Caribbean Cruise

This last June, my family was able to go on a cruise to the western Caribbean. It was kind of a Brad's-graduation-trip-slash-last-hurrah-before-he-leaves-for-his-mission vacation. I'd been on a cruise before, but I was like 12 and don't remember a ton. I will apologize in advance for this mega-post.

We were on the Freedom of the Seas, a ship from the Royal Caribbean cruise line. The ship was absolutely GORGEOUS. Supposedly it's the second- or third-largest ship in the world. It's longer than the Statue of Liberty is tall! There were some way cool features on the boat. The bottom decks were mostly staterooms and dining rooms. Each family was assigned a dining room (we were in one called Leonardo's) and table number. We had to share a table with another family. They were nice enough, but it was always kind of awkward. Our waiters were the coolest people ever! Our main waiter was named Olena; she was from Ukraine. She was a freaking ninja! I'm a huge fan of her.

Freedom of the Seas

On the 4th Deck, there was a big promenade with some shops and restaurants and stuff. There was also a casino, a theater for the evening entertainment, an ice rink, and a little movie theater onboard. Up higher on the ship, there was the big buffet diner place called the Windjammer Cafe. There were also a bunch of swimming pools up on that deck. AND there was a soft-serve ice cream machine and you could have as many free ice cream cones as you want! The top deck was pretty cool--there was a climbing wall, a mini golf course, basketball courts, and a FlowRider where you could surf and stuff.

The Promenade

Attractive FlowRider instructor from New Zealand

The climbing wall!

Mini golf course!

We stopped at 4 different ports; the first was Labadee, their private island on Haiti. It was absolutely beautiful, but effing hot. We got tickets to go on an alpine slide, which was way fun. It was kinda funny because the company's address was in Utah. We spent most of the day at the beach, though. The sand was super pretty and the water was the perfect temperature. Random funny story... when we were in the water, there was a border of rope held up by buoys to set a boundary for the swimmers. My brother held up the rope and something attached to it looked like this super nasty mangled head or something. We're like "Sick! Dad, what is that?!" "Oh it's just part of a boy or something." "Gah! Part of a BOY?!" "No, a BUOY." ...I guess you had to be there.

Labadee,  Haiti

 When we got back to the ship, we were talking to Julio, who cleaned our room. [Side note: he was the coolest dude ever. He would always leave us the coolest towel animals and every time we passed him in the hall he'd excitedly say hello and then joke around with us a bit.] Anyway, Julio is from Haiti and so while we were all hanging out on the island, he had to hurry and finish cleaning the rooms so he could visit his family. I guess he had to travel like an hour each way and only got to see them for half an hour! It was ridiculously depressing... I'm glad he got to see his family though. He probably has super cute little black children. :)

Our next port was Jamaica. It was probably my favorite of all the ports. I think seeing all the adorable black children had something to do with it. It is a beautiful place though--very green, and the water is really blue. When we got on land, we met up with our tour guide/driver for the land excursion. He told us to call him "U." (Or maybe it was "Yoo" or "Yu." We'll never know.) Our tour was way nice because it was just our family in the car, so we could pretty much do whatever we wanted.

Yes, that steering wheel is on the right side of the car. Super trippy.

The epitome of Jamaica

Our first stop was tubing down some river. It was a big surprise to us--my mom forgot she'd signed us up for it! It was GORGEOUS. We just floated along down this river and we had a river guide named George (like "George of the Jungle," as he explained). George was pretty great. He had a long ponytail and was missing some teeth... and yet I was strangely attracted to him. Probably because he was serenading us down the river. Yes, you read that correctly. He would change the song he was singing whenever something new happened. For example, when someone was heading for some brush on the side or it looked like they were headed to some rocks or something, he would sing Bob Marley's "Don't Worry." ("Every little thing is gonna be all right...") Whenever he was next to me, he would start singing Marley's "One Love." You know, the whole "let's get together and feel all right." I think he was in love with me. Naturally. Anyway, at one point he started singing "Lovin' You." My parents just busted up laughing--it was super funny hearing some random Jamaican dude with a heavy accent sing an awful song from the '70's.

Pretty view :)

Some random "pirate ship" on the side of the road

After tubing, we headed to Dunn's River Falls. It's a hike up these really pretty water falls. It was a little scary in a couple places because it was really slippery and/or unexpectedly deep. It was pretty cool though. (According to Wikipedia, the falls are 600 ft. high.) I had heard it was a really tough hike, and it didn't end up being nearly as bad as I thought; regardless, I was proud of myself for doing it :)

The official sign saying we made it!

All sweaty after climbing the falls

The next stop was Grand Cayman. We got on a little tour bus with some other people and headed to a little port to get on a boat that would take us out snorkeling. There were just 3 guys in charge-- one guy who drove the boat, another who was kind of the tour guide (who was basically a black version of Patrick Swayze), and some random white guy (our videographer) who went by "Froggy."

Snorkeling was super awesome because they took us out to the middle of the ocean and we just plopped right down and checked out some really cool fish. I heart snorkeling, even though sometimes I get a little claustrophobic with that big thing on my face...

Then we took our little boat over to Stingray City. That was super cool! It was just this big sand bar in the middle of the ocean where all the stingrays gathered. Unfortunately there were several boats full of tourists trying to see stingrays. But luckily our Patrick Swayze-esque tour guide was a freaking ninja! They had food for us to give to the stingrays, plus our guide knew the names of all the stingrays and caught one really big one for all of us to hold (and kiss for good luck). So yes, I held a stingray. AND kissed it for good luck. It kinda creeped me out... any of you who know how much I love loathe animals knows that is kind of a big deal.

Stingray City

Our last stop was Cozumel, Mexico. Our first excursion was driving ATV's through the jungle! Pretty adventurous, I know. It was pretty cool. We got really dirty/muddy and I got over 25 mosquito bites (I just wore my swimsuit top with my jeans because I didn't want to get my shirt all muddy). It was cool (at first) because we got to take a bunch of pictures with exotic animals. Like baby crocodiles. It was kind of awesome, but after they made us stop like 5 times, it got a little old. Unfortunately my mom had a little mishap... When she was turning, she felt the ATV start to tip over. She looked back and saw her wheel rolling away! Something like that could only happen to my mom. Haha. 

After our ATVing adventure, we went to a little beach club thing. There was a bar/restaurant and some gear you could use for snorkeling and stuff. Once you got out into the water, some of the fish were cool, but the beach was super awkward. It was super rocky and not easily accessible. We didn't stay there really long, but it was a pretty beach.

Overall, we had a blast! I got to see a couple movies I hadn't seen before, I got some really pretty jewelry from the store on the ship, and they had really good shows every night for their evening entertainment. The food was great, and I got pretty adventurous. I'm not a big fan of fish, but I tried quite a bit of it at dinner. The only thing I absolutely hated the entire trip was this cold papaya soup. It sounds fruity and delicious, right? WRONG. It tasted like vomit. Literally. Luckily you could order as much food as you wanted for no extra cost. So don't worry, I didn't go hungry. 

Here are some of our favorite towel animals. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture every day... there was also a really cute hippo, some swans, and an elephant.

A bat

A monkey

An alligator

After we got off the boat, we had several hours to spare before our flight left. We decided to go to Kennedy Space Center. It was super fun! I've always been really intrigued with space travel, so it was a lot of fun to see shuttles and stuff in person.

The actual control room they used for Apollo 13

 

Well that just about sums it up! Sorry I'm a blog slacker... I'll try to update more frequently. Thanks for reading!