Wednesday
We dropped kids off at a friend’s house and raced to airport. The first leg of our journey was
eventful. We browsed the inflight
magazines, slept and relaxed.
We had a quick layover with best burger ever from GBD and
frantic phone calls to rearrange kid care after finding out the evening sitter
was sick—thank heaven for grandparents.
Crisis resolved, we boarded the next leg of our journey and
watched took advantage on the inflight wifi.
We watched a couple episodes of shark week and half of a strange-not-to-be-recommended
movie.
We grabbed a late
night cab to Caribe Hilton, checked in and was given a happy anniversary
upgrade. Before heading to our room we ordered
food at bar minutes before closing and had amazing rib/fried banana sliders.
(who knew?)
Finally, we settled into our room with a fantastic balcony
view of the hotel’s private bay.
Thursday
We slept in and then feasted at the buffet breakfast with
omelet bar.
We spent the morning
exploring the hotel, including peacock garden, mini-boardwalk and sunbathing
rotunda in a private bay. We donned the
snorkel gear we had brought with us, eager to enjoy the gorgeous water of the
hotel’s private bay. Not seeing much at
first, we decided to swim up over the reef to get to open water for better
snorkeling. Unfortunately the reef was very
shallow and the crossing got little rough—great fish, but nasty urchins. Our new waterproof camera earned its first
scratches and husband came up with a handful of spines. (turns out those are mildly poisonous.)
After long naps, w took a cab to Old San Juan, avoiding a
demonstration of some sort near an important looking building. We started at Fort Cristobal for a hurried
highlights tour and then jumped onto the trolley to get to Fort Felipe de Morro
where we wandered until closing. (loved
the huge grassy span for picnics and kite flying) We took a quick overlook into the cemetery
and wandered the edge of town until we got to the San Juan city gate (love the
cobblestone streets).
We had dinner at Café El Punto (well
done tripadvisor!), fantastic food!
Husband had the surf and turf monfungo, I had the empanadas and beans
and rice. Love the fried sweet
plantains.
We enjoyed the long walk back to the hotel
with some random shopping (chocolate, caffeine, new board shorts, coffee,
vanilla, and of course, a magnet).
Celebrated with 7Eleven slurpees for dessert and laid around in the
hotel’s hammocks until bedtime.
Friday
Yay for breakfast buffet!
We walked to car rental, then
drove to El Yunque Rain Forest. We stopped
at a gas station for chocolate and an energy drink, trying a local brand called
Circulon. So good.
We started at visitors center
where a great guide gave us a recommended route to hit the best spots. (so glad we rented a car, taxi drop off would
not have worked, too far between trails).
We parked at the top to hike to the observation tower and the El Yunque
Peak—gorgeous views on top of the world.
Husband may have assaulted a frog (in his defense, he was just trying to
feel the tree moss. The frog was well
hidden and unappreciative.) Then we drove
down to La Mina Falls; the hike was longer than anticipated but well worth
it. We waded in to a less crowded area
and jumped into the falls, swimming in the brisk water. Then our last stop was La Coca Falls, where
we played photographer for a 40+ family from Georgia who adopted us and
insisted on taking photos with us (our new cousins). And just as we left the forest area, we stopped
at a roadside stand for a coconut to drink and sketchy giftshop to avoid.
We briefly toyed with idea of Bioluminescent
Bay (least recommended moon phase+rain=not today) and drove back to our
neighborhood. While sitting in the
rental, pulled over in a parking lot looking up directions, a random stranger
approached us, insistently tapping on the glass and trying to sell us
perfume. We politely declined, he wished
us a great vacation and announced we would go home pregnant with a son, then
corrected himself—twins!
For dinner, we went to the highly
recommended Restaurant Jose Enrique (an hour wait but heard it was worth
it). During the wait, we decided to
wander and found a huge street party a block away at La Placita. We lounged around until dinner and then
devoured an amazing crab appetizer and possibly the best fish known to man
(according to me--a crusted yellow tail snapper).
And lastly, we lounged on the
balcony until bedtime.
Saturday
Woke up earlier to go to a yoga
class on the beach—totally worth it.
More breakfast buffet. We haphazardly
packed and checked out of the room, leaving the luggage with the hotel. We returned the rental car and walked to
Velauno Paddleboarding.
