The Camaras

The thoughts and lives of the camara family. Ross Camara Nicole Camara

Archive for April, 2008

Key West Butterfly Conservatory

April 30th, 2008

One of my favorite things on our cruise was our stop in Key West. We didn’t have anything planned while we were there, and just decided to walk around instead. On our walk we came across the Key West Butterfly Conservatory. I debated about whether or not it was worth the admissions price to go in, but in the end decided it was worth a try. It was worth it!

The exhibit started with an informational area where there was a video playing, and lots of posters about the butterflies. We could also see some caterpillars etc. I had forgotten a lot of my grade school science about butterflies, so it was a good refresher.

Then we entered the butterfly area. There were hundreds of butterflies flying around — it was amazing. I especially loved these one with bright blue wings. It was difficult to take pictures of all the butterflies because they were flying around so fast. Ross and I noticed some really ugly brown butterflies sitting on pieces of fruit. Only later did we realized that these brown butterflies were the same ones as the blue ones – just the underside of their wings is brown. There were all kinds of flowers and some fruit around the conservatory to give the butterflies something to eat. There were also all kinds of pretty finches in the conservatory.

At the end of the little walkway that snaked through the conservatory were clear glass windows with caccoons hanging in them. It was really cool to see the large variety of different caccoons from the different species of butterflies. I must say – they were way cooler than Drosophila pupae – if only the ones I worked with everyday were that cool.

If you’re ever in Key West – be sure to stop by and visit =)

Here is a link to our pictures from the Butterfly Conservatory:

http://thecamaras.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/slideshows/butterfly/

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Tags: butterfly cruise vacation

Cruise Pictures

April 28th, 2008

Here is a slide show on our cruise.

http://thecamaras.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/slideshows/cruise/

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Carnival Cruise

April 28th, 2008

So we just got back from our Carnival Liberty Caribbean cruise. It was our vacation for the year where we went and did something on our own that didn’t involve our extended since thats the way we generally spend our vacation time. The cruise was a six day cruise that left out of Ft. Lauderdale on Sunday April 20th. We choose to book an inside stateroom guarantee which was basically the cheapest possible accommodation. Instead of a trying to book a specific room we just went with the guarantee which let carnival pick the room for us. We figured we wouldn’t know a good room from a bad room so we’d pay the least possible and let carnival put us in a room. We ended up getting room 8314 which was on deck 8 much higher up on the ship than we expected. We were happy with the room we had and were glad we didn’t spend the extra money on a window or balcony since we hardly spent any time in the room.

Our cruise got started early since we decided to go down the day before and get a hotel room for the night instead of trying to fly out the morning of the cruise. This was mostly so we wouldn’t be exhausted when we got to the ship since we wouldn’t need to get up before dawn to get to the airport. We found a cheap hotel called the “Rodeway Inn” that was near the airport and the cruise port. It wasn’t a nice hotel by any stretch of the imagination but it was clean enough for the one night that we were going to spend there. We had dinner at this little restaurants that was in the hotel. It had a very limited menu but it was home cooked and fresh which made it quite yummy. We went to bed fairly early since we wanted to get a good night of rest before we had to get up and get on the ship. Sadly our plan of going to bed early did not work out. It turns out that saturday night a company was hosting some concert across the street and was blasting music with some serious base. It was so loud neither of us could get to sleep and went on till almost 5 AM. Apparently since they had a permit they didn’t have to respect any other noise or time ordinance in the state. That was really annoying and not the way we wanted to start our cruise.

The next day got off with a much better start as we were able to make a quick and easy transfer to the pier where we were supposed to get on the ship. Checking in and boarding the ship took a little longer than we expected but thats because we found out they had a full ship inspection that morning and slowed down their normal boarding process. Once we got on board we set out to explore the ship. It was pretty huge and for quite awhile I had no idea where i was on the ship or which way was forward or aft. We got our first taste of the food options as we grabbed some food from the lido buffet. Once we had some food in use we decided to cruising around the upper decks of the ship and check out what was available. This lead us to the mini-golf course that they had set up on one of the top decks. We decided to kill some time before we could go to our room by playing a round. Unfortunetly for me I managed to lose by a single stroke to nicole. As much as nicole I caught nicole trying to cheat and give me extra strokes I wasn’t able to come back and beat her :-p. At this point we were allowed to go to our rooms and we went to check out our room. We were impressed with the size of the room.

After we got a sense of our room we jumped into our swim suits and decided to get some sun on the deck before the ship left port. We got to enjoy an hour or so getting some reading and napping done in the sun. At this point it was time for the muster drill and the embarkation party. The muster drill was as boring as we had heard and spent awhile listing to what we were supposed to do in the event of an emergency and not to have anything in our rooms that might cause a fire. Then we had the extra fun of hearing it all again in spanish because there was a large spanish speaking group on the cruise.

