Caribbean Cruise

I don't know if I will ever be able to enjoy a vacation as much as this one ever again...

Ben and I haven't been on vacation alone since our honeymoon 10 1/2 years ago (with the exception of a couple night getaways), and our kids will never be at these young ages again. SO, it was such a HUGE resting, relaxing, FUN, rejuvinating week!!

Now I am about to bore everyone but myself with a million details about our vacation, so just skip the words and glimpse at some pictures:) which by the way, it's so weird posting a million pictures of myself. I usually prefer pics of the kids but they weren't there {smile}.

But if you are interested in a cruise, maybe this would be helpful?!

We went on Royal Caribbean and I was really impressed with them. From what I hear, Carnival is a bit cheaper and draws a younger crowd, which could include a lot of "party-ers," but some people prefer that. I would say the average age on our cruise was about 65, and that suited us perfectly. They had plenty of activities that all ages would enjoy: rock climbing, great shows, swimming and hot tubbing, saunas, workout room.

I heard our ship had a nicer workout room than some. It was awesome! We typically would go on an excursion during the day, they bring us back to the ship where we would get lunch, then the beach, then work out, shower and get ready, go to dinner and catch a show or watch a movie in our room after that.

They made us hug in our picture below. I'm fully committed and Ben is semi-committed to their forced posing! This "picture" of a picture is our way of sticking it to the man I think :)

The islands we visited were:

St. Thomas

Antigua

Martinique

St. Lucia

Grenada

and the last day was a day at sea

I LOVED cruising.

Biggest perks for me were not cooking and not making my bed. I also loved waking up to a new adventure on a new island.

I didn't love that you don't get to know any particular area very well, and some people say they are afraid of catching a disease on the ship, but, that wasn't a personal deterrent.

Every night we come in our spotless room with a fancy folded towel and I would think "That right there is worth every penny of this!"

We had an interior room in the middle of the ship on a lower level. The rocking on the ship was very gentle and our room was like a quiet little cave and I LOVED it.

Day 1

Charlotte Amelie, St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands

Population: 51,000

We did some shopping that morning

and then that afternoon went to Magen's Bay.

It is supposedly one of National Geographic's Top 10 most beautiful beaches,

and it was beautiful.

We got there by taxi. Open air kind of style:

Every island was really easy to find a taxi. Since tourism is their main, almost only, source of income sometimes it's a little overhwhelming how many people approach, but it's not hard to find what you need.

Day 2

St. John's, Antigua

(Pronounced "Antiga")

Population: 80,000
(I always want to know populations of any place we go. It quantifies it in my head I guess.)

Almost every day was partly cloudy with a chance of rain but it was always short lived if it did rain - 10 minutes at the most.

Just as we left the ship this morning it stopped raining and a huge rainbow greeted us.

This was by far our favorite excursion we took!
(We did all our excursions through the cruise ship - less coordinating stress.)

First we traveled in a bus across the island and learned a bit about it.

They love cricket and have a huge stadium.

The man giving the tour joked and said that the reason they don't do things right the first time (such as make roads without potholes) is because then they wouldn't have jobs.

Antigua is beautiful! There are a million little tiny islands surrounding it.

One, called Long Island, supposedly costs $10,000 per night to stay on. It is also the home of Oprah Winfrey, Will Smith, and several other famous people.

We were brought to a very nice home  (as opposed to most we saw along the drive) with a little pathway back to the beach.

They took us in a couple of boats out to some kayaks. This is where I don't have my camera anymore...no waterproof equipment!

We went kayaking to several of the tiny islands. Our guides were incredible. So charismatic and friendly. 

There was a group of about 20 people with us and we had a kayak race and Ben and I won :) !

Then we "Hiked" on Great Bird Island, another tiny island. I say "hiked" because it was a short walk up a hill, but still very cool. I've never seen thousands of butterflies all over the place before. It was almost like rain.

At the top there were several holes leading to the ocean. Some were quite deep!

I love the color of the Caribbean water.

After that we snorkeled. The snorkeling was AWESOME, unfortunately, it rained the entire time we snorkeled and there were waves where it was usually calm so the water was a little bit murky. The fish were still so cool. We saw sea cucumbers, upside down jelly fish, the biggest sea star EVER, trigger fish and a bunch of colorful fish. We were able to facetime Macey, Mackayla and Bonnie for a minute because the beautiful home we were taken to had wifi!

