Bahama Mama

As promised, I am returning with a synopsis of my most recent travel escapades. Most of you probably know that over Thanksgiving I went on a 4 night cruise to the Bahamas with 4 of my friends. It was such a blast and I highly recommend Royal Caribbean for all of your cruising needs. Things couldn't have gone much better for us.

Sunday, November 18th

We flew into the Fort Lauderdale Airport and met up with our ground transportation. It was about a half hour drive to our hotel in downtown Miami. We ended up getting to the hotel sometime around midnight and we were all starving. Kim and Heidi headed across the street to Checkers (a burger stand) across the street while the rest of us dropped off our luggage.

We joined up with the girls and Checkers and soon discovered that perhaps our hotel wasn't in the best part of town. This guy...I swear he was totally high or otherwise wacked out...wouldn't stop talking to us and the overall vibe was not good. We escaped with only two meals and ran back to the "safety" of our hotel room. Guess that's what you get for a $60 deal on Hotwire, eh?

Monday, November 19th

The next morning got off to a much better start. We had some time to burn before heading to the port so this really nice valet or porter or someone pointed us towards a homestyle diner so we could grab some food. I'm sure we looked like total dweeby tourists as we walked the few blocks. Here's a self-portrait with some Miami high rises in the background:

I really enjoyed our diner experience. We had this great waitress that honestly seemed more like a character from a movie than a real-life person. We had awesome cheeseburgers and Candice got hit on by some Coast Guard guy and another guy bought her a piece of cake because he somehow ended up with the burger that was supposed to be hers. In case you are wondering, Candice was definitely the resident hottie on the trip. Anyway, here we are outside the lovely diner.

We made the short taxi ride to the port and found the embarkation process to be very easy. We went to our staterooms to drop off our luggage and tried to explore a bit. However, not too far into our explorations we had to suit up for the muster drill before we could hit the high seas. It was interesting to me that although our rooms were next door to each other, Heidi and I were assigned to a completely different muster station than Candice, Analee and Kim (hereafter referred to as the CAK.) Therefore if the ship were to go down we would not be able to know the whereabouts of our friends...hmmm. Anyway, we weren't too worried as you can tell by this picture of me and Heidi suited up in our oh-so-fashionable-prison jumpsuit-orange life jackets.

Shortly after the muster drill we were on our way and to make a long story short we had an enjoyable first night on the ship. I did have a little bit of sea sickness but nothing too bad. We also got quite a kick out of standing at the front of the ship and having our hair blow sky high. I can't find the picture I wanted to post of that right now so I'll try to remember to do it later.

Tuesday, November 20th

We arrived in our first port of Nassau, New Providence Island in the Bahamas. We had signed up for a "Forts and Pirates" tour which turned out to be much less exciting than we anticipated. We boarded a mini bus and got kind of a narrative tour through the city before stopping at Fort Fincastle. We got a little rowdy so they put us in Bahamian time out:

From there we moved onto Fort Charlotte where we could have chosen to pay yet another $5 to actually tour the fort and take pictures of the harbor. Instead, we took this picture for free outside the fort.

Our next stop was the Pirates of Nassau Museum. I was really looking forward to this because I have always been a bit fascinated by pirates. This museum was touted as the "highlight" of our tour and it sure was something. We were led on a guided tour by a crazy man dressed as a pirate who kept scaring the children on our tour recycling his same lame pirate jokes every 3 minutes or so. Needless to say I was a bit disappointed. I suggest you save your money and take the online tour yourself. The scariest pirates around belonged to this crew pictured on the left.

After the tour we spent some time on the beach. It got pretty windy (I think I still have sand in my left ear) so we headed back to do some shopping. There wasn't really anything exciting souvenir wise and the CAK headed back to the ship while Heidi and I forged on. She ended up with a couple of things and I bought a license plate.

Back on board it was time to get all glammed up for the Captain's Gala or something like that. Basically it was formal night and so we all got fabulous and had a great time posing for the formal portraits, including some rather awkward poses suggested by the photographer...we were laughing hysterically. I must say we all looked very nice and although I was skeptical before the trip, Candice was right...formal night was quite fun!

Wednesday, November 21st

This day's port of call was CocoCay--Royal Caribbean's private island. While the island wasn't all that exciting, it was actually really nice to have a day to just lounge in the sun and not have to do much of anything. The water was a bit colder than I expected but Kim and I had fun with the waterproof digital camera although our underwater self-portraits didn't turn out as well as we hoped:

Thursday, November 22nd--Happy Thanksgiving!

Our third port of call was Key West. It's kind of crazy to think that it is closer to Cuba than it is Miami. I thought about swimming the 90 miles to Havana but I'm just a little too afraid of the open water. But more on my fears later. Our shore excursion in Key West was called "The Big Three" which involved sea kayaking, snorkeling and dolphon watching.

Our first adventure was sea kayaking which I had never done before. It was quite enjoyable but I would like to try it in a one person kayak because I am too chicken of capsizing the kayak. Had that happened it wouldn't have been much of a problem though as it was low tide and many of the areas only had a foot or so of water. Here are Analee and Kim, the kamikaze kayakers:

We then suited up for snorkeling. I had been snorkeling once before in Cancun and for the life of me couldn't figure out why I had signed up to do it again. **Confession--I have an irrational but very powerful fear of being touched by fish or other sea life while in the water.** This makes snorkeling some what challenging, and at times, terrifying. However, I decided to buck up and try to be brave. I only said a bad word in my snorkel once (hehehe) although my heart got pumping a number of times. Overall it was a much better experience than my first time but I was still ever-so-grateful to get back on the boat. Thankfully the waterproof digitals were able to capture footage of my bravery.

On the way back to the ship we were tried to find some dolphins. We wer very lucky to run into a pod of about six of them and we followed them for a good twenty minutes. They were quite playful and just amazing creatures to watch close up. One even jumped out of the water for us. It was pretty cool.

This is our cruise ship, the Majesty of the Seas:

I was sad that it was already the last night of our cruise. We had such a fun time and even the stereotypical things about a cruise were so great. We enjoyed going to the cheesy shows in the theater and making fun of the horrible choreography and singing. The exception was the comedian they had the first night because he was funny and clean! Anyway, we wanted to commemorate the theater in a photo...notice the people behind us...definitely kindred mischevious spirits of ours!

Friday, November 23rd

It felt like the blink of an eye our cruise was over. However, we had scheduled an Everglades tour in Miami so we loaded on the bus and headed out to the Gator Park for our airboat tour and gator show. I really loved riding on the airboat even though our guide was a more annoying and less-funny version of Larry the Cable Guy. The Everglades are impressive and we were actually able to see a couple of alligators in the habitat.









After the airboat tour we moved on to watch alligators being fed and then a show about some of the wildlife in the region, including gators. Perhaps the coolest thing of all was that I got to hold a young alligator in my very own hands. Their skin is very cool to the touch and has quite an interesting texture. It was sooo cool!


I made some new friends at the Gator Park:


After the Everglades tour we went back to downtown Miami and checked into our hotel. We then took some local transportation (Metro mover) to an open air mall along the dock called Bayside. We ate at the Hard Rock Cafe and wandered around for a while before barricading ourselves in the hotel room again. We did not make the mistake of another late night run to Checkers! :)

Saturday, November 24th

The days flew by way too quickly and it was time to head home. We had an early morning flight and had to leave our hotel by 4 a.m. which means we only got a very few hours of sleep. Despite the grumpy tired looks on our faces on that early morning we had a GREAT time on our cruise and I would happily do it all over again. Thanks to Heidi and the CAK for another great set of memories!