Around the World in 280 Days"

 

I have had terrible jet lag, not falling asleep until 3am and suddenly waking up with the sun at 7:30am.  But last night I finally slept for 10 hours.  I miss Maarten every day.  I miss traveling the world, my cast mates, the ease and luxury of life on the Solstice, but I am so excited for the holidays and to begin my life on land.  Thank you so much for following my blog for the past 10 months.  I hope you were entertained and maybe even learned something.  Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year to everyone!  Jessica Ernest, oouut.

My journey on the Celebrity Solstice (March 11 - December 9, 2012)

G'Day Mate

Well, the Celebrity Solstice has finally completed its repositioning…we have made it to Australia!  Up first was Darwin.  After being in Egypt, Singapore and Bali I really feel like I have made it back to Western society.  In Australia, I knew that I had to see crocodiles, koalas, kangaroos and hopefully a kookaburra.  And I succeeded!  When we got to Darwin, I went to Crocosaurus Cove where we watched croc feeding shows, saw turtles, reptiles and crocodiles of all sizes.  I even got to hold a 17 month old crocodile named Fluffy. I channeled Steve Irwin.  I was a little scared, but it was much easier than the snake in Bali! When we got to Brisbane, Maarten and I went to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, the largest in the world.  There we were able to feed kangaroos, see traditional Australian animals (Platypus, Tasmanian Devil, Dingoes, kookaburra etc.) and hold a koala named Tinkerbell.  We even saw a baby joey pump into his mom’s pouch! It has been amazing to see animals you only ever see pictures of.  Now we are off to Sydney and my plane home.  I will have one final blog post about my travels when I reach Maine and maybe before the jet-lag hits me.  But I guess now I should probably get back to packing.  Thank you all for checking in with me for the past 9 months.  I hope you enjoyed it half as much as I did writing it.

Jessica and Louise in a canoe at Crocosarus Cove

Jessica and Fluffy

Croc Feeding Time

HUGE Crocodile

Kangaroos at the Koala Sanctuary

Jessica, Tinkerbell and Maarten…our Christmas card! Haha

“Kukabarrow sits in the old gum tree-ee, merry merry king of the Bush is he-ee”

Disappearing joey

 

Bali Hai will call you, any night, any day!

Here we are, my last cruise.  Bali, Indonesia was the first port of my last cruise and I LOVED it!  Maarten and I went around together.  We got a tour that took us on our own private glass bottom boat snorkeling and then to Turtle Island.  We held turtles, snakes and had deliciously spicy fish for lunch.  It was a beautiful day!  I definitely want to come back to Bali at some point.  There was so much that I didn’t get to see; the green rice fields, the ancient temples and the super tourist-y beach areas.  Everything was so cheap, the food was delicious and the weather was perfect (if not almost too hot).  It was a great way to start my last cruise.

Jessica on Sanur Beach, Bali

 

Indonesian monuments
 

Jessica and Maarten post-snorkeling in the Glass Bottom Boat

 

Jessica and Maarten on Turtle Island

 

Spicy Indonesian Seafood

 

I’m almost like Britney Spears in the “Slave 4 U” video!!
 

Jessica and Maarten back in Benoa Harbor

And now we are off to the Land Down Under…the Land of OZ…Australia!

Thankful Lady

There are so many things that I am thankful for and this blog won’t begin to cover it, but I am going to try.  It all starts with Cochin, India.  Unfortunately, we were not able to get off the ship in India because crew was not told that we needed a visa to get off the ship.  But I took some pictures from the ship and even saw a little ferry boat get pushed into a big air carrier by our bow thrusters.  You can see the picture below with the people grabbing for lifejackets.

View of Cochin from both sides of the ship

Ferry Boat Crash

In Malaysia we were able to get off the ship and were planning on going to a water park, but then things went wrong.  It is the first time that Celebrity ships are sailing down through this part of the world and Malaysia wasn’t prepared for all the guests and crew.  There were practically no taxi’s and the shuttle bus didn’t have room for crew with all the guests getting off the ship, so we were advised to just get back on the ship.  We had a great day on the ship relaxing on deck 6 and hanging out with each other. 

Excited for the Water Park!

Boo, Malaysia

On Thanksgiving Day we were in Malaysia and had a show that night so we Americans didn’t have a ton of time for a real Thanksgiving dinner, but we all decided that we would have a real dinner a couple days earlier on one of our nights off.  Twelve Americans from the cast and hot glass team went for Thanksgiving dinner in the Grand Epernay main dining room.  It was a lovely meal…no blue cheese brussle sprouts or stuffing, but we all shared what we are thankful for and ate until we were full to the brim!

My Thanksgiving Dinner

American’s at Dinner (Clockwise from Bottom Front: Kevin, Tom, Andrew, Jessica, Brad, Ricky, Natasha, Chris, Kenny, Catherine, Jenny, Isaiah)

Our overnight in Singapore is definitely the highlight of this blog!  Singapore is such a hopping city.  I spent the first day in Chinatown, eating, wandering around and buying seaweed by the sheet and wasabi peas.  After walking around a bit the sky started to cloud over and suddenly get really dark.  Minutes later the skies opened up and it poured for a good hour.  We made it back to the ship on the extremely clean public transportation system without getting too wet.  Littering, chewing gum and J-walking are illegal in Singapore and are cause for a huge fine and possible jail term! I think that is one reason that the train system is so immaculate and efficient. 

