We went on a cruise!

Dangit. I'm bad at this. So. This was going to be my next post but I never got to it because... well, I'm lazy.

We went on a cruise! We spent 7 nights on the Caribbean. We got back to Florida the day of the 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking, which I'm glad we got back cause, little known fact, there's like a bajillion icebergs in the Caribbean. So here's how it went down.

Friday, April 6th:

We left our house in Dayton, Ohio on our 16 hour drive to Jacksonville, Florida. We went through seven states. Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, & Florida. All of those middle ones I had never been to. But we stopped at the house Gabe lived in when he was young while driving thru SC. So that was cool. We arrived in Jacksonville at about 1am. Long day.

Saturday, April 7th:
We left Jacksonville & drove the rest of the way to Port Canaveral to board on Carnival Dream. It was a stressful process, but once we got on the boat & left port, it was really exciting... until we got away from land. The waves got big & the boat started rocking like crazy. & my oh my did I get seasick. We had to leave dinner within about 10 minutes because I was so miserable. It was pretty bad. I was seasick for the first couple of days at least. Definitely not fun.

Atlantis Resort

Sunday, April 8th:

We docked in Nassau, Bahamas. It's been one of my life dreams to go to the Atlantis Resort there. & so we did! We spent a few hours at the water park. It was amazing. The lazy river there is a mile & a half long... & not very lazy. There's rapids & waves. & you can take a side path & it takes you to a tower of slides, but you never have to leave your tube. So I guess that's lazy. I made Gabe do it a couple of times. I really enjoyed it. He went down the slide that I guess is the steepest water slide in the world. It goes down through a shark tank at the bottom. But he said you can't see anything anyway cause you're going too fast. So we went on the one right next to it that goes through the same shark tank, but with tubes. So we got to actually float through the tank. It was pretty cool. I was really impressed with the park. I wish we had a bajillion dollars so we could afford to stay in the royal towers (pictured behind us). That bridge between the two buildings was originally built for Michael Jackson. It costs $25,000 a night with a 4 night minimum. Ridiculous. It must be amazing. Must be nice to have enough money to waste $100,000 to stay in a hotel for 4 nights.

Monday, April 9th:

We spent the day at sea. Which kinda sucked cause of the whole sea sickness thing. I did a lot of napping on this cruise. A lot. It would've been nice if it wasn't because I was nauseous. But I was feeling better by dinner time which meant that I got to eat the chocolate melting cake for dessert. & that was one of the best things about the cruise.

Tuesday, April 10th: 

Shipwreck Cove

Magen's Bay

We were docked at St. Thomas, one of the US Virgin Islands. Such a tiring day, but so fun. We took a boat out to an island and went snorkeling. It was my first time, but Gabe is a seasoned snorkeler. The first spot we went to was Turtle Cove. There was a big barracuda, a ton of stingrays, some fish, & obviously, turtles. Lots of them. It was pretty cool. The second spot we went to was Shipwreck Cove. There's a WWII freighter about 40ft below the surface. It was really cool. But the initial jump into the water at this spot freaked me out. There were TONS of fish surrounding the boat cause we had cantaloupe peels that we could feed them. I jumped in right in the middle of them all & they were running in to me. Freaked me out. I made Gabe come back for me cause I was scared to move. I'm such a pansy. When we were swimming around with the fish, I put my head under & watched a fish swim up to Gabe's pocket, stick his head slightly into it, & pull out the peel Gabe had in there. It was pretty funny. No one ever told me that snorkeling is exhausting. All that swimming around in waves. Holy crap. Anyway, after we got back to the main island, we went to Magen's Bay. Apparently it's one of the top 10 beaches in the world. It's GORGEOUS! Beautiful, soft sand. The water is clear & blue. & there's palm trees everywhere. It's wonderful. We spent a couple of hours. & I buried Gabe in the sand, in the form of a mermaid, complete with breasts. We then caught a taxi back to the other side of the island where the boat was docked. I ended up with an AWFUL sunburn all over my body. My back, face, chest, arms, legs... everything was bright red. I've never burned before. It was horrible. I spent some time crying in the room last night because when I got in to bed it hurt horribly. Gabe had to try to cool me down with ice cubes. It was bad. But totally worth it! St. Thomas is beautiful!

Wednesday, April 11th:

St. Maarten, NA

Our ship docked at St. Maarteen, Netherlands Antilles. Half of the island belongs to The Netherlands, the other to France. We really wanted to go over to the French side cause we'd heard great things about it, but yours truly was sun sick, among other things. So we ended up walking around the little town right on the beach & then going to play in the crystal blue water for a little bit. We couldn't resist cause it was just too pretty. But we had to get back on the boat about 3 hours early cause I wasn't feeling great. We were getting back off to look around when it started pouring like crazy, so we called it a day & got back on the boat. They had giant chess on deck 5 outside, so we went & played that for a while before dinner. Turns out my husband is incredibly competitive when it comes to chess. Who knew. It was fun though. Just wish we had gotten to the French side of the island. Would've been cool.

Thursday, April 12th:

Another sea day. Luckily we had gotten used to the rocking of the boat by this time so it didn't really phase us. Mostly me. Or at least my belly. Walking around is a whole other story. That is still not an easy task when the boat is rocking from side to side. & this girl is already not that great on her feet. I fell out of the elevator once when the door opened as the boat rocked. It was pretty embarrassing. We went to a comedy show that night. Pretty cool. There are lots of things to do on a cruise. It's nice that they plan out so much, especially for days spent at sea.

Friday, April 13th:

Last day on the boat, also spent at sea. I really wasn't feeling good by then. But there was a "chocolate extravaganza" at lunch. It doesn't matter how sickly I feel, I wanted chocolate covered pineapples. Totally worth it. That night we went to another comedy show, played some more chess, & it was our last night with our wonderful waiter, Michael from Jamaica. Gabe loved the dining room. They had delicious food & he got to have as much as he wanted. After all that we went up to the 10th or 11th deck, can't remember, to be spectators of the party that was happening that night. After about 15 minutes though, we decided it was bed time. It was pretty sad knowing that we would be back in Florida by the time we got up in the morning. 

Friday, April 14th:

It was weird waking up & not be rocking. We were already docked in Port Canaveral. Pretty sad. We decided to drive all the way back to Ohio that day. We left Port Canaveral around 1030ish that morning & got back to Dayton, I want to say some time after 2am on Sunday. It was a long long long drive. But we made it without dying! 

Oasis on the left, Dream on the right

Sadly we had to go back to work/school on Monday. But our Caribbean getaway was absolutely wonderful. I highly recommend a cruise. It's a lot of fun. & the food is freaking great. We want to check out Royal Caribbean next time. We pulled up next to Oasis of the Seas, which is apparently the biggest ship in the world (actually I hear it's 6 inches shorter than the biggest, Allure is bigger, but it also belongs to Royal Caribbean.) It's huge. Our boat is one of the biggest for Carnival, but it made ours look like a pansy, as you can see. But I also want to do a Disney cruise... hmmm. I guess we have some time to decide what to do since a cruise is not anywhere in our foreseeable future. But anyway. It was a good time. You should all go.

The end.

- Alexa