Cruising the Caribbean

After months of ideas and hinting at Mike, I was able to convince him to go on a cruise for our first anniversary, I also convinced my brother and his girlfriend, Nohra, to come too. And on our actual anniversary we were off to sunny Miami, Florida to board the Norwegian Pearl. We met, Matthew and Nohra at the port and ready to go for our adventure, once we were abroad we were also promptly ready for our sail away party and drinks. It's always fun checking out the ship and seeing what fun awaits for the week.

 For our first stop on Monday we were headed to the private island in the Bahamas. Unfortunately the weather didn't quite cooperate for us. Matthew and Nohra made it over to the Island earlier than we did, Mike and I attempted to go over, however the weather had other plans for us. Just as we were pulling into the dock on the tender the heavens opened up and it was torrential downpours. Being on the top deck of the tender did not provide us with much cover either, good thing we were wearing bathing suits and towels. We never made it off the tender that day and went right back to the ship to enjoy the rest of the day on the boat, by the pool once it cleared up. Matt and Nohra got to spend some time on the Island though.

Yea - Note the clouds! 

The next day was much nicer thankfully since it was an at-sea day. Of course we got by just fine while we were on the ship, there was certainly no shortage of food. We spent most of our day by the pool or checking out some of the activities on the ship like rock climbing. I was quite content sitting by the pool with my kindle and a corona (light). Look at those tough guys climbing. Nohra and Matt made it up there pretty quickly, I only made it like half way. It was def much harder than I thought.

We had a great time going to dinner and the shows every night. They did have some good entertainment and plenty of good food at dinner. We also had quite the entertaining time when we went to go take professional pictures and the guy made Mike and Matt lay on the floor, that was funny to say the least.

After that our next stop was Ochos Rios, Jamaica on Wednesday. The weather didn't start off too great but it turned into a surprisingly nice day. We decided to wing it and just find a tour to take us to Dunns River Falls the main attraction on the island once we were off the ship. We had so much fun at the falls, it was probably our favorite activity of the whole week. You climb up the falls and it's a lot of fun. Nohra's waterproof camera case really came in handy.

I will say Nohra is a genius, she asked our personal tour driver if he would take us for authentic beef patties in sweet bread, so he did, man were these things delicious. I would also refer to these as hot pockets of deliciousness, we all really enjoyed our authentic Jamaican beef patty lunch!

Unfortunately our next two ports were changed due to hurricane Rina that was approaching the coast of Mexico where we were scheduled to go, so we lost out on going to Grand Cayman and Cozumel, which we were really looking forward to. Instead we got an extra day at sea and a day in Nassau, Bahamas (not the most exciting port in the Caribbean). But I guess all we can say is at least we were safe, dry, and away from the hurricane. This is risk you run taking a cruise during hurricane season. So we hung by the pool, which was again fine for me, I was on my second or third book by this point.

Our next and final port (before another sea day) was Nassau. We didn't have much of a game plan for the day so we took a taxi down to Atlantis, although you really can't see much of the grounds without giving them your first born child, it costs more for one person to use the pool for the day than a day at Disney World!!! Crazy. We clearly did not stay there, so we took another cab to go essentially less than a mile down the road to the free beach where we hung out for the day.

Before we knew it the week had flown by and it was time to go back home. But we had a great time and a lot of great memories. This was a great way to celebrate our first anniversary! I hope every one will be as great as this one and only get better with the years to come.