Sunday – After enjoying a wonderful southern cooked homestyle meal made by my mother-in-law consisting of chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and gravy, yellow squash, corn on the cob, green beans, and a roll Philip and I kissed Raegan goodbye and headed to Dallas. We scoped out the hotel pool which although it had water flowing peacefully from the hottub into it, it wasn’t much larger than my bathtub and therefore we decided to forego swimming and go check out the Grapevine Mills mall. I searched the map on my phone and saw that Uncle Julios was near there and figured we could waste some time at the mall and then head over there for dinner. Gosh that mall is huge, I remember going there to shop for school clothes and the last time we were there was to buy our washer and dryer from the Sears outlet. The place was packed, especially for a Sunday evening. We went in at Rainforest Café because Philip had never seen it before, definitely a place we should go back to when we have Raegan with us. We walked briskly through the mall, stopping only at Victoria’s Secret to check one more time if they had a certain swimsuit in my size – which just like the two other malls we had visited earlier this month and the VS website, they didn’t. Note to self: don't wait until August to buy a swimsuit!
While checking out the new Sealife Adventure place Philip saw the AMC theater outside and suggested we go see a movie, I was excited because I had been wanting to see Crazy, Stupid, Love ever since a friend of mine commented on facebook that it was perhaps the best movie of the year. So I was sold. We actually decided to go with the Cinema Suites tickets which are only for 21 years and older, with recliners and full waitstaff service. There were only 48 seats in the theater. This was the way to go, the recliners were so nice and so was our waitress. We ordered chips and blanco queso, fancy mac&cheese with grilled parmesean chicken, and a brownie Sunday for dessert!
Monday: We woke up super early and caught the 4:15am shuttle to the airport (kinda reminded me of our honeymoon when we woke up super early to fly to Jamaica). We flew from Dallas to Atlanta and then into Melbourne where we took another shuttle to the ship. This was the first cruise Philip and I have ever taken, we were somewhat surprised by all the security measures and formalities and that we couldn't just get out of the car and walk onto the ship. We had to stand in line and fill out forms promising we didn't have contagious diseases and then show our passports and other paperwork at a counter and then zigzag through another line before reaching the ship. We were very lucky to have a room on the main deck floor which meant we didn't have to take the stairs when boarding or deboarding and that guest relations was right around the corner. Even though I told Philip we didn't need a window in our room since we wouldn't be there much, we got a room with a large window which watching the waves out of it kinda made me nauseous at first, but I got used to it pretty quickly. After checking out our room we went straight to the buffet! I probably ate more than my weight on this cruise and it was great! One of my favorite parts was the free self serve ice cream. Philip is a pro at making perfect ice cream cones and we probably had at least two ice cream cones a day each!
That evening we attended the send off party and then met Daniel, Christina, Josh, and Kristen our dinner table friends and went to the production show with singing/dancing and then listened to a comedian, who's name I can't remember, but he was pretty good even though he did a lot of impressions of people before my time.
Tuesday - When we woke up this morning we arrived at Coco Cay, which is a small (1 mile long, 1/2 mile wide) island that the cruise line actually owns, so the people with us on our ship were the only ones on the island with us. We swam in the ocean sum, but I'm not a fan of seaweed touching my feet so I only enjoyed it when we were far enough out to actually swim. The island was a pretty neat place, being early riser we got there pretty early and found a PERFECT hammock with a great view of the beach, we got everything set up, laid down, and less than 10 minutes later it started sprinkling. My weather man of a husband told me it would only last 10 minutes and then about 10 minutes later the sprinklers turned into heavy rain. Some people were still in the ocean, others parasailing or on jet skis, but we hid under our towels on the hammock afraid to seek real shelter as our hammock may get claimed , but eventually we figured it wasn't worth it and about 10 minutes later it had stopped the sunshine was intense! We scouted out the island, saw some hermit crabs, fish, iguanas, chickens, yes chickens?!? Then we met one of the cruise entertainers and a couple other groups for a scavenger hunt of the island. I was glad we had already scouted out the island and knew where to find most of the items! I've never seen Philip run so fast, after hearing one of the clues Philip ran so fast his flip flops flew off his feet and he beat a high school cross country runner with tennis shoes on! I guess you could call that a competitive nature? The last item we were asked to find was "talent" i.e. a dance contest, which I'm proud to say I got 2nd place in! I think I'm getting too old for that stuff! After all that running around we ate a delicious lunch (the rice was my favorite part, I need to find the recipe for it) and then relaxed in the shade on a hammock before heading back on to the ship for afternoon BINGO.
We paid $16 for BINGO that afternoon in hopes of winning $300, but to no avail; however, that didn't stop us from coming back, stay continued... We had dinner again with the honeymooners and dating couple and learned more about them and found out we are getting old as the honeymooners who we assumed were probably about our age, maybe older, were actually the same age we were when we got married!
Wednesday morning when we woke up we were docking at Nassau, Bahamas next to the Norwegian cruise liner. We had scheduled a snorkeling trip prior to our trip for this morning so we got up early, had breakfast and then de-boarded the ship and found our group for the snorkeling trip. We loaded up onto a Catamaran with about 25 other people and listened to island music as we sailed out a ways to a coral reef. This was the first time Philip had ever snorkeled so it took awhile for him to feel comfortable with it, but once he did we were off like fish ourselves. The fish didn't seem scared of us at all, they'd swim right up to us and then Philip would reach out his hands and try to touch one and they'd dart off. I was literally laughing through my snorkel at how hard Philip was trying to touch the fish. After snorkeling and browsing through the market place we headed back to the ship for lunch. After lunch we rested awhile, enjoyed the nearly empty pool while others were out exploring and then headed back out to Nassau and tried out the mopeds which we planned on using to be able to quickly explore more of the island; however after a rocky test drive that scared me to death we decided that could end poorly and we'd just walk. Philip is very protective of me esp in foreign countries although I felt completely safe. He likes for me to walk on the inside of the sidewalk with my arm locked with his. He's a good guy! They have nice stores right there near the port including: Fendi, Gucci, Coach, Rolex etc... they also have a Burger King, Starbucks, McDonalds, Hard Rock Cafe, and Senor Frogs. We shared a snocone while browsing through all the little shops and then spent a little time at Senor Frogs and Hard Rock before it started pouring and we ran (literally ran back to the ship)! My dress was soaked and I froze when we walked back in to the cold air conditioning on the ship! That evening I was too tired to get up and go to dinner so we ordered 2 spinach cheese dip appetizers, chicken strips, a cheeseburger and two lemonades for dinner and took a nap before heading to BINGO.
At BINGO that night Philip won 2 of the 4 sessions for total winnings of $300 woohoo - what a lucky guy!
Thursday was our last day on the ship and was spent crusing, relaxing, reading, playing more bingo, a game of war before dinner, watching the sexiest man contest, taking a tour of the galley (kitchen was SPOTLESS!), dancing, eating, and watching the live Love & Marriage game show.
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