Best Vacation EVER!!!
John and i went on our first Cruise and it wont be our last. We had such a great time going on a cruise. this was a redemption cruise for us to replace the one we had booked last year and had to cancel because I was too far along in my pregnancy to go last year.
I dropped the kids off at their Grandparents house and the next morning John and I were off on our adventure. we had booked the trip with two of his work buddies and their significant others and then there were two other couples in our group that we had never met. there were 10 of us total but the day of the cruise one of the couples had to cancel because of Health issues.
the cruise ship was huge and everyone working on it was so nice. are bags were brought right to our room and everything was perfect for the trip. John and I had gotten an interior room while everyone else had a balcony. we were a little farther away from everyone else but at least we were all on the same floor.
The best part about the cruise was the food. and we learned that the first night. for some reason I was blessed with the ability to not get full the first two days and I was able to eat as much as I wanted with out ever feeling sick. I loved dinner the most because it was so formal and you could order as much as you wanted. I tried alligator, escargot, froglegs and lobster for the first time ever. Dinner was also fun because our group could all meet up after loosing track of each other during the day.
the first three days John and I played in the pools and slides and hot tubs. and enjoyed as the Air and water got warmer and warmer. One day I entered a spontaneous synchronized swim competition it was really fun and cray at the same time. My all girls team lost to the all boys team. John and I spent the rest of the day analyzing what we could have done better to win.
a few days later I entered a singing competition to try to get the Part of Shania Twain for the tribute show that would be at the end of the cruise. I was not very prepared and should have sang some karaoke on the previous nights to practice. there were 4 girls trying out. the first girl was really good. the 2nd girl was singing the same song i was going to do she mumbled most of it. So on my turn I changed the song last minute to "man I feel like a woman" which is probably one of the hardest Shania songs to sing and then I crashed an burned as the words went whizzing by on the prompter. John said I didn't even have the mike close enough to my mouth so nobody heard me. thankfully the girl after me was whisper quiet too. the best part was that they didn't make anyone sing more than the first verse so it was only about a minute that each person sang. the part went to the first girl. once again John and I replayed the whole thing going over and over what I could have done differently to have won. john tried to enter me in other competitions but I was done!.
then we arrived in Jamaica. We didn't have anything planed so we just took the bus to a near by beach and hung out there. We went shopping in the surrounding area and ran into out friends Jessica and Claudio.
We got a few things and then spent most of the time getting harassed by the shop owners who would not leave me alone.
They would put bracelets on our wrists and say that one of them would be for free if we bought the other one. I was getting really annoyed by it because I did't want to pay $5 for a cheep bracelet that I would have made at Girls camp when I was 12.
they finally let us leave and then the 4 of us were lead to a really authentic place to eat. John had Curry Goat and I had Turkey Neck. It was full of bones but it was really good food and so filling. then we went back out into the shops where we were again bombarded with people trying to sell us stuff. one man tried to sell John Marijuana right when we walked in his store. He spent 5 minutes putting a braclet on my hand that I clearly was not interested in purchasing. then when I kindly said no for the 100th time he changed his tune. to flat out begging for money from me "so he could buy bread for his 2-year-old-daughter." It was so obvious that he was feeding me a line that I walked out of his store and I ended up buying a beautiful bracelet from the shop next door where the woman was really nice
We went back to the beach and we swam around in the warm warm waters. we had a good time but soon were getting to much sun and needed to retreat to the shade. it became apparent that we were in the smoking section of the beach, as in marijuana smoking. there were people trying to sell it to us left and right. we had been warned that this would happen but I couldn't believe how many people around us were actually buying the stuff. marijuana is illegal in Jamaica but they police there really don't do to much to stop it.
we moved to a nice little porch that was smoke free and were able to call our kids for the first time since beginning our trip. They sounded happy and were having a good time.
we made our way back to the boat and felt like we had had an ok time in Jamacia.
the next day we were in Grand Caman of the Caman Islands. this Island is beautiful everything was so well taken care of all of the lawns and trees were carefully maintained and clean.
we had signed up to go see the stingrays with our friends Carrie and Mike. we had a blast snorkeling and trying to catch these guys. we have more pictures that I will share once we develop out underwater camera.
We had a fantastic day we got to spend time at a beautiful little beach. JOhn and I went snorkeling and John found a huge Conch that was still alive. there weren't a lot of fish but we still had a great time.
Our last stop was Cozumel Mexico. this was By far my favorite place. I had not expected to be so impressed with Cozumel because it seemed the least exotic of the three places we went.
these are chocolate bars from The funnest candy store I have ever been too. everything in there was something I have never seen before.
anyways Cozumel. We had planed to go Scuba diving with one of the couples Jessica and Andy but they were the couple that got sick and couldn't make the trip so we went solo to the Dive shop that was in a State park called Chankanaab. We took a 5 minute taxi and were in paradise. they had dolphins white sandy beaches and everyone spoke Spanish. this was heaven to John who loved to surprise everyone with his fluent Spanish
we had some yummy Mexican food
a virgin Pina Colada
and the best part was the dive. of course we have some pictures but they haven't been developed yet. It was an introductory scuba dive and so we only went 25 ft under. I was so scared at first to trust the gear I kept going under and then immediately feeling like i wasn't getting enough air. I felt so claustrophobic with everything on me and my face. but the guide was great and let me take my time and soon I was ready to go. I actually ended up doing better than John because his ears wouldn't pop. the fish were so cool they didn't even care that we were swimming right through them. we saw two huge lobsters and some stingrays and the biggest schools of fish. we even went through and underwater cave. that was more scary then cool but It was cool once we were out of it. I would like to go scuba diving again and John says he will never go again. but he still had a good time.
as we got back on the boat in Cozumel we called our kids once again. this time they were just waking up from a nap and weren't in a good mood. This lead to me getting really home sick that night we pulled out some pictures of the kids that we had taken with us and that really helped me feel better about missing them and home.
we had one final day on the ship and then it was time to go home.
we had such a great time and made some really great friends that we will never forget. I loved having the time to get to spend with John as well as try several things for the first time.
