Cruise Photos

As promised (although about 3.5 weeks later than planned) I have put together some photos from the cruise portion of our vacation.  Our cruise was a 7 night cruise with planned stops in Half Moon Caye Bahamas, Puerto Rico, Turks & Caicos and St Thomas.  Unfortunately, we had engine problems so we didn't get to do St Thomas (it was sad since that was one of the ports that I REALLY looked forward to seeing)

The week after Thanksgiving was a great time to go on a cruise because most kids are in school; plus Seattle was having record rainfall while were were in 80 degree sunshine.

Our first stop was the Bahamas at the secluded Half Moon Caye. We planned on simply sitting on the beach all day and that is exactly what we did.  I was reapplying sunscreen every 15 minutes but still got quite overheated.  I managed to not get burnt, but I was super red while in the sun. The ocean was wonderful and calm so we would go in there every so often to cool off.  There were some people feeding the fish orange peels in the swimming area so I had a great time with my underwater camera.

St Thomas was supposed to be our second stop; but with our engine problems we weren't able to get that far south so we went straight to Puerto Rico and they had an engine specialist flown in. We got off the boat about 4:30 and wandered around for a little bit before grabbing dinner at Senior Frogs. The following day was a full day in port so Brad and I walked around town and headed up to the castle. The view was beautiful from the upper levels of the fort. I also went to Starbucks and noticed that they had different Christmas drinks than we have here at home.  I would have tried the cranberry white chocolate mocha if I had seen it prior to ordering.

Our final stop was Turks & Caicos.  We had a snorkeling trip scheduled and it was a great experience. The snorkeling trip went to two different spots but the first one was definitely better.  At this first stop; we saw and swam with nurse sharks! I had a great time swimming around with my camera taking pictures and video of all the fish and sharks. The second stop would have been better if it was a smaller group; but with 50 of us in the water we were constantly running into people.

The boat overall was OK, but I got spoiled on our last cruise with all that there was to do onboard. We went to the nightly shows and did the miniature golf course, but most of the time we sat by the pool (or at the bar with our favorite bartender, Jing)

Our flight out of Miami wasn't until the evening so we booked an excursion to the everglades for when we got off of the boat.  The excursion included an airboat ride and we also got to hold a 2 year old alligator.

Brad and I decided that a cruise is the perfect vacation to go with other people.  We were able to do things together but didn't feel like we had to do everything together.