Caribbean Cruise

****WARNING: Long Post ahead for journaling purposes. Feel free to skip.****

When Adam and I were first married my parents gave us some very sound advice. “Take a couples get-away every year just the two of you,” they suggested, “your marriage is worth it.” We have found this advice to be so very true and a wonderful way to rekindle our love and connect as a couple and so therefore we have made taking a trip together every year a priority in our marriage. Sometimes our getaways are just a night or two long, and sometimes they are a quick little trip to a condo close to home, but we have always managed to sneak away for at least a little while just the two of us.

Normally we like to take our getaways in the winter and go someplace tropical to avoid the cold weather. However, with my pregnancy due date being in August we knew that sneaking away together would be very difficult to do since I would be nursing a new baby – so we moved our plans up. Our original plan was to go to England this year and tour around Europe a bit visiting friends and family members. But as I was going through the sicky ickies of pregnancy and feeling OH SO TIRED all the time – I changed my mind and decided I wanted something a bit more low key. A vacation where we wouldn’t be driving around like mad men trying to see everything – but a trip where we could RELAX, be WARM, and take it EASY.

So instead of a trip to Europe I decided to book us on a cruise to Bermuda! That’s right, all the cooking done for me, dancing every night, laying around the ship reading books, going to after dinner shows, having someone clean my stateroom everyday, and not having to do any of the driving. Sounded like just what I needed! Bermuda was a different kind of cruise as well where instead of island hopping and seeing 3-4 different islands we would just spend all our time JUST on Bermuda. I liked that idea since a) I’m a big culture junky and love getting to know people, their language, food, customs, etc. and 2) I would finally get to enjoy some of the night life on the island (since most cruise ships leave by 4:00 or 5:00 pm. Sounded like a new adventure for us.

So I booked our plane tickets (using our free vouchers) and then called around to make sure the dates worked with our babysitters. However, when I went to book our cruise I realized something important…that I’m PREGNANT, and that cruise ships have certain rules for pregnant women. So I got online and found that our cruise ships regulations were that women could not be over 24 weeks along to cruise. I checked my calendar and found out that…dun, dun, dun…I would be 5 days over their regulation deadline. FIVE DAYS! Darn it all. But I decided to call and just ask about it anyway thinking that maybe I could get a doctors note and they would make an exception???? Unfortunately the answer was a big NO – which required Adam and I once again getting online and trying to figure something else out.

We were pretty lucky though and ended up finding another cruise with two islands we hadn’t been to that was leaving 2 weeks earlier than our other one putting me in the safe range of traveling. So we again called our babysitters to make sure the new dates worked with them, called our airline to see about changing our flights (which didn’t end up working very well and required us buying our tickets for one way of our flight – since all the free flight seats were taken costing us an extra $450), and then booked our vtwo weeks before we were scheduled to leave. YIKES! But it sure made things exciting! 🙂

So on Friday April 22nd we dropped our three little darlins off at my brother Lukes house and took off for our 6.5 hour plane ride over to Fort Lauderdale Florida. We arrived around 11:00 Florida time (9:00 Utah time) and were then transported to our hotel a few miles away where we pretty much took showers and then crashed for the night.

The next morning we got up for our free continental breakfast and then went back to our room where we read, watched some TV, took naps, and then packed up again for our drive over to our Princess cruise port. The hotel took us over there for free and we arrived about 12:15 in the afternoon (our ship wasn’t scheduled to leave until 5:00). We’ve decided that was TOTALLY the way to go because A) going through all the lines to get onto the board was a CINCH – since there was hardly anybody there yet, and B) We really got to enjoy our cruise for just that much longer. It was wonderful!

After checking in and getting on the boat we went to our stateroom to drop off our bags and then headed up to the Lido deck for some lunch.

A view of Miami from the cruise ship

The rest of the afternoon we pretty much just walked around the boat, went to our emergency evacuation meeting, and then hung out in our stateroom waiting for our bags to arrive so that I could change into my swimsuit since I was DYING of heat wearing long pants, tennis shoes, and a short sleeved turtleneck sweater. WHAT WAS I THINKING???? Funny enough though – once our bags did arrive and we both got into our swim suits, and headed up to find some beach chairs – we were only able to enjoy ourselves for about 5 minutes before needing to head back down to our stateroom to change for dinner. ha ha. Bless our hearts! We were laughing pretty hard at ourselves.

For dinner we chose to do traditional dining with 3 other couples at a big table – but when we arrived at 5:15 there was only one other couple on our table. Wayne and Melanie. Wayne had been in the military for 17 years and was on his second marriage to Melanie who was a Spanish teacher. They were on the cruise celebrating Wayne returning from 13 months over in Afghanistan. They were both quite religious and belonged to a church that had been started two years earlier. Needless to say it was very interesting talking with them.

After dinner we walked around the ship a bit and then Adam found a nice cozy little bar/lounge where they were playing some awesome music and Adam sweetly asked me to dance. LOVE HIM! We were both too embarrassed to actually go out and dance on the dance floor (since we would be one of two couples – so we just found an open area in the back of the room and had a great ol’ time ripping it up just the two of us. They played some great oldies songs, samba, cha cha, and many others that were just awesome to dance to. Neither one of us knew most of the moves – but we just made up our own stuff and had a ball. It was sure a wonderful start to our Princess cruise!