Once the muster drill was over we went and met some of the people we had talked with before our cruise on the cruise critic fourms that we had been following. It was an interesting time and we met another couple that was on the cruise and chatted with them for awhile. After we were invited back to another couples cabin to check out their aft wrap around balcony. Their room was really cool and the balcony was certainly very impressive.

Before dinner that night we stopped off in the casino and learned how to play craps. It was very interesting and looked like a lot of fun but it also seemed really complicated. After learning how waste money (gamble ) we went to our dinning room for dinner and to meet our table mates. For our cruise we were seated at an 8 person table. On the first night we meet two of the couples. The first couple was Mike and Carrie Ann from Michigan. They were probably in their early thirties without kids. Carrie Ann was a pediatric nurse and Mike did some kind of work for the city. The other couple was William and Garnet from St. Louis. They were black and a little older at least in the 40’s and were on their honeymoon. They owned their own funeral home and that made for some interesting dinner conversations.

After a yummy dinner we went to check out the opening show. It was neat and we got to meet our cruise directory Steve and the Carnival Liberty dancers and singers. At this point we were pooped and decided to call it a night.

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Tags: cruise vacation

Cruise Food

April 27th, 2008

So we just got back from our Carnival cruise to the caribbean on the Carnival Liberty. We had a fantastic time. It was really good and we were sorry to be back. Although our waistlines (or at least mine) isn’t sorry to be back from the cruise. One thing that cruises are known for is the food that they serve. You can get food on the ship at any time of the day and most of the time you have a lot of options to choose from. They have round the clock room service (which you’ve already paid for) and freshly made pizza at the pizza bar. Also there is self serve ice cream and frozen yogurt any time of the day or night.

On top of all that throughout the day they have various food stations and buffet lines open that you can pick up more food. And since all of it is already paid for you can take as much or as little as you want whenever you go. It’s a good time to try different things. Sadly there remains very few things that I haven’t already had so I don’t think I really tried anything new from any of the food stations. So there was a lot of food available.

In addition to all the self server food available through out the day there was also the formal dinning times. We selected and got the late seating at 8:30 for the cruise. This was great because it meant we never had to come in out of the sun early or cut our day short so we could get ready for dinner. Overall I thought the food was pretty decent but I don’t think Nicole was all that impressed with the food. It was probably a little better than most chain restaurants but by no means a gourmet experience. One thing that hurt our dining was that dinner was very slow for our table. Us and our table mates think it was unusually slow because our waiter wasn’t getting the help from his assistant that he was supposed to which meant that he had to do everything himself.

One night we did opt to go to the specialty supper club on the Liberty called ‘Harry’s’ where we had a 5 course meal. It was a fantastic experience and it was probably the best food we’d eaten in a long time. The only regret we had when we were there was that we should have headed the warning and eaten a lighter lunch because we couldn’t finish all the food they gave us. We had to roll our selves out of the place.

If you want to see a slide show of some of the food we ate follow this link: http://thecamaras.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/slideshows/cruise-food/

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Tags: cruise food

Nationals Game

April 14th, 2008

On sunday we went to the Nationals game down in DC to check out the brand new stadium. Aaron and Adam had arranged to go to the game with some of their coworkers. We met up with them at a Bar Louie before the game started. We got there a little late but had a lot of fun at the bar. It was defiantly good to have gone to the bar before the game cause we could drink a lot better beers for the same amount that we’d have to pay in the stadium.

I wasn’t expecting much from the game itself since the nationals were on a 9 game skid and were playing the Braves who i know about as well as the nationals. Mainly i was there to check out the new stadium. The stadium is nice and close to the metro station since its only about half a block from the station exit to the stadium gates. I’m not sure if the road thats right outside of the station is supposed to be a pedestrian street but people were definitely using it like it was. The stadium itself was pretty nice. The seats are great and even though we had the crappiest seats possible you could see the game without a set of binoculars. I was a little disappointed by the concessions. Based on what i had read and saw there were some pretty good concessions, provided you weren’t sitting on the top level. Since we were on the top level there weren’t any options except the generic hotdog, french fries, and beer options. We had to walk a good ways just to be able to get a burger or chicken tenders. I think if we’d gone down to the lower levels we would have been better off. Supposedly there was even a five guys in the park.

The nationals did managed to pull off a win while we were there. They had built up a 5-0 lead by the 5th inning when they seemed to fall apart. The braves managed to make it 5-4 with the bases loaded before the nationals were able to get the last out. Anything else about the game I couldn’t really tell you since I don’t really know any of the players.

Getting out of the stadium was surprisingly easy and the DC Metro did a good job of having plenty of trains. It was slow but moving the whole time and we were on a train out withing 20 min of the game ending.