After Ohio we flew back to Florida, which I hardly remember because of too many cocktails.. well except for the part when I realized we were sitting next to the local weather man.. that was, interesting. I still don't understand how I got starstruck by a weather man on the local news but we will blame that on the cranberry vodkas. *Anyways* we were at my parents house for a night or two to drop Pip off since they were watching her for us while we went on the cruise.
Before the cruise we managed to squeeze two days in at Universal Orlando before heading to Ft Lauderdale. Being a Florida resident sure does come in handy down in south Florida where they like to rip off tourists. We were able to get a pretty sweet deal staying at one of the on site hotels with a two day pass to the parks. A perk of staying at the on-site hotel is that you can enter the theme park early..which we did..and it was aweeeesome!
Harry Potter!
We then traveled from Orlando to Ft Lauderdale to catch the cruise ship. The ship we went on is currently the largest ship in the world, Royal Caribbean's "Allure of the Seas". Here we are ready to hit the seas:
Our first port was Nassau, Bahamas. We don't typically go for the overpriced 'tour' packages while on cruises and instead prefer to tour on our own. We were only in Nassau for about half the day so we decided to go to Junkanoo Beach which was about a 15 minute walk from the dock.
After the Bahamas we cruised to St Thomas! If you ever needed new diamond jewelry here is where to find it! One of the jewelry capitals of the world. I had a ring that we purchased on the ship re-sized here for only about $20 and it was done within two hours. I had this done at Diamonds International and they were very credible, I was a little reluctant allowing them to take my new ring but trusted in the fact that they had a good reputation and it paid off. After shopping around and waiting for my ring we negotiated with a taxi bus driver to take us around the island and drop us off to snorkel at Sapphire Beach.
Our last stop on this itinerary was by far our favorite, St Maarten. We did do a tour from the ship on this island as well as going on our own adventure after. The tour we did was called "Sea Trek" and it was such a fun experience, albeit short for the price. I was actually very reluctant to do this because I am a bit claustrophobic and wasn't completely comfortable to rely on this mechanism to supply me oxygen on the sea floor. But alas, I managed to suck it up and do it and I am glad I did!
After our Sea Trek adventure we hopped in a cab to see the low flying planes over the famous Maho Beach! Words can't even begin to describe experiencing this, what a sight!
Here is a video I was able to get of a plane coming in for landing:
And now for some random photos aboard the ship:
As always, thank you so much for reading!!! xxx
