One Year Anniversary CRUISE!!

It’s the last night of our week-long cruise to the Caribbean. It’s largely due to Jeff’s bargain shopping and deal spotting abilities that we were able to enjoy such an incredible one-year anniversary celebration! And we have his dad to thank for our free flights to and from Miami!

On Friday, the adventure began. Our always-reliable friend, Matt Maxfield, took us to the airport in Salt Lake in time for our 4:35pm flight. We ended up having to entertain ourselves walking around the airport and looking through shops for a while since our flight was delayed an hour. Having learned from my previous mistake, we got turkey sandwiches at Quizno’s right before we boarded and thankfully, I felt great for the entire flight. We landed in Dallas at about 9:15pm and took a shuttle to the Hyatt Regency near the airport (after we mistook the even fancier Grand Hyatt for our hotel first and were sent away). Jeff came through again when he found a fantastic deal ($60/night) that let us stay in such a nice hotel for the night. Our room was HUGE and the bed was SO comfortable. Jeff caught the end of a football game on our giant HDTV and was a little sad to be reminded what he was missing (we don’t have cable). Sadly, we didn’t have much time to enjoy our fancy accommodations because we had to be up early the next morning to catch our flight to Miami. We almost went straight to sleep in our massive and incredibly comfy bed.

The next morning, we were up at 5:15 taking showers and getting ready to catch our shuttle to the airport for our 7:00 flight to Miami. Everything went smoothly. We arrived in Miami on time and were met by the Carnival representative, who gave us instructions on where to wait for our bus to the ship. We got our bags almost immediately – the fastest either of us has ever gotten bags from baggage claim and soon after, we were on our way. Our check-in process was quick after we arrived at the port since my very prepared husband had already checked us in online. I love him.

Waiting to board our flight to Miami

Excited to be on our way to Miami

Something interesting happened before we boarded the ship. A man told us that everyone over 18 years old had to fill out a short information sheet. He handed one to Jeff and then looked at me and asked Jeff in a good-natured, jokingly skeptical tone if I was 18. I laughed and told him I was 21, but it wasn’t until after he walked away that it registered with me that he probably thought he was giving a compliment to a middle aged lady who would be tickled to hear that she looked 18. Apparently, I look old.

We entered the ship on deck 3 in the beautiful lobby. We took a couple of minutes to take in the magnificence and grandeur of it all and get really excited. We took a couple of pictures on the staircase and then headed to lunch. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were all served buffet-style on deck 9 – the lido deck – every day. The menu changed each day and there was a deli (where Jeff and I got several delicious turkey sandwiches), a pizzeria, and a fish and chips buffet open for lunch and dinner in addition to the buffet. Not to mention all of the desserts and the frozen yogurt and ice cream machines! With all of that delicious free food, I’m pretty sure I gained a couple of pounds on this vacation. Not a day went by that I didn’t get some yummy frozen yogurt. Jeff and I both have pretty simple taste though so a lot of the food that was served was just too fancy for us and didn’t even look appetizing so we passed it by. Of course, with so much to choose from, we could always find something we wanted.

Just as we got on the ship, taking it all in

I'm a pro at making giant frozen yogurt cones

Eating one of the delicious turkey sandwiches

After lunch, Jeff and I explored the ship for a while and went to check out our cabin on deck 1. It was pretty cozy in there, but we had a big comfy bed to sleep in and cable TV. The housekeeping staff was great! They were very friendly and smiley and the two guys who took care of our room impressively learned our names on the first day. We never quite got theirs down. I think they were from the Philippines and their very long names would’ve been hard enough to understand without the accents.

I realized pretty quickly that I could feel every wave that hit the ship and we hadn’t even left the dock yet. Although I never felt sick, I got the feeling that I was riding an elevator down several times and decided I should get some sea sickness pills. Lucky for us, they were free at the guest services desk and taking just one a day, I felt fine for the entire trip. I learned quickly after that first night that I should only take one a day, not two. I was VERY drowsy by about 9pm.

