Our day in Progreso didn't start so smoothly. I should have taken it as a sign of what was to come and just stayed on the ship.
We docked at 7, but since the kiddo needed a wee bit more sleep than 8 hours (remember, we had late dining), we decided we'd sleep until we just happened to wake up or be awakened with announcements. We woke up on our own around 7:45. We headed up to the Lido deck to get some breakfast and then went back to the room to get ready to go into port.
While up on the Lido Deck, we got some pictures of the Ecstasy that was parked next to us. It's a bit of a smaller ship, but the Lido Deck had undergone a nice refurbishment with the addition of palm trees and tiki huts. Made it look all tropical and stuff.
We packed the bag and then grabbed it and the stroller and made our way to the fore elevator.....to give you an idea of where our room was, we were on the 8th deck, one deck below Lido, and our room was right around the corner from the aft elevator.
We rode the fore elevator down to deck 0, made our way off the ship and started walking through the wind tunnel between us and the Ecstasy to get to the pier facilities and then it occurred to me that we had not packed any form of photo ID. I suddenly envisioned us getting thrown into a Mexican jail for committing some crime I didn't even know we were committing and since we'd have no photo ID, we had no hope of ever getting out alive.
So, I have an overactive imagination. Sue me.
I sent DH back up to the room to retrieve the IDs. I plopped Maddie into her stroller and just walked laps around the pier there between the ships. I did about 8 laps before DH finally got back...remember, he had to get back on the ship, catch an elevator going up and then go all the way to the back of the ship. He joined me and I turned around to head through the port area to the shuttle buses into Progreso. See, when you dock in Progreso, you're on a dock that is 4 miles out into the Gulf...the only way to the mainland is via a taxi or a free shuttle. But without a car seat, we wouldn't take a taxi....more on the shuttle bus in a minute.
As he joined me and I turned around, I casually asked "got it all?"
"Not exactly."
"WHAT?"
"I didn't realize until I got up there that I used your room key to lock the safe so I need it."
O.M.F.G.
Gave him my room key and did about 12 laps around this time waiting for him to get back. At least 20 minutes had passed and I was certain that he wasn't able to get back into the safe with my room key and had to call the purser to come open it with the master key. There was no other explanation for why it took so long.
Finally I saw him heading in my direction. Again, I turned around toward the port area and started walking and asked "Can we go now?" when he told me "Well...no."
WHAT NOW?????
"I couldn't find your driver's license."
It occurred to me then that it was in my pants pocket from embarkation day. I think that logically, pants pockets would have been the next place I'd have looked if I were looking for a missing ID of his, but I can't really say for sure. I tried not to blow a major gasket - about 35 minutes had passed at this point by the time we'd originally gotten off the ship. I snatched all of the cards with magnetic strips out of his hand as I wasn't sure which one he'd used to lock the safe back up in case I needed to get into it, and then tore off for the ship myself. If you want something done right, do it yourself.
Stormed up to the room, sprinting down the hallway, opened the cabin door, went straight to my jeans, retrieved my IDs, tossed my military ID and credit card into the safe and then tore back off for the gangway.
Of course, getting off of the ship this time, I was getting PISSED because I got stuck on the gangway behind people who wanted to take 3 different combinations of pictures with the guy with the parrot on his shoulder. I just wanted off the daggum ship!
So, I found DH and we started to the port area with photo IDs in hand. It was then that he asked me "Well since we have our driver's licenses, do you want me to take the passports back?" When he couldn't find my DL, he grabbed all 3 of our passports.
O.M.F.G. NO HE DIDN'T!!!
I told him no, but he better guard those passports with his life because he'd lose an important body part if they got stolen and they were to never leave the safe ever again.
So....45 minutes after we'd gotten off the ship, we were finally ready to go into Progreso.
I snapped a picture of us parked next to the Ecstasy.
We maneuvered through the stores in the pier area and headed toward the line for the shuttle. Which wrapped around and around and around and around. I told DH "Let's just get back on the ship." By the time we would wait in a line that long, Maddie would be done for the day. She simply can't handle things like that. She doesn't get upset like a normal 2 year old would, she literally melts down and melts down and doesn't stop until naptime when she has an opportunity to "reset."
DH told me tough crap, we're sticking this one out. We went back and forth about it but then 2 shuttle buses showed up so I decided to just drop it because maybe it won't be long.
10 minutes later, 3 more shuttle buses showed up. Maddie was on the brink of melting down at this point. I could see it in her eyes that she was getting really overwhelmed.
Then, people started cutting in line way up ahead. I was about to blow a gasket.
3 more shuttle buses came and the line cutters got on board.
Shortly thereafter, 2 more buses came and if the line cutters wouldn't have cut the line, we'd have been on one of these buses. Finally, a bus came for us, but there were only 2 seats left on it that weren't together - at that point I didn't even care, but DH sat down in the first available seat, leaving me with the other one that was on the inside of some lady and she did not want to scoot over to let me sit down! I was like W-T-F lady I'm carrying this big stroller, I need to sit down. She huffed and puffed about it but eventually moved over.
