Cruisin' With Cocky: A Cock-eyed View of the Carnival Triumph

Hi there, this is Cocky, everyone's favorite traveling chicken. I recently accompanied the Browns and Shealys on the Carnival Triumph to the Bahamas. They were rude and wouldn't let me embark with them actually in the Bahamas since they smuggled me onboard, so all I got was a glimpse of those Caribbean blue seas! Here are some pictures of the fun things I did get to do while confined to the boat.

I made friends with several other animals during our trip. Oddly, they were all albino and they kept disappearing every time Cy or Carissa took a shower. I think it was some sort of conspiracy. I should probably notify PETA.


I enjoyed lounging on the chair on our deck as we said goodbye to the Ravenel Bridge and Charleston Harbor.
'S in da bag. Here I am riding in style in Carissa's new bag from the straw market in Port Lucaya.


Catching some Zzzz's in Rachel's bunk.


This mermaid needed to cover up her breastuses!


The rain made me so sad and forlorn. Perhaps the rain was why they would not let me embark. Maybe they were afraid I would start molting. . . er, melting.


Ah, twenty-four hour ice cream cones. Clearly the best part of the vacation.


Below, you can see me shakin' my tailfeathers on the tail of the boat.

Here I am on the jogging track. There wasn't much to the jogging track, yet people kept lapping me - what's up with that?


Trying my luck at the casino. Cha-ching!


Here I am posing for my formal portrait. I even put my foots out. Pendragon would be proud.


Singing a cock-a-doodle-duet with Dad during karaoke hour. He obviously needed my help on backup.


I put the "fun" in the Carnival funship!!!

Bahamas!

The last week of May, we boarded the Carnival Triumph with the Brown family (Dad, Mom, & Rachel) to cruise to the Bahamas. The ship was really amazing - tons of restaurants, shops, a mini golf course, swimming pools, water slide, tons of stuff to do, and food to eat constantly. It would have been perfect except for the seasickness. We heard that the cruise we were on was pretty calm, but we'll just admit that we are pansies and were incredibly seasick the whole time. (Some of us are still feeling seasick nearly a month later, back on land and will be going back to physical therapy.) In short, we like the idea of a cruise - an all-inclusive package with everything right there, but the seasickness was bad enough for us that we will never go on any boat anywhere ever again.


Having said that, there were a lot of fun moments (as the pictures below will show). We enjoyed the mini golf (especially when I nearly hit the ball off the side of the boat), we enjoyed Francis, our maitre d and his quality Indian accent, especially when he said "Slumdog Millionerrrrrrr!" We enjoyed the strange photographers (Pendragon, who told us to "put your foots" and creepy George from Serbia who said, "You make the picture look good, Angel"). The waiters (Dennis and Phar) were fun.

Our first full day on the boat was spent entirely at sea (barf). We got to spend our second full day in Port Lucaya, where we roamed through the straw market and then hit up the beach.


Our third full day was spent in Nassau, where we went on a kind of bizarre tour of the island, seeing several forts that had never seen battle, and other random landmarks, including a giant flamingo! Then we went to the museum Pirates of Nassau, which was pretty cool, until we came out and a semi-hurricane had appeared out of nowhere. We huddled together on this patio and watched a bunch of chairs and tree branches flying through the air, until we decided to follow this guy (who we thought was one of the pirates, but apparently just looked like one) through this sketchy alley which turned out to be the back entrance to the gift shop. Weird. After the mini-hurricane blew away, we waded through two feet of water on the streets of Nassau and got back on the boat.

Then it was time for another barf day. . .er, I mean fun day at sea. We spent most of that day making billions of towel animals and watching Get Smart on repeat all day long. By the time we woke up the next morning, we could step out on our balcony and see the Yorktown and the Ravenel Bridge (which honestly, we were incredibly happy to see). So yes, we did have fun, but we will never go on a cruise again.

ZOO9

Obviously, our blog has fallen severely behind. That's mainly due to prolonged illness, which I could blog about all day long and still not vent enough; maybe I'll come back to that later. . .

Today's entry is backtracking to the second week of May, when we went on our annual end of the semester trip to Riverbanks Zoo. It was really fun - we got to see a bear fight, which was pretty crazy, and the lemurs were actually out for once and not hiding from us.

There were also a couple of hilarious moments too, like when we overheard this lady tell this little girl: "Hold yo sista hand!" Or when we saw this little girl with a giant lollipop and her mom said, "You better suck that thing down to the stick!!! Dadgum $11 for a lollipop!" and the mom's friend replied, "I ain't never seen the like!!!"

All in all, a good trip. Below are some of the best pictures, with appropriate captions.

Bear Fight! It was kind of disturbing, but not as disturbing as the group of kindergarten girls yelling "Fight, fight, fight!" at the bears. . .

King Julian! "I like to move it, move it!"

Yeah, no joke.

Guy next to us: "I think that's called a musket. Look at the musket." (Oblivious to the giant sign saying 'meerkat.')

The real reason we go to the zoo every year: So I can take a billion pictures of the flamingo exhibit!!!