The Marina Bay Sands Hotel from the bus

Hong Kong Fried Noodles in Chinatown

Jessica and Emanuel running from the rain clouds

That night Maarten and I decided that we wanted to go up to the SkyPark at the top of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel.  It is an amazing structure that was the most expensive hotel to build.  We had a very expensive drink at the top, but the view was priceless.  From the top we saw all over Singapore, including a water/light show, a huge concert by SMTOWN and the Singapore Flyer.  After that we walked around the harbor to have some dinner and got poured on when we tried to hail a cab back to the ship after dinner.  It was an unforgettable day.

View from the top of the Marina Bay Sands

 

Singapore Skyline at night

Maarten and Jessica with the Marina Bay Sands Hotel laser light show

 

The second day in Singapore Maarten and I took public transportation to the Singapore Botanical Garden.  It was so green, humid and such a nice escape from ship life.  Part of the botanical garden is the National Orchid Garden.  It is the world’s largest orchid collection.  We were even able to get in for free because it was some special day and I had my student ID.  There were so many orchids, different colors, different shapes and different smells.  My dad would love it there.  It was a beautiful way to spend a day. 

Walking in the Singapore Botanical Garden

Orchid picture for Dad

Maarten and Jessica at the National Orchid Garden

And so begins my last cruise aboard the Celebrity Solstice.  I will sign off December 9^th and fly home.  I will have spent 274 days living on the ship, visited 40 ports in 20+ countries and took 4,300+ pictures.  A truly priceless experience that I am so thankful to have.  Happy Thanksgiving to all!!

Dubai and Oman

I know that every time I visit a new place I saw “wow!”, but really Dubai… WOW! It was unlike any place I have ever been.  The best I can describe it is a flawless, Disney universe.  Everything is clean.  Everything is new.  Everything is perfect.  Everything is larger than life, over the top.  There is so much money in this city and you can see it everywhere.  I think I had even more of an effect on me because of the places in Egypt that we had visited most recently. 

We were docked in Dubai overnight and got a new set of passengers.  Although about 1,000 of the guests that got on the ship October 26^th in Barcelona are staying with us all the way until December 9^th when we get to Sydney, Australia.  I spent the day in Dubai with Isaiah, Kevin (two of the male dancers) and Josh (the Sound tech AV).  We took a cab to the Dubai Mall which is one of the largest malls in the world.  One of the first signs we saw when we got inside was for an ice rink, then a sign for a waterfall and then for an aquarium!  I thought, these definitely can’t all be in the mall, but I was mistaken.  I guess I underestimated Dubai.  The mall turned out to be HUGE!  We spent a good part of the day there and still didn’t see even a third of it.  But we did find the waterfall, the ice rink, the aquarium/underwater zoo and even a store called “Andrew’s Ties”. 

Jessica outside the Dubai Mall

The 3+ story Waterfall in the Mall

Ice Rink in a mall?!

We made reservations to visit the top of the Burj Khalifa, which is also accessible from the Dubai Mall, so around 1pm we made our way over there.  We waited in a bit of a line to go through security and make our way to the elevator that takes you to the observation deck on the 124^th floor.  The Burj Khalifa is currently the tallest building in the world.  It can be seen from 95km away.  It has something like 200 floors and is 2716 feet tall. While taking the elevator up, my ears popped about 6 times to adjust to the rapidly changing elevation.  And boy, was it high up.  We could see the desert, the water and port, the perfect buildings, the Burj al Arab (the only seven star hotel in the world which is shaped like the sail of a boat), and the World Islands.  It was a bit hazy so we weren’t able to see the Palm Jumeirah, but we saw the direction it was in.  The view was pretty awesome, much different than the Empire State Building or the Top of the Rock in NYC, because of the complete desert surrounding the city. 

Elevator to the Top

View out over Dubai and the port

Josh, Isaiah, Kevin and Jessica At the Top!

Dubai and the fountains below

Burj Khalifa…tallest building, tallest girl!

Next we decided that we wanted to go to the Aquarium and Underwater Zoo in the mall.  It starts with you walking through a tunnel in this huge fish tank, which has the largest single sheet of glass/plastic in the world (according to the Guinness World Record).  There were sharks and fish swimming right over you! In the zoo, we saw more beautiful fish, huge crabs, penguins and even snakes.

The Underwater Tunnel

“Just keep swimming, just keep swimming”

Clockwise: Jessica, Josh, Isaiah, Kevin in the Zoo

Jessica with the “Finding Nemo” fish tank

For dinner we went to another area to meet one of Isaiah’s friends who now lives in Dubai.  It was this beautiful restaurant called The Meat Co. in what felt exactly like Disney.  There are man-made rivers with boats that bring you to your resort, lights on palm trees and the service was excellent.  The restaurant was also closer to the Burj al Arab, the sail hotel, so we got to see it a little closer up.  After dinner we had to rush back to the ship to do our Welcome Aboard Show, but then were able to come back out for extremely expensive drinks later that night.  It was an amazing, out-of-this-world day. 

Sunset over Dubai

The Burj al Arab and Isaiah, Jessica and Kevin after dinner

L – R: Kevin, Isaiah, Jessica, Isaiah, Maarten, Jessica, Andrii

Our next Port of Call was Muscat, Oman. I didn’t even know that there was a country called Oman!  Maarten and I spent the day together shopping in the Souk, climbing up to a fort and drinking really good fresh fruit juice.  I had a Lemon Mint juice and Maarten had a Mango Pineapple juice.  They were the highlight of the day!

Overwhelmed by the incense smell in the Souk

Beautiful stained glass at the entrance of the Souk with Jessica

Muscat Harbor from the Fort

Delicious fruit juice

I only have 7 more Ports of Call before my contract is finished and it is starting to hit me.  Yikes.  But I’m not going to think about that now!  I still have 7 places to explore!

Maarten and Me after my 2^nd to last “Ghostlight” night