After a quick lesson, we headed
out, finding it easy to catch on and such
a great experience. We paddled up current
to the end of the cove and laid on our boards to rest and relax in the
sunshine, drifting on the water. Then we
paddled down current to the bridge, where we spotted two large gray water blobs
(apparently manatees, I didn’t get as close as husband did). We paddled in, returned the boards, bought a
gigantic fruit filled lemonade as we walked back to hotel, retrieved luggage
and hailed a cab to the pier.
We checked in the luggage and
joined the hamster maze to check in ourselves.
Fortunately, were got on board quickly and found a quiet spot on the
pool deck to call the girls. We used
facetime to show them the views and hear about some of the adventures with
Grammy. We asked what they wanted as souvenirs:
L said earrings, A asked for an activity and E piped in with “chocolate!
M&Ms!”
We wandered around exploring the
ship and made our way to our room where we were delighted to find a
balcony! We had originally booked an
inside room overlooking the Promenade and later upgraded to an oceanview. Somehow I forgot that upgrade ended up being
a balcony. The room is amazing!
We went to dinner in the dining
room—the first of many amazing meals, and went to the welcome aboard show
featuring a comedian.
Sunday – St. Thomas
Breakfast and then headed ashore
for shopping. I really wanted to find a
nice piece of jewelry, heirloom quality, to celebrate our ten year
anniversary. We wandered downtown,
directly to Ajanta Jewelers, which I had found via tripadvisor. We perused the beautiful stones for a long
time. I really had my heart set on
picking out a beautiful piece of elegant jewelry but was quickly shocked by how
little I apparently knew about the cost of such jewelry. Fortunately, while the diamonds were
certainly gorgeous, I fell in love with some of the other precious stones,
drawing towards a sapphire and diamond set.
However, they were still expensive (a really good price for the set,
just expensive sounding to me). So we
decided to walk some more and visited seven more stores, finding nothing of
similar quality. We even considered at length
buying a similar setting of tanzanite—more affordable, but in the end, simply
not as beautiful or as well crafted. So
we went back to Ajanata and thoroughly enjoyed our experience. They offered us drinks and chocolate and
showed us many beautiful things. They
changed the mounting on the earrings for me and got the set beautifully
polished as husband picked out a new watch.
We ran out of time before we found
a beach, so we never used the snorkeling gear we brought. But we also visited a Belgium chocolate shop
and an artisan market for larimar jewelry (a local stone) before going back to
the ship.
We showered and dressed for formal
night, sadly discovering the zipper of my favorite formal dress was
broken. So I wore a different dress, we
took pictures and went to dinner. Our waiters (from Indian) learned we love
Indian food and thus began bringing us an extra dinner every night to share
Indian food with us.
Monday—St. Kitts
After breakfast we went ashore and
found a cab driver to take us to a snorkeling beach. He dropped us off with his phone number and
we donned our gear. We snorkeled,
chasing the fish and swimming in the perfect water. We lounged on the beach, went for a long walk
on the black sand beach (beautifully unique) and eventually called for cabbie
to take us back to town. We wandered
through the downtown stores, picking up a pair of Caribbean topaz earrings for
L and the free pearl earrings, given as a gift “just for looking”.
We visited the gym and then after
dinner we went to the headliner show featuring a comedy/acrobatic act.
Tuesday—day at sea—our Anniversary
Breakfast and then found a place
to lounge on the highest deck at the front of the ship. We read awhile, relaxing and listening to the
waves.
After lunch we attended the art
action, mostly just for the experience. And
played the ship’s mini-golf course which I happen to be terrible at.
After naptime we hit the gym and
then cleaned up for dinner. The waiters
brought us an extra dessert and sang to us.
Then we went to the headliner show with the Royal Caribbean singers and dancers. The show itself is a little disjointed; I was
never sure the theme. But the cast was
talented and the transitions were especially well done.
Having a balcony has thoroughly
spoiled us. Lounging on our balcony is
far more enjoyable than finding a spot on deck with everyone else. We even got to enjoy the gorgeous sunset on
multiple nights.
