Cruise recap

Sorry it has taken me so long to get this up on my blog. I have been crazy busy at work (coming back to one week of piled up work really sucks!)and I have also been sick. Nope, the cold did not go away the minute the cruise started. In fact, it progressively got worse everday I was cruising. BUT that is not saying I had a horrible time. The cold did not hold me back from LIVIN' IT UP and having a BLAST! I can only describe my little vacation in one word: AMAZING!!!! I loved EVERY minute of it (well, almost every minute)...

The fam (minus grandkids) met up in FL where we stayed the night in a hotel waiting to board the ship (the Crown Princess) the next morning. It was so fun seeing Natalie's face as she arrived at the hotel and also when she walked onto the ship. She has never been on a cruise before so it was fun breaking her in! There were all sorts of fun activities on board and we participated in many of them. My faves were line dancing, Movies Under the Stars, dancing on the Lido deck, the comedy shows, the dancing shows and the magic shows. Ok, so pretty much everything was my fave. Good times indeed.

We made four stops on our Eastern Caribbean cruise (side note: I mentioned before I left that I was headed to the western Caribbean...well, it wasn't until the 3rd day on board that my family told me I was mistaken about which side of the Caribbean I was on...oh well). The first stop was at a private little island called Princess Cays in the Bahamas. Obviously, the cruise line we went on was Princess, so the island is owned by them and was just for the 3500 of us on board. There wasn't much to do on the island. We just layed out, took a cool dip in the ocean and did a wee bit of shopping. I only got asked if I wanted my hair braided by the local merchants three times...

The next day was a sea day, and sadly the wind was a little crazy in the Caribbean so the boat was rockin' a bit. I don't get sea sick, but if you know me at all you know that I have a fear of vomit. I was pretty much worried that someone in my family would puke near me (namely my bro Curt) and it was hard to relax. But all was well. No one got sick and I was a happy girl.

The second stop was my FAVE stop of the entire cruise and it was to St. Martin/St. Maarten, an island of the British West Indies. Half of the island is owned by the Dutch and the other half is owned by the French, hence the reason for the two spellings of the name. Since we spent our time in the Dutch quarters, I will spell the island name as St. Maarten. It was a breathtakingly beautiful place! The weather was amazing, the beach was gorgeous, the scenery was awe inspiring, etc. We never ventured to the French side because we heard that the beaches are "clothing optional" over there...and the boys didn't really need the "eye medicine," as one of the locals called it. We just went shopping in port and strolled along the beach, but I loved it. I honestly don't know why this was my favorite port because looking back, nothing exciting happened there. Maybe it's because the next port was so horrific for me...

The next day we stopped at beautiful St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. I had such high hopes for this port. We decided to participate in an excursion while there and took a little island tour/shuttle to a place called Coral World. There we got into a semi-submarine and took a little boat ride around the coral reefs seeing the beautiful sea life. Coral World is like an extremely miniature version of Sea World, just full of fish tanks and different variety of sea life. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful park, but then things took a "tumble" for the worse. While making my way down a set of rock stairs, I somehow lost my balance and managed to fall forward down the remaining steps. No one was near me, I didn't trip over anything that I can remember, I just simply fell down the stairs. I heard someone in the distance gasp as they saw me falling and all I could think to myself was, "get up you freak! This is so embarassing!" I got my composure and walked to where my dad was only to notice that my left calf was cut open in many spots, both of my feet were scraped, my right knee was bleeding, my left elbow was cut, my left hand was sore and I think my second toe on my left foot got broken. It was quite a spill. My mom had to get some alcohol pads and neosporin from the staff there and clean me up...what a champ! My dad noticed that my pants had ripped open near my bum (I had no idea) so my mom got some medical tape and taped my pants up too. I looked awesome! Needless to say, that kind of put a damper on my day. We spent the rest of the time shopping (yes, I was still a bloody, taped up mess) while all the people stared at me. It was fun. Then to make things even better, right before getting back on the ship my mom and I walked into a gift shop. While looking at the shot glasses (don't ask why, but they intrigue me and I have a small collection of them) I happened to knock one over and it shattered on the floor. Yep, they made me pay for it...and they wouldn't even give me the shattered pieces to glue back together. So, I went to St. Thomas and paid $3.97 for air and got an awesome leg decoration. Do you understand why St. Thomas is my least favorite place in the world??

The last stop was Grand Turk, Turks and Caicos. I was really excited about this port just because I like to say Turks and Caicos. We had signed up for a snorkeling/stingray adventure. We had a couple of hours to kill before the excursion so we looked at the shops for a while. Once the excursion started we had a lot of fun. Snorkeling was a blast. I LOVE snorkeling! It is amazing what lives in the ocean, and it is no wonder the ocean freaks me out. Snorkeling really opens your eyes to what is in the water with you. Kind of scary! But it is still fun. After the snorkeling adventure we cruised to a little private beach where the waters are full of stingrays. It was a little creepy (visions of the Crocodile Hunter flashed in my head) and I worried that the stingrays would attack my leg and suck my blood...but they didn't. I got to hold a stingray and even got to kiss one. Mmmm...SLIME! Then I got to get a stingray massage. The whole adventure was tons of fun and something I will not soon forget.

The last day on board was a sea day and was spent doing all of the fun last minute activities. There was a Susan G Komen "Walk for the Cure" on deck, so we couldn't pass up the opportunity to participate in that. It was cool coming together for such a great cause, especially when it is so close to our family. We played a fun round of Bingo, got in some shows and it was off to bed. We were sad that the cruise was ending. Honestly, by the last day of the cruise my cold was horrible and I just happened to get an eye infection too. I was feeling pretty crappy and was ready to crawl into my own, spacious bed, in my own house, where I could openly cough my lungs out and not worry about waking anyone up.

The cruise was a little piece of heaven on earth...spent with the greatest people I know! I wouldn't trade my experience for anything! Next time the family goes on a cruise though, I WILL have a husband...