Back to where they dropped us off by the ship was this place:

Who knew this was the headquarters? ;)

Day 3

Fort de France, Martinique

Population: 380,000

The Fort:

We took a water taxi to a beach.

This beach was especially awesome because it was a nude beach.

But not just any nude beach, an older than 90 nude beach. All these unique older women were topless everywhere. ha!

This island was much harder to navigate because it is french. The people there don't even attempt to speak English, which is fine because I don't speak French either, but if I went back I would skip this island because all the other ones DO speak English. Plus, it was incredibly dirty, more so than the others, at least where we went, which is interesting because it supposedly has a higher standard of living than other Caribbean islands. We just didn't see it in our short visit.

That being said, the beach was a little more quaint and quiet than most others too, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Ben and I snorkeled for hours! We found a sand dollar and some sea urchins and sea stars.

"The 40 foot sand dollar"

I answered the phone that night in our room and a man said "Hi Carl" so Ben called me Carl several times this trip :)

Day 4

Castries, St Lucia

Population: 174,000

St Lucia is incredibly hilly, so most homes were up on high stilts (much higher than these pictured).

It was humbling to see the conditions the people live in.

Many of the nicer homes were colorful bright oranges, blues, greens, yellows.

On this island we took a bus up into the mountains to the

Adrenaline Zip Line

 There were 9 lines

and to be honest, it was a bit more tame than I imagined zip lining to be,

but still WAY fun!

 That afternoon we went to Rodney Bay, a nice beach near some resort hotels.

We did some more "treasure hunting" while we snorkeled and found some cool shells.

Formal night

Next time we cruise we may switch our dining time to a later one because we didn't make it to dinner all that often. Luckily, they had an equally good restaurant that was always open when we were hungry.

Ben would always get some variation of Meat and Potatoes. Pretty standard.

I prefer trying new things! wrote down some of my favorite new-to-me or at least different-than-normal foods: watermelon soup, borsch, sushi, cassava (which I Love), roulade, jamaican jerk chicken, chupe de camarones soup, pineapple and lychee soup.

Creme brulee is always a good one to try

Day 5

St. George's, Grenada

The Island of Spice

Population: 110,000

Grenada was one of our favorite islands. Overall it just seemed cleaner and friendly.

And there's a vet school there, so it's awesome for that, too.

We went on a catamaran sail and snorkel. 

They took us to an underwater sculpture garden. It was ok, but the snorkeling was terrible and I would have preferred to go to better snorkeling. But, it was a huge sculpture underwater!

Ben thought I looked super awesome in my snorkeling gear. Yup.

They took us to Grand Anse Beach. It was a large, nice, clean beach.

Pressure from locals to buy something was intense. We did get a "spice necklace" and I had to get some of their other spices. They produce 20% of the world's nutmeg.

Here's us with our $50 hamburgers. It was one of few stressful moments of the cruise when we sat down to eat at this restaurant to realize that our meal would cost us $70 for hamburgers, that's it, and one drink. Through a long convoluted process we realized that was in their currency, not US dollars.

Day 6

At Sea

Being at sea was every bit as fun as being on the island.

We laid out, read our books, swam, and went to the very front of the boat.

There we watched FLYING FISH jump out in front of the boat and fly an impressive distance then dive back down in the water.

Of course this wouldn't have been possible without the help of one of our favorite grandma's to our children, Bonnie, and also Jessi and Jeff, who each came out a few of the days to help.

They were taken care of better than we could have done.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

(We thought Cody would have loved all the ships on the cruise ship.)

Holy cow. That is officially the longest, wordiest post I have ever done.

If you read it, you shouldn't have, but it was such a fun trip and it was so fun to go with Ben!

With Ben being in school/internships almost 10 of the almost 11 years we've been married I didn't even know if I liked hanging out with him anymore. (a bit of sarcasm, but he was gone a lot). It was so reaffirming to realize that I don't just love him but I LOVE being with him, doing fun things with him, hanging out with him. Cruises would be fun with friends, but this one was perfect marriage therapy. I highly recommend it :)