By the time we got off of the bus, it was 10:25....a full hour and 25 minutes after we'd initially gotten off of the ship. Aye. Thankfully the shuttle ride calmed Maddie down because she thinks it's really cool to be on a bus.
We were immediately approached by a man who wanted to sell us a beach tour. I told him "No thank you, we're headed to the beach over there" and pointed to the beach 1 block away. He told us, quite seriously, "That beach is broken. You can't go to it."
The beach is broken? ROTFL! That's one of the funniest things I'd ever heard and at that point I needed a laugh.
We then saw the open air bus was about to leave so we bought tickets for $3 each and hopped on. It was really fun and informative and only took about 20 minutes.
View from the bus
Since Maddie thinks buses are so cool, she was glowing during the entire ride on this bus:
Town square in Progreso decorated for Christmas. The elf all the way to the right in the pic sort of creeped me out:
When the tour was over, we headed to the beach. The broken beach. It's true that the road was under construction, but the beach was pristine...just a wee bit too chilly for our liking to swim or sunbathe.
We stopped for lunch at this place called Buddy's that I'd heard about on Cruise Critic. Everyone seemed to love it there and I trust the general consensus of the opinions of people on that website as I've done numerous private tours through recommended vendors on there and have loved them all.
To put it bluntly, Buddy's SUCKED.
No one wanted to seat us and it took over 15 minutes to get a menu and 10 more minutes to get some chips & salsa at our table. If it weren't for a Christmas tree with shimmering lights next to us that Maddie could stim off of, she'd have had a nuclear meltdown. We ordered and then we waited. Waited. Waited. Was getting irate:
Then this guy came and serenaded Maddie with Jingle Bells and then expectantly waited for a tip. We were going to tip him anyway but he lost 50% of his tip for being rude about waiting for a tip:
We noticed "hey....not a single soul in here has any food." At exactly noon they started bringing food out - we think their kitchen didn't open until noon. Or maybe they didn't start serving until noon. Either way, my tacos were ice cold and they served Maddie some sort of mystery meat that turned out to be a pork burger. At that point we just wanted to get the hell out of there so we paid our huge $29 bill for 3 measly entrees and left.
We wandered around trying to find a pharmacy that had something I was looking for and actually needed right away but no one had it and strangely enough, none of them spoke English - I'm not complaining as I know English is not their native language, but I've found that typically around the touristy areas in Mexico the pharmacists speak it well. I wasn't worried as I knew in Cozumel the next day, the language barrier wouldn't be so pronounced so to speak
We went to the flea market and shopped for a little while.
Didn't find anything of interest other than a guy on stage who was singing Lady Gaga and wearing impossibly tight jeans. I should have snapped a photo of him LOL. He was very entertaining.
We were sort of over our not so great day at that point so we got back in line for the bus, which came much faster than it had that morning and we crammed ourselves into a seat with Maddie, our bag and the stroller and headed back to the port.
This is Progreso from the bus ride out on the pier:
And the port area, taken from the ship once we were back onboard:
Once we got back to the port area, I bought some vanilla as it's something I use a lot of and I like the stuff I can get in Mexico, but you have to be careful in making sure you're getting the right product. Some of the "real" vanilla contains nasty stuff that isn't real vanilla at all.
DH bought some cuban cigars to smoke in the cigar bar onboard the ship.
We headed back onboard and got Maddie straight to her nap. We woke up just before it was time to sail away at 4 and headed up to the Lido Deck to get a snack. We checked her into Camp Carnival for about 45 minutes while we played a trivia game and then we retrieved her and wandered the ship some more, looking for anything interesting to do. Not much was going on and people were tired from a long day in port as we were docked for 9 hours. Maddie took her second nap of the day with DH while I hung out around the ship and then she got up, we got her ready for dinner and then took her to Camp Carnival while we got ready for dinner. It was much easier getting ready for dinner while she was up at Camp Carnival! We even got to stroll around the ship for a while and we came across an adorable backdrop for a photo area that was set up that we thought she'd look cute in so we signed her out of camp and tried to get a picture of her...but she wasn't in the mood to cooperate. Bummer.
Headed up to dinner. This was the only night I remembered to get a photo of the menu.
I had the quesadilla and short ribs. They were both excellent. And of course, warm chocolate melting cake for dessert.
Maddie continued playing with her fruit all night.
And when we got back to the room, she fell in love with her new elephant friend that awaited us. You can see her Funship Freddy doll who was her previous best friend was tossed aside for Mr. Elephant.
Maddie and I headed to bed while DH went to smoke a cigar in the cigar bar. He got in sometime around midnight I think.
Stay tuned for my day to myself in Cozumel - yes I ventured into port alone!
for some reason, I can't remember if you cruised with her before, or just the hubby. Mind blank here.
You're not new to cruising, so it's not like you wouldn't know the drill. It's nice they let you off the hook!
Oh well!
To my knowledge, most 1-2 year olds that would use those teeny toddler wading pools would have diapers. Strange. I know it's for health reasons, though.. but then, why have them.
But when I got to the part about the broken beach, I literally LOL'd out loud!
Linear Mode