The Venetian Palace

View of Miami from Lido deck

When our bags were delivered to our rooms, Jeff and I put on our swimsuits and went up to lido deck to try out the pools and slide. The first thing we did was go down the slide. We were both greeted by a wave of salt water at the bottom and that was enough to make us remember to keep our mouths shut every time after that. The pools were filled with salt water too. Only the hot tubs seemed to be fresh water. We were sitting in one of the hot tubs when the safety drill began. We had to go back to our rooms, grab our life jackets and meet out by the lifeboats for in-case-of-an-emergency instructions. We had time to go back to the room and take showers before we finally set sail. Jeff and I went up to lido deck to watch.

Jeff being swallowed up by a wave of salty water

Setting sail

That night at 6:00 was our first formal dinner. We went to our assigned table and met the two other couples we shared it with. One was on their honeymoon and the other had been married for about a year and a half and were fellow BYU students. Jeff and I ate a lot of little bread rolls and drank a lot of water before we finally got our little too fancy dinners. We decided we would eat dinner at the buffet from then on and never returned to the restaurant.

A little after dinner, the drowsiness side effect of the pill began to set in and I took a long nap before Jeff woke me up to go up on deck and to the show in the Venetian Palace at 10:30. I was pretty out of it, but still enjoyed the show. Our amusing cruise director, Noonan (he went by his last name) pulled eight random people from the audience and asked them questions about themselves and good-naturedly poked fun at them and joked with the audience. Then, an apparently well-known comedian named JR came out and got the audience laughing pretty hard. It was a good show.

Sunday was a day at sea and since few of the activities offered on the ship appealed to Jeff and I, we spent the majority of sea days lounging around on deck or in our room trying to keep ourselves entertained. At 11:00 that morning, we went to listen to Noonan’s advice and information about our 3 ports of call and ended up being glad we went as he was very knowledgeable and gave us plenty of valuable information. We spent a few hours lying out on lounge chairs on the deck enjoying the sun and cool breeze. Naturally, I had some frozen yogurt and read some of my current book, The Pillars of the Earth. That night Jeff and I watched The Express on the big screen on lido deck before going to bed. It was the first time either of us had seen it. It was a good movie.

Monday morning, Jeff and I got up early to work out. He went to the nice gym on deck 11 while I ran up the stairs from deck 1 to deck 12 and back down ten times. While we were working out, the ship docked in Jamaica! We had breakfast, showered, put on our swimsuits and packed our camelbaks and Jeff filled them with ice and water. Then, we were on our way. We went down to deck zero and got off the ship about 9am. We met up with the group for our beach horseback riding excursion and were soon lead out to the buses. Our driver, Perry took us to the stables at the start of our ride and on the way taught us a little Jamaican slang. He taught us to answer “ya mon” instead of “yes” and that “irie” expressed good feelings and we could say “irie mon” if we were happy or felt good about something.

On the bus

View from the bus. We drove on left side of the road!