Wednesday—Aruba
We woke up early since we had
booked an excursion—“Discover Scuba”. We
got off the ship and went to the shore excursions desk, which was a complete
madhouse. The room was far too small for
the number of people and groups were muddled together. We registered and stood where we were
told. A guide came to get us and then we
waited on a bus while they tried to figure out their rosters. Turned out, it was the wrong group. So we tried again and finally got on the
right guide bus. They drove us to a
hotel to the Red Sail Sports desk who helped us get outfitted. They took us
into the hotel pool to learn the basics of scuba diving. Once we demonstrated our understanding, we
loaded up on a boat that took us to our dive site and we split into groups of
four. Our group was first in the water
and our guide led the way down the line to a wreckage site—the remains of an
oil tanker (hit by a German WWII sub, taken apart and abandoned by the US and
finally blown up and sunk by Aruba’s marines).
In the pool, I had been nervous and had to focus on my breathing and keeping
myself calm. But it became easier in the
ocean and I loved following our guide through the wreckage site as he pointed
out various sea life. We put our new
underwater camera to good use and tried to capture what we could. I especially loved the giant parrotfish and
the triangle shaped boxfish. The guide
tried to tease a large rockfish out of its camouflage and we found lobsters and
more. The dive lasted 30-40 minutes
before we resurfaced. We were surprised
to find that it was raining. Despite the
warmth of the rain and the sunshine, I was freezing from being so deep for so
long and took awhile to warm up.
When we left the dive shop, we
walked to Aruba’s butterfly farm. We
were led into the garden and left to wander on our own first. We explored in amazement at the exotic and
beautiful creatures everywhere. My
favorite was the elusive blue butterflies and husband got some great footage
with the high speed action settings. We
were then given a tour by one of the guides, very well done. It was informative and entertaining. Lastly, we lingered in the gift shop where we
finally purchased an artistic display of butterflies—another favorite souvenir
from the trip.
We decided to take the city bus
back to the pier—which turned out to be a Toyota minivan and packed full with
locals. Back on the ship we found we had
missed lunch but were able to get food at the Café Promenade and then lounge on
our balcony. We attended the Cool Art
Hot Ice Show, an ice dancing performance, on the ship which turned out to be
amazing—the best show we saw the whole week.
The turns and tricks preformed were impressive, especially to be done in
such a small space and on a moving ship!
We went to dinner and then attended the Love & Marriage
Gameshow. We “auditioned” but didn’t
make it onstage, which after hearing the questions, suspect it was more fun
this way anyway.
Thursday—Curacao
Slept in, breakfast and went ashore
to find a taxi to take us to the beach.
He dropped us off at the start of a long boardwalk to a beautifully
designed beach. There were plenty of
stores and restaurants lining the way to the beachfront. The view was gorgeous, a manmade reef ran the
length of the beach creating a picture perfect, gentle cove of turquoise
water. On the other side of the reef,
the wind whipped the waves up against the rock forcefully. We donned gear and entered the water, colder
than anticipated and cloudy from all the sand stirred up by tourists. But once we climbed over the reef and braved
the rougher water on the other side, the water became perfectly clear and
brimming with sea life. The coral and
fish were amazing, watching the tumultuous water from underneath was incredible
and the jellyfish were inhospitable (but fortunately few).
We caught a cab back to town,
learning it was Curacao’s Independence Day so there was a festival of music and
dancing downtown as we wandered the shopping area (very similar to a British
high street) and the open air markets.
We watched the famous Queen Emma(?) bridge in action and wandered back
to the ship, collecting our usually magnets and local currency as we went.
Aruba and Curacao are both Dutch
islands and obviously so in their charming cityscape of brightly colored
buildings.
After a late lunch we ended up in
the ship’s movie theatre which was showing “Jupiter Rising”. The script was mediocre and the chairs were
incredibly uncomfortably but overall the movie was ok. We dressed up for a second formal night,
feasting on lobster tails and then after dinner we skipped the headliner show
in favor of lounging on our balcony and watching tv in our room.
Friday—day at sea
We decided, just to be different,
that we wanted to eat all our meals in the dining room, starting with
breakfast. And we quickly learned we
should have started much sooner. The
food in the Windjammer was good, and always had a lot of variety but even breakfast
in the dining room was so good, prepared more carefully and artistically.
