Before I start, I just want to say my blogs wont always be this long.
On July 17th we took a shuttle from our hotel in Fort Lauderdale to the port and saw the ship for the first time. It is HUGE! It makes all of the other cruise ships look like babies in comparison. We got very excited and practically ran up the ramp Our whole entire afternoon was spent discovering this beast, with its 16 floors, 24 restaurants, zip line, pools, hot tubs, and more we had a lot to see! We had to do a 'sinking' drill which was kind of entertaining in that a lot of people were in this aqua theatre place (where the diving shows were held) and the messages were said and projected on screens in many different languages. The funny thing was that the people sitting next to us got almost ALL of the languages wrong - they guessed French for Italian, Italian for Spanish, etc. It was funny. Then Paul and I had signed up for a couples massage. We had checked it out online and it cost approx. 100$, which we thought was very reasonable. So we get there and we see the price is around 220$ and we were like oh ok that must be the price for both of us... no no it turned out to be 220$ EACH! So we were majorly ripped off at the spa (Paul also thought it was a good idea to listen to the lady and buy all kinds of soaps and oils which cost a gazillion dollars). The massage (hot stone, by the way, which is incredible) was amazing though, and it was most needed after the crazy stress we'd been in for the previous wedding planning and hosting month. After that we got ready for dinner. I LOVED dinner. Every night we got to dress up, some nights were fancier than others but I just enjoyed wearing a dress every night. We got the wine package so we got a bottle of wine every night, and that was enough to get us both quite tipsy. And the food was yummy!!! I wish I remembered what I ate every night. I know there was lasagna, gnocchis, fettuccini - you all know how much I love pasta!
July 18th, we woke up super early to get off the ship in the Bahamas. We were in the Bahamas around 8am and decided to get a taxi to go to the Atlantis hotel, which is famous, and as it turns out, quite beautiful. We got there and just walked around and saw sharks and sting rays in a lagoon, we walked on the beach a little bit and then we were in a water park! Everything was closed because it was so early and I think this definitely worked in our favour because we were able to see the entire hotel (we later heard a security guard telling people that the area we had been in was for guests only - oops!). Inside the hotel we walked around some more and found a casino and Paul decided we should play. I hate slot machines so I was against this idea until he convinced me to play only two one dollar bills. So we did and I won 15$ (we only actually won 11 because we spent 4, but you know what I mean), and then I decided slots were pretty fun! haha... We took a taxi back to town and walked up and down main street. We went into a few shops, they were mostly jewelry shops, we didn't get anything and soon got bored because they were all the same and we didn't really want to buy anything anyway. So we went back to the ship and went to the pool, and relaxed and read. Paul wanted to see the boat pull away at 2pm since we hadn't seen it the previous day (we were in our massages at 5pm when the ship left) so he went to watch while I read some more. He came back super excited because four people were left behind in the Bahamas! Then we went and had a nap. We got dressed up for dinner, which was a formal night, and enjoyed dinner. We chatted a bit with our dinner neighbours - there were five tables of two right next to each other so the first couple on our left were two older ladies from Boston, they're best friends and go on cruises a lot, next to them were a nice couple from Pennsylvania, George and Debbie, the last couple never came. On our right side was an older couple from Trinidad and Tobago. The lady LOVED to talk - she talked Paul's ear off that night! Afterwards we were going to see the diving show at the Aquatheatre called Oasis of Dreams, but it was cancelled due to technical difficulties. They told us we'd get to see it again later on in the week, but the technical difficulty never got fixed and we never got to see it! So we walked around and stumbled upon a fabulous jazz show - I think Paul has a video of the band on his Iphone, it was amazing!
July 19th was a day at sea. I honestly can't remember what we did during the day, but it was most likely relaxing by the pool or in a hot tub, walking around Central Park (yes there is a central park on this ship), ordering room service and sitting on the balcony eating cheese and cookies. I just remembered what we did!!! We went to see the 'hottest man in the world', which ended up being a super cute 10 year old boy who danced really well. We also went to 'Guess that 80s tune' trivia and to a 'learn how to dance like Michael Jackson' thing. There were just so many things to do! After dinner that night we went to see the Love and Marriage game show - it was just like the show Newlyweds, except they had a honeymoon couple, an older couple (39 years) and an in-between couple. It was really funny! After that we went up to the top of the ship for a party. This day the ship was super rocky because of a storm, so in my high heels it was so hard to dance! It was fun though.