At the stables, we all mounted our horses and lined up for the ride. There were nine of us plus 3 guides. We rode for a while before we got to the beach and any time there was pretty scenery, one guide in particular would take peoples’ cameras and get pictures of them riding through it. When we got to the beach, we all dismounted and got into our swimsuits and put on our little floaty belts before getting back on our horses and riding into the water. We stayed, more or less in a line, but overlapped each other quite a bit. We rode around in a big circle a few times before getting back out. It was SO much fun! I was laughing the entire time. My horse made some pretty funny grunting noises while she tried to trample and shove the other horses. She was pretty feisty. We were pretty deep in water a lot of the time and got moving pretty fast so when we would unexpectedly run up onto a sandbank, it was very bouncy in the shallow water and we had to hang on for dear life. I was lucky enough to witness one guy who just couldn’t hack it fall clumsily off of his horse into the water. It was a pretty funny sight and of course he wasn’t hurt so I didn’t feel too bad laughing. His horse wandered off so one of the guides jumped off his horse and helped the fallen man mount it. Then he got the horse going towards the man’s runaway horse and held onto his own horse’s tail so that it would tow him through the water. He squealed and made all kinds of funny noises to draw attention to himself as it dragged him through the water. It was pretty funny. After riding around in the water for a while, it was time to head back to shore, but the guide who had been taking the most pictures earlier told me to dismount in the water and go and get my camera while he held onto my horse and waited there with Jeff. When I came back, he helped me back onto my horse and took a bunch of pictures of Jeff and I together on our horses. I don’t know why we got such special treatment! No one else got a personal photo shoot in the water! I felt so guilty later that we couldn’t tip him. He deserved it, but the smallest bill we had was a 20. Before we rode back to the stables, we got to see some of the pictures that had been taken of us by some guys on a boat in the middle of the circle we formed in the water. I was surprised by how well they had turned out as we looked through them on the computer. If we wanted to buy any of the pictures, we had to buy a minimum of 8 for $25. On the price sheet, the prices had all been marked down $5 to make us think we were getting a deal. When we went through and picked out all of the pictures we liked, we had 14, but before I could begin to narrow it down to 8, the guy selling us the pictures decided to strike a deal with Jeff. He whispered in his ear that he would give him all 14 for the $25 if Jeff would leave $5 with him. Sooo…14 for $30. I think the price list said 10 for $30. Jeff went along with it and played the part of the firm, commanding man who takes care of his woman. Damn the costs! He said in an authoritative voice, “We’ll take them all” and put his arm around me. And make no mistake; we did take them all. After we had our pictures burned to a CD, we remounted our horses and rode back to the stables to wait for our bus, which was late.

One of the pretty sights on the way to the ocean ride

Our guide/personal photographer friend is behind me

Excited to ride in the ocean in a few minutes

Waiting to get back on the horses and get in that water!

Notice the tongue

I was in heaven

Our own personal VIP photo shoot

When Perry finally arrived, we headed back to the dock, where he dropped off some of the group, but for a $10 fee, we stayed on the bus and had him drive us straight back the way we came and drop us off at Dunn’s River Falls, a place that Noonan had mentioned during his ports of call info talk on Sunday. The fee included a ride back to the dock after we climbed the falls. The falls were inside a national park so we had to pay a fee to get inside. Then, we were led on a short walk to the waterfall. We were hassled left and right by pushy Jamaican salesmen trying to lure us to their shops or get us to by little wooden carvings and necklaces the entire way. They are definitely not shy. We made it to the falls and started the climb up the slippery rocks. Jeff managed to film almost every second of our climb. I was so impressed! I fell at least five times and each and every one of them was caught on camera. I definitely couldn’t have spared a hand to hold the camera or any of the concentration that would have been required to make sure that camera stayed dry. We made it to the top pretty quickly, even with the camera. We still had plenty of time before Perry was supposed to be back to pick us up so we decided to walk around the park and take some pictures. It was beautiful there. Of course we had to fend of aggressive salesmen the entire time. One man, however, asked us so nicely to just come and look at his shop that we couldn’t refuse. We followed him into the cluster of open shops and displays, but as we expected, we weren’t interested in buying anything from his shop. He was very understanding and we headed back out to take a few more pictures. As we were heading back towards the parking lot to leave, another man stopped us and asked if we would just stop by his shop on the way out. We agreed and started to follow him, but the first man who had convinced us to do this spotted us and in unintelligible Jamaican slang, warned the man we were following that Jeff and I were not very promising customers. The man quickly turned around and asked us, “Have you already shopped?” We told him we had already been through once and he immediately lost all interest in us. As we continued, alone, through the shops to the exit, a very persistent girl managed to lure me over to her display. She was very nice and actually did have some very pretty hand-made jewelry to sell. I had been on the lookout for something to buy for Katrina’s birthday that day. I thought a pair of black and white shell earrings would look great on her. The girl told me the shells meant prosperity in Jamaica. She asked me how much I would be willing to pay for them and of course told me they usually sold for $20, but she liked me and would give them to me for less. I asked $7. She said that was too low and suggested $12. I told her Jeff and I only had $10 left (true) so she took that. It was my first bartering experience and later, in a gift shop near the dock, Jeff and I saw similar earrings for $12 so I guess we did pretty well. And she threw in a simple pink “board” earrings (little circular pieces of what seemed like balsa wood, painted pink) and a necklace in for free.