We wandered around the ship,
fighting the intense wind and stumbling around with the lurching ship as we
encountered particular rough waters through the day. In fact the ship’s pool looked more like a
surf rider with the ship movement tossing the water up high, over the side of
the pool and onto the deck.
After lunch we went to the ice
dancing show again and then lounged around some more until we went to the gym
again.
We packed our evening with
fun. We went to a headliner show
starring Lance Ringwald (highly entertaining!), went to dinner, picked out some
portraits to take home with us, watched the Promenade “parade” (cool costumes
but somewhat anti-climatic) and went to the late night comedy starring Robbie
Printz (also highly recommended).
Saturday—disembarkation
We were better prepared than
previous cruises, having actually packed our larger suitcases and left them out
for the porters. So we managed to get
going early enough to have breakfast in the dining room before joining the
disembarkation line. As we came into
service, our cell phones began spitting out updates—texts, pictures and news
from home. We called the girls, eager to
hear from them and got to walk to each one as they woke up, finding out they
were more homesick than we anticipated and plagued with the flu. Fortunately we will see them soon.
We took a cab to the airport and
seriously considered changing our flights home (through Orlando instead of
Baltimore so I could visit my sister).
But we debated for too long and missed the chance. So we flew to Baltimore. Originally, we looked at just a 2 hour
layover before our next leg home. But,
since it was the 4th of July in a beautiful, historic city, we had
decided to stay the night (a little encore to the trip). We took the train from the airport and into
the city, admiring the picturesque homes and greenery. Unfortunately our stop took us to a less
favorable part of town so we walked quickly the half mile to our hotel. The room was huge! We didn’t stay long, setting out for the
Baltimore Inner Harbor in search of crab and our fireworks cruise.
We found the restaurant
recommended to us and ordered a bucket of crab to go. Then found a park bench and set out to
feast. But what was in our dinner was
not what I expected! I’ve always had the meaty legs of snow or king crab. But Maryland blue crabs have very little meat
in their legs and mostly in their body.
Getting the meat out was a difficult task and spent plenty of time
laughing at ourselves. Then we hurried
to find “the Sea Dog”. We had bought
tickets for their Fireworks Cruise (the harbor was quickly getting crowded so
this seemed like a fantastic was to enjoy the fireworks). The two guys running the show got us seated
and eventually we headed out with one of them giving a highlights tour
describing some of the sights with plenty of humor. Once out in the open, they turned up the
music and put on the speed so we soared across the water, enjoying the view and
killing time until dark. Then we slowed
coming into the harbor again and settled in to watch the fireworks.
Once docked, we wandered off the
boat, picking up some snacks and making our way back to our hotel for the
night.
Sunday
We found the nearest wardhouse and
attended sacrament meeting. It was a
really great experience. Baltimore had
made a rather lackluster impression the night before, perhaps because we saw a
rougher part of town. Attending church
there was a pretty wonderful experience with seeing a different side of
Baltimore and connecting in such a familiar, satisfying way.
Unfortunately, then we had to
hurry back to our hotel, pick up the luggage and rush to the airport to make
our flight home.
Favorites:
The food in San Juan (Café El
Punto in Old San Juan, Jose Enrique in La Placita and the rib sliders at the
hotel)
Having a balcony! (both in the
hotel and on the cruise ship)Favorite show was definitely the ice dancing
My new sapphire jewelry
Scuba diving in Aruba
Butterfly farm in Aruba
Hanging out in the hammocks
Paddleboarding
Star gazing from the cabana
Hiking the El Yunque Peak
Souvenirs:
A magnet from every city
Coffee for our coffee drinking
siblingsMy gorgeous sapphire earrings and pendant
Larimar earrings
Display case of butterflies
Official 10 year anniversary portrait of us (I’ve always regretted not buying the portrait we took on our 5 year anniversary)
Vanilla (for cooking)
Chocolate
L’s earrings (Caribbean topaz)
A’s activity (a lego cruise ship)
E’s M&Ms
Sand dollar and shells found while snorkeling
Chimchurri sauce that we tasted and bought in the SJU airport because it was too good to pass up
Happy Anniversary to my Smoking Hot Husband! What a way to celebrate.
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