July 20th we landed in St. Thomas. It was raining cats and dogs when we arrived and I was worried our snorkeling tour might be cancelled, but it wasn't. So we walked off the boat (just FYI if you ever go on a cruise I recommend buying a waterproof bag to keep passports and stuff in - we did and it was a very good decision) and got herded together with the Turtle Cove snorkel group. We got on the boat and were soaking wet already, so we sat at the front and started chatting with a very nice couple from Ireland - Ursula and Paidrag (which is Patrick in Irish). Then all of a sudden, the captain told us we'd have to turn around because there was thunder and lightning and the coast guard didn't think it was safe for us to be out. We were all disappointed but they were ready to serve us rum for breakfast, so it wasn't too bad! Just as the sailors were starting to give out the drinks, we saw blue skies! So the captain called the coast guard and told them we would keep going if that was OK. We arrived at turtle island, which is a beautiful natural reserve we weren't even allowed to step foot on! We snorkeled and were lucky enough to swim with sea turtles! It was a magical experience. On the way back, we got rained on again, but this time the rum was flowing freely throughout the boat so we didn't even feel cold! We had been told St. Thomas was the best place to buy things, so we got on the ship to have a shower and get dry in order to go shopping afterwards. We stepped out and I think the rain just sensed our presence or something because it started to seriously downpour! We decided pretty quickly that shopping was a bad idea. We got back on the ship and hung out with our new friends in the hot tub. That night after dinner we went to see the headliner show, which was a man singing. He was OK. He was very talented but catered more to an older crowd.
July 21st was our day in St. Maarten. We landed on the - wait I just realized do you 'land' when you are on a boat? maybe I should be saying 'docked' - anyway, we arrived on the Dutch side of the island and had signed up for a kayak & snorkel tour, so we followed our little group, got a briefing on how to kayak and set out! I was enjoying myself up until Paul said I wasn't kayaking correctly, which just pissed me off, how did he know it all? Maybe he was the one messing it up. We made it through our kayaking experience overall generally happy and were one of the first ones on the other side of the beach, so I guess we must have been doing something right! We snorkeled for a bit but St. Thomas was a lot better in terms of variety of fish and marine life. Here there were a lot of those scary black sea urchins and I kept thinking I would hurt myself. After the tour, we both really wanted to go to the French side of the island, so we got the best taxi driver in the world and went. The taxi driver was just very high and hilarious. Paul asked if there were 'coffee shops' on the island and if they were legal like they are in the Netherlands and the driver's response was that there weren't any coffee shops, but that they had a lot of coffee. He was like "I have coffee every day" and showed us his joint, sitting right there by the steering wheel. After an entertaining ride, we arrived on the French side and had lunch at a restaurant called "Le café de la mer". I had fish, it was good. Then we went to the market and bought a few bracelets and things for Paul's sisters. We returned to the ship and sat in an infinity hot tub while we watched the ship leave. Then we went to the comedy show, which was pretty good, and then had dinner. At dinner that night, the George/Debbie couple got us a bottle of wine as a congratulations on getting married gift, and then the best friends couple got us shots! So we had a good time and I don't remember what we did after dinner!
July 22nd was a day at sea. We had a few things we wanted to do on the ship: the zip line, wall climbing and ice skating oh and the flowrider, which is a surf simulator. Of all of those things, we were only able to go wall climbing because everything else was either closed at the time we went looking, or too full to wait. We did go see the ice skating show, which was amazing. We also saw a diving and synchronized swimming show, which was also great. After dinner, we watched a musical show called 'Come Fly with me' it was really well done! Almost circus like with trapeze artists, dancers and singers. Then we went up to the top deck for a party, but we were about to leave because the music got boring when Ursula and Paidrag showed up, so we stayed a while longer and hung out with them. We were going to go to the bar called Dazzles, but the pizza place got in the way, so we ate and then it was 3am and we got tired and went to sleep so we never did see the bar on the ship!
July 23rd was another day at sea. We bought each other honeymoon gifts with our leftover spending money, I got Paul a nice watch and he got me a nice purse and wallet. I don't remember what else we did, considering we had three bottles of wine to finish that day from our wine package! We had one with lunch, one with dinner and one we brought back to our room with us, but we never did finish it since we were pretty tired!
July 24th got off the ship really early at 7am, took a shuttle to the Miami airport and then realized our hotel was NOT close to the airport! Urg! So we finally make it to the hotel and of course we can't check in until 3pm, so Paul was worried I would freak out about not being able to sleep but I just said if we could find a Starbucks as fast as possible, I would be OK. We did, since we were right next to Bayside, which is a big shopping center. After that we went to Ocean Drive and found Miami Ink (we briefly considered a tattoo and then decided against it). Then we found another shopping street, bought stuff at the Gap, ate really great wraps, and went to yet another mall! I was really intrigued about Target and Marshalls since my American friends always tell me so much about them so I went. Target was awesome, I went a little crazy (but not too bad) and Marshalls wasn't so cool - it's just like Winners where everything is disorganized and you have to find the clothes yourself. I prefer nicely folded and colour-coordinated Gap-like stores.
There you have it, if you read the whole thing, I'm quite impressed!
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