Caribbean Cruise Vacation

So Zac and I have wanted to go on a vacation with just the two of us for as long as we have been married. Our special all-inclusive week long honeymoon in Cancun got canceled due to a hurricane. We were pretty bummed about it, but Zac's aunt was gracious enough to let us stay at her hacienda on the Cabo side of Mexico instead, and we had a ton of fun. However, we were still bummed we didn't get to do our really cool trip, and we have been talking about doing a cruise sometime as our cool trip. We threw the idea around for a long time, but when we finally found out that we were expecting a baby we decided to make that dream a reality because our time to go on a trip with just the two of us was rapidly coming to a close. So we finally got around to finding the right cruise and finding a steal of a deal. We decided we wanted to go to the Caribbean and we were hoping to go in August around our two year anniversary, but between Zac's soccer games, and golf tournaments we couldn't go until October. Plus since October is the off season for cruising in the Caribbean it was a great deal. We picked a 6 night cruise that went to Key West, FL; Georgetown, Grand Cayman; and Ocho Rios, Jamaica on the Carnival Freedom. It was only like $800 for the both of us! Plus a couple months ago when coming back from a golf tournament Zac offered to take a later flight and so Southwest credited him $300, and my mom gave us a free ticket, so it ended up only costing us $100 for airfare. It was awesome to get such an awesome vacation for such an awesome deal!

Our trip started on Saturday Oct. 17 when we flew from San Jose to Ft. Lauderdale. We had to leave super early and it took all day, and we both looked absolutely beautiful by the time we reached Florida, as you can tell:

We were a little surprised when we got there and it was really overcast, but it was still very warm. We knew to expect rain while we were in the Caribbean in October, but we hoped the rain would cooperate, and for the most part it did. We only got one day of rain the whole trip.
That night we stayed at a very nice luxurious resort know as the Days Inn. Okay so it wasn't 5 stars or anything but it offered a free shuttle from the airport to the hotel and a free shuttle the next day from the hotel to the cruiseport, and it was cheap and that was enough for us. That night we went down to the beach and had dinner at a cute little restaurant. We listened to live music while we ate fajitas and afterwards we walked along the beach for a while. The water was still so warm even late at night. Zac wanted to go swimming in it, but I pointed out that we didn't have our swimsuits on. This of course gave Zac another idea, which I promptly turned down becuase even though it was dark, there were still enough people on the beach that could see :)

SUNDAY- boarding the cruise

We were able to get on the boat at noon. We got through customs, and all the cruise check in stuff, and finally got on and found our room. We got some lunch then it was time for our muster drill. This is where we report to our muster station and learn what to do in the unlikely event that we needed to evacuate the ship. And I'm sure in that unlikely event we would all calmly find our assigned muster station. Rrrriiiiggghhtttt. Then we went out on deck to watch us leave port. Zac was particularly excited since this was his first cruise, and I was excited to see Zac's excitement since this was my sixth cruise. We enjoyed a very nice steak dinner, and then a show in the lounge. After that we explored every part of the ship. So cool! We both enjoyed the drawing room and the library and of course, the lounge. We finished off the night by watching the Falcons vs Bears game on the outdoor big screen on the top deck while we played in the swimming pool.

MONDAY- Key West, FL





It was beautiful, sunny and the perfect temperature when we arrived in Key West.

Here is a picture of our cruise ship.

The first place we saw when we got off the boat was this cool museum that had really realistic life size statues everywhere outside. This statue was a guy who was painting a picture of the other statues.

Here are the statues that guy was painting. They were some weird naked ladies with a guy looking up, so Zac decided to have a look see too.

We walked around the town and explored a little before we decided to ride scooters to some of the historical sites. However the scooter guy could tell I was pregnant (guess I wasn't hiding it well) and said I couldn't ride a scooter, but I could ride a bike (I'm not sure why a bike is so much safer, but whatever). So we decided to ride bikes. Then we discovered they had tandem bikes, and we had never ridden a tandem bike before so we decided to do that. It turned out to be a lot of fun, and I'm really glad we did it, it was probably even better than scooters.

