The Cruise

I uploaded the best pictures to my facebook, but haven't taken the time to blog yet-it's been a crazy week trying to get back to real life! Parker finished school on Wednesday, I started my tennis team, and Camden has lots of fun end of year stuff coming up! But here is the blog post about our fabulous cruise to the bahamas that we took or our 10 year anniversary! Again, thank you to my mother in-law for watching the kids so we could enjoy a romantic getaway and remember why we married each other ;)

We left out of the port of Miami.
Embarkation went smoothly and we were on our way after the boat drill..
We spent the 1st day exploring the ship, getting massages and enjoying our first cruise dinner.

The second day was a day at sea-so we hung out by the pool, read our books, went to the gym and again, and then dressed up for formal night, where we enjoyed lobster tails and shrimp for our main course at dinner.

Our 3rd day, we stopped at Grand Turks in the Turks and Caicos islands. We woke up early to do our shore excursion-a dunebuggy ride around the Island.
First, we drove from one end of the Island to the other,
then we did some off roading where we got completely wet and muddy-it makes you feel like a kid! We also got to hike up to a point where we had a great view of the surrounding Islands and the port.

After we were done, we were filthy
so we headed back to the ship to shower off, and then came back out to the beach, where I got our money shot of the cruise: Those chairs are where we were sitting!! (You can kind of see Paul's head in the right one.)
The water our in the Caribbean is AMAZING!!!! It is this clear turquoise color and you can see all the way to the bottom-even when it gets deep!

Our 4th day we woke up at Half Moon Cay-which is Carnival's private island. The water and beach were again amazing.

We rented a clam shell (kind of like a half tent thing) which was great because it rained while we were there, and we just hung out and watched people scurry back to the ship.
We swam and read and walked around the Island.
We went on a nature trail and saw big lizards:
Walked over to the lagoon and saw stingrays:
And we watched our ship sail away. Yeah, really-there was an electrical problem on board and so they pulled the boat away just to be safe until they had everything resolved. It freaked a lot of people out :) Unfortunately (not for us) there were some tenders out to meet the boat and they were out on the water for like an hour waiting for the boat to come back-and that was when it started to rain!!! All I could think of was that there was probably some poor mom with a little kid that she was taking back for a nap or something...see, even on vacation, can't get the kids out of my head!

Our 5th day was in Nassau. We took a taxi tour around the city. Our guide showed us the whole city-including the poor sections. We got to see the hotel Atlantis, which was pretty impressive. Someday...when we are rich....check out the yachts parked to stay there! They also had a neat indoor aquarium-and there was a sting ray swimming around that was seriously 10 feet wide!

We then went to the beach where we hung out. We went for a walk on the beach, and ended up finding a stretch that was pretty deserted-we had the beach and ocean all to ourselves! That's what I'm talking about!! Then we walked further, saw some pretty fish in the water and headed back to where everyone was.
We rented a jetski,
which was really fun, and then headed bak to the shops, where we tried conch fritters-which were really yummy!
That evening, we treated ourselves to the spa, and then enjoyed our last night sailing.

And then, we headed home :( We had a really good time, had a ton of fun people watching, and even enjoyed our dinner companions and people that we met on the boat. There were lots of really interesting people!!! By the time we were back on land, we were already trying to figure out when we could go on our next cruise! Maybe with the kids??? We are trying to figure out if that would ruin the whole cruising experience :D But it was beautiful, and very relaxing, and I feel like I came back much more relaxed and happy!

So there it was! Now we are back to real life!