Holy shit. I recall thinking that, laying in bed late on Saturday morning. The weather was cloudy and it was raining slightly. The sea was pretty rocky, and the ship had a different feel to it as I lay there still half asleep. It was swaying, back and forth.Guilt was the first feeling that came over me. Thinking that our slight over-indulgence in adult beverages last night resulted in an ill-timed hangover, I figured that I should just get up and pop a handful of ibuprofen and get looking for some coffee. As I tried to raise my pathetic self from the bed, I immediately realized that I was not, after all hung over.The dreaded sea illness had taken hold of me and had no plans on letting go anytime soon. We had Bonine, Dramamine and Sea bands – tried them early in the cruise, but as the week went on determined that the slight wobble was not going to lead me to the nightmarish land of Seasick Island, so I hadn’t taken anything since much earlier in the week. Bad move Bonehead. Would it have killed me to pop one of these little fuckin’ pills every morning, just to be sure? Of course not.So now I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, think, blink – it all hurt, and every motion made me wish I was in a coma. Chrissy force fed me some of the pills, opened the balcony door to let in some sea breezes, and stuck a cold rag on my head. Of course, I was seasick, which is not normally accompanied by a fever, but it was a nice gesture nonetheless. She then took a walk to try and get me some coffee. Innocent enough, however, upon her return, the winds had picked up, and when she came back to the stateroom and tried to open the door, a huge vacuum was created and caused a gale-force wind to blow everything in the room asunder and the cabin door to slam shut, spilling the coffee and seriously pissing off my wife.I couldn’t get out of the bed, fortunately a cabin boy was passing and helped her eventually get the door open and come inside. Had a sip or two of what was left of the coffee, and retreated into my misery. Being the last day at sea, we had to get our luggage packed for pickup the night before, so she decided to get a head start while waiting for my sea sickness to pass. The Celebrity Solstice boasts some of the most spacious staterooms on the open seas, and we were in Aqua Class, getting an even larger room. But even still, these are tight rooms. You are on a boat after all, granted a big boat, but still, a boat. So, as she set about getting her packing on, she piled and folded on the bed, where I lay sick as a dog on a rocking ship. That was fun.Now in addition to feeling like crap, I was also feeling guilty. Poor young Junior Miss was left pretty much on her own to wander around the ship bothering anyone who would talk to her. She has been known to bore easily, so we’re always on our toes to make sure she’s entertained. Otherwise, she usually starts annoying us. So I half expected her to wander into our cabin and start tossing crackers and grapes at my head to amuse herself, and I was in no mood for that.

So the morning turned to afternoon, and into late afternoon. Thankfully, the horror of sea sickness finally passed and I managed to get up and make myself somewhat presentable to head out. We met up with the child who told us in great detail all about her day. It’s the last night, and there’s no late show performance at the Solstice Theater, so we have to hurry down a few decks to catch the Grand Finale performance. Not quite as explosive a Grand Finale as you’d see in the July 4th Macy’s Fireworks show, but a nice show nonetheless.

Then we race to the photo displays to decide which over-priced photos of our silly-looking selves we want to buy. Waiting until the last night was a good idea, since there were paparazzi snapping our photos the entire week, we searched out as many of those featuring any and/or all of us so that we can make a consensus decision as to what we wanted. There was some great snapshots of people that were not us, that we thought would be amusing to purchase too – however, the gentleman who handled our transaction did not seem to possess the same sense of humor as us. So we simply stole them.

On the way to our final dinner at Blu, we made a point of visiting Jose in the Emerald Lounge and gave him an extra tip for his great service all week. We also made certain to take care of the head waiter at Blu – John, who is from India. John and his assistant Raj (also from India) had provided us with great service, an abundance of extra peas, and one of the best laughs we’d had all week.

I think it was Friday night. Remember, everyone in the Aqua Class had their own private table, and like many restaurants, the seating featured a long bench/booth along the wall, and 5 individual seats for the 3 tables in our section. So we always dined with the same people in the area, and at the same time. When John came over each night to go over the specials, he did it for us and for the couple in the table for two next to us, to save time and chatter. On Friday while he was doing this, he must have been turned a little too much away from us, because Raj came over and started, loudly, asking us for our drink order. You could see John turning to Raj with a wrath of fire coming from his eyes, but he never stopped his speech on the specials, and Raj kept going on and on about beverages – each of them raising his voice just a little louder to be heard over the other. You really had to be there to get the full effect, but trust me it was hysterical.

Sadly, we left Blu knowing that we had to head back to the staterooms to finish packing. Luggage had to be left outside the room by 11pm. We picked up a couple of souvenirs, searched out some of our favorite crew members to say so long, and then headed back to close the bags on this wonderful week. We packed everything except tomorrow’s clothes, and the toothbrushes and toothpaste. Oddly, Chrissy had the most difficult time finding the toothpaste, left on the bathroom counter in very plain site. You know she has the same problem at home with the vacuum.