We went to a couple of historical sites on the island. The first place we went was the southern most part of the island, which is also the southern most point of the USA. Then we found an historic Lighthouse.

Then we went to Ernest Hemingway's home. It was interesting and we learned stuff about this gifted man, and his rather tragic life. I especially enjoyed all the Hemingway cats. Hemingway had like 50 cats when he lived there, and the trust that maintains the the home has kept the descendants of his cats on the property and continues to care for them. This little black cat is named Charlie Chaplin and he was so cute!

Then we went to the Harry Truman Little White House. This was where President Truman liked to come on vacation while he was president. It was informational and we learned a bit more about Harry Truman and some of the historical events that happened in the house.

After that we went to a little cemetery. We heard there were some funny sayings on some of the tombstones, like 'At Least I Know Where He's Sleeping Tonight' and stuff like that, but we couldn't find any of these tombs. We did notice that a bunch of the tombstones had these Masonic symbols on them:Zac had been reading the new Dan Brown book that deals with Masons so he was pretty excited and intrigued by this, thus the picture.

After that we took the bikes back, and did a little shopping. Then we found a little shop selling key lime pie, and so we stopped for some key lime pie in Key West.

Then we got back on the ship and went to dinner. When we came back, we found our first towel animal. So cute!

TUESDAY- at sea

There were tons of activities going on on the boat, so we had plenty to keep us busy all day. One of the things we did was a trivia game and Zac actually won so he got this cool little "ship on a stick" trophy.

It was also our first formal night so we got to get all dressed up and go to dinner and a cool singing and dancing show.

They had a bunch of stations set up to have your picture taken at, and we actually went to like 10 of them, but we didn't buy any of them because they were like 10 bucks a piece. Heck no! So our cheap pictures will have to do.

When we got back we found our second little towel animal. I love this picture of Zac, it's so cute!

WEDNESDAY- Georgetown, Grand Cayman

The last two times I've been to the Cayman Islands I went to Stingray City with Captain Marvin's tour group, and I decided to take Zac back to Stingray City again, because it was such a cool experience.

We got to do some snorkeling and see some cool fish and pretty coral, and of course we got to hold and kiss wild stingrays!

After dinner we found our next towel animal, and so appropriately it was a stingray (this is me being a fish by the way).

THURSDAY- Ocho Rios, Jamaica

The first thing we decided to do was take a taxi to Dunn's River Falls.

You actually walk up this series of waterfalls. It was really cool and beautiful!

Try not to pay too much attention to my pregnant belly. I realize it is not very attractive, plus none of my swimsuits really fit anymore, so I was kind of limited in what I could wear. When we first discussed this trip, I imagined myself being skinny and looking really hot. I was going to workout and everything!

Needless to say once I became pregnant the skinny option disappeared, and I pretty much gave up on the idea of working out. Oh well!

Once we got to the top we had to take our picture with the sign congratulating us for making it.

FRIDAY- at sea

We spent most of the day on deck reading and riding the water slide. We actually got a bit of sun this day, and got pretty sunburned. At least it was the last day and not the first day. It was very relaxing and a great way to spend our last day.

Dinner that night was our last formal night, both in purple, so cute!
We also went to an art auction that night and learned a lot about high end art and the kinds of people who buy it. Some of the stuff was going for over $100,000!

SATURDAY- fly home

Well all good things must come to an end. We were pretty sad to leave, but I guess we had to come back at some point. It was really great to go on a real trip with just us, although if I had already had the baby and we left her at home with family she would have been less "with us" than she was. I took her everywhere! At least at this point she didn't need to be fed or changed or take a nap or anything :)

We had a really great time on our trip! We did so much fun stuff - from comedy shows to warm Carribean waters to games to simply relaxing in the pools. If you thought this blog post was long you didn't even get half of it. I loved that I was able to spend quality time like this with Zac. It was really great to spend so much time with my best friend. We had so much fun, we got totally spoiled and we are so not ready to go back to the "real world."