Caribbean Cruise!!

Alright I know, I know Im the worst blogger EVER!! I guess its just because since my last post (in October!) We have been so busy with moving back from Reno to Pocatello, and then Christmas/ New Years, and then Nick and my cruise we went on and then we came to Burley for Nick's pharmacy rotation, and thats where we are at now. See what I mean? We have been going and going and going! And I will eventually get to all that we have been up to, but for this post I would like to just write about our Cruise because it was THE BEST EVER, and I want to tell all I can before I forget. :) WARNING: This is a very long post!

So in January Nick and I went on our first Caribbean Cruise. I have been on a Caribbean cruise before with my entire family on my Mom's side, and ever since I have really wanted to go back!! So I finally convinced Nick that we needed to go, although, it didnt take much convincing. ;) We decided that this January would be the perfect time to go since Sophie would be about 18 months old ( we didnt want to bring her with us, I know, we are the meanest parents ever right!?), and this is Nick's last semester of school and he would be on break in January so it just worked out perfect! SO... We did it!! We went, and it was AWESOME!!! We left January 21 and flew to Miami. We stayed in Miami that night in probably the classiest hotels ever! (NOT REALLY) It was pretty ghetto actually, and kinda freaky but it worked. HA. So then the next morning we headed to the ship. We went on Norweigian Cruise Lines and we really liked it.

Our awesome hotel room

waiting for the shuttle to get to the ship

Day 1: The first day we just ATE and ATE, we did a lot of that this week ;), and we just hung out on the ship the as we headed out to Sea.

Waiting in the theater on the ship for the show to start

Our huge stateroom on the ship

Day 2: We got to the Great Stirrup Cay, Bahamas. Which is a small island the ship line owns. It was pretty cool. We took a ferry to the island and stayed there all day. Nick and I snorkled and explored around the isalnd. It was pretty fun! The best part of this cruise, though, was the weather. Which was perfect the ENTIRE time. Like 78-84 degrees all day every day even on the ship and at night! It was so great! This island also prvided a huge free buffet that the ship brought and so that was cool to be able to go and eat during the day whenever we felt like it on the isalnd without having to go back to the ship.

Day 3: This was another day at Sea. But they have so many things on these cruise ships to do that the days at sea are pretty fun. Nick joined a bunch of foreign guys for a soccer game and basketball. I would watch and take pictures. None of them were too good, so Nick was like an all-star to them haha, and so they all loved him! It was pretty funny because after that anytime we would see any of the guys around the ship they would always say "Hi" to Nick and make sure he was coming to the next bball or soccer game that was going on. We also played dodge ball and went to some shows and things like that. Oh ya... and we ate and ate and ate. ;)

Day 4: Ocho Rios Jamaica! Ok actually Jamaica was kind of a bust for us. Our original plan was to try and walk to these cool falls that we heard about but when we got off the ship and asked someone about it they told us it was WAY to far and we couldnt walk there (which we find out later is not true because apparently people do it all the time) So we were kinda bummed about that and we really didn twant to pay $40 bucks for a taxi so we decided instead to go to a beach and go snorkling. Well on our way to find a map this crazy guy named Rocky comes up to us and bsically makes us follow him and long story short we end up taking a taxi with Rocky's friend to a beach that is like less than a mile away and we had to pay $10 for it and it was terrible snorkeling and the water was kinda murky and so we only stayed for like 30 min and walked back to the ship. SO LAME!! We did go look at some shops and got Sophie a cute little Jamaica dress. So that was kinda fun.

Day 5: This day we were at the Grand Cayman Island! It was super fun! We took this awesome tour thing where we went out to the middle of the ocean on this little boat and we went to Sting ray heaven! It was pretty cool. in the middle of the ocean there is a sandbar where a bunch of wild sting rays are at and we were able to feed them and hold them and swim with them and it was cool. I will admit I was kind freaked out by them because they are kinda nasty things that are HUGE! But I still held one. I was pretty proud of myself. After that  the ship took us to a cool reef to go snorkling and it was really neat! I love the water in the Caribbean because its SO warm and SO clear. It was awesome!

the boat we took out to the stingrays

Unfortunately I couldnt get a pic of Nick with the stinkgray so this is all ya get

Day 6: Cozumel, Mexico. This was our last stop before heading back to Miami. Nick and I decided to rent a scooter for the day and just go check out the island. We had a blast!! It was pretty funny because right after we hopped on the scooter and headed off it started pouring rain!! It was crazy! So we were driving around soaking wet and laughing our heads off. It stopped after about 15 min and the sun came out it it was nice the rest of the day. We drove all around the island and saw neighborhoods where people actually live. Honestly I couldnt believe how impovrished it was! People were literally living in shacks. It was very interesting. Then we drove to these old Myan ruins to look around and it turned out that cost money and we didnt have enough with us so we turned around and decided to find a cool place to snorkle (what a surprise huh! ;) we actually checked out a few beaches that were busts but then Nick spotted this little tiny beach just off the road with about 8 people on it. We saw a bunch of rocks and figured that it had to be good snorkling and it turned out it was! In fact it was AWESOME!! So we spent the rest of the day there and had SO much fun!

the Myan ruins we didnt actually get to see :)

a "nice" house in cozumel

an iguana

nick and our scooter

Day 7: Our last full day on the ship was a sea day. So like before we just hung out and had fun!

Day 8: Back in Miami! We just woke up and ate and then got off the ship. Our flight didnt leave until later in the day so we had a lot of time to kill. This day actually was kind of funny because we really didnt want to pay for a taxi ( we are SO cheap!) So we walked with our luggage (we actually didnt have that much) through Miami so we could find a bus or something besides and expensive taxi to take us to the airport. Our efforts paid off and I think we spent $8 on the transit which was way better than $35 and we had a fun adventure. :)
We had such a Fun time on the cruise! It was so relaxing and just great!! I would definitely recommend it to everyone!! And although we really did miss Sophie ( My mom watched her most the week and Nick's mom took her for a couple days too, we are very lucky to have such great parents who will watch our child for us!) It was totally worth it. Im so so so glad we did it and I already want to go again someday. Although I dont think we will for a few years ;)