Dunn's River Fall

Getting started

All wet near the top

Pictures in the park

If you can't tell, this is a picture of a MASSIVE spider! If I had known those were around, I might have hesitated to climb that tree or pose in those bushes!

Jeff and I caught our bus back to the dock and wandered around the shops and streets for a while before heading back to the ship a little early to avoid the crowds in the mad rush to get back on the ship by 4:30. We still had to wait in line for a while and we were STARVING! We hadn’t eaten since breakfast. We learned from this experience and got turkey sandwiches from the deli before it closed that night and packed them for Grand Cayman the next day. Once we were back on the ship, we relaxed and had dinner. At 8:30 we went to a magic show in the Venetian. These two guys called themselves The Village Idiots because they do dangerous stunts. They juggled knives, ate fire, and things of that nature. It was impressive and although a lot of their jokes and puns were a little cheesy, they were pretty funny overall.

Exploring around the port before getting back on the ship

This is just one example of the inappropriate items we found in the gift shops at every port. Apparently, they think tourists just can't resist this kind of humor.

I LOVED all the towel animals! Notice how out of control my hair got in the humid Caribbean weather!

After the show, we went to the casino to learn the choreography to “Thriller.” Jeff loves that dance. What are the odds that someone would offer to teach it to us?? We had to go. Jeff did great! He learned all the steps. I’ve never been very coordinated when it comes to choreographed dancing so I struggled a little, but we had a great time.

Getting into it with the howls

This was totally candid

A little unsure of myself

The very next morning, we were pulling into port in the Cayman Islands while Jeff and I worked out. We got ready and left the ship about 8am. We had to take a tender (little boat) from the cruise ship to the dock because our ship was too big to dock. The Disney Magic cruise ship was docked next to us. I was a little jealous. When we got on shore, we found our excursion group and followed a guide to the snorkeling site. We got our gear (life vest, snorkel, goggles, and flippers), paid for a locker, and headed into the designated snorkeling zone. We spent about an hour and a half swimming around looking at all the fish on the reef and trying to take decent pictures with our underwater camera (it was REALLY hard to see through the view finder with the goggles on). There were some pretty cool fish and especially at first, it was cool to swim around above this magical little underwater world of colorful fish and plant life. It would have been nice if the water had been a little clearer, but overall we enjoyed ourselves. We decided we had had our fill after about an hour and a half and returned our gear and cleaned out our locker. When Jeff asked me which way I wanted to walk down the street we were on to explore, I decided I wanted to go right, away from the busier, more touristy area. We walked along hoping to get a little better idea of what the Cayman Islands were really like, beyond the tourist’s view. I really enjoyed just walking and talking with Jeff in a more peaceful quiet environment after being constantly surrounded by so many other people for the past few days.

On the tender getting ready to go to shore

So awesome!

Our underwater camera didn't capture the fish very clearly through the slightly murky water

Jeff captured this little gem without my knowledge

Check out the GIANT fish! There were only about 4 or 5 of those right by the shore.

We saw this HUGE tree right at the beginning or our walk

This horse was tethered to the ground in this open field full of chickens and roosters. He came over to say hi. I think he was hoping I'd have some food for him.

Our own private little beach

There were beautiful fake looking flowers like this all over the place!

Iguana road-kill.

After we felt like we had walked far enough, we headed back towards the dock and surrounding gift shops. We looked through several shops. Jeff was always on the lookout for a hat he liked since he left his at home in Provo, but he never found one he liked. In one of the first stores we came to, we were excited to find Cayman Islands t-shirts that we really liked. We bought them and continued on to multiple other stores keeping in mind that Jared’s birthday was only 2 days away and Patrick’s only a couple of weeks. I think they were easier to shop for when they were kids. We came to a Del Sol store, where everything changes color when exposed to sunlight. There are UV lights all over the store so customers can hold up the t-shirts, hats, and other merchandise to them to see what colors appeared. I thought it was really cool and although the t-shirt selection wasn’t great, I found two t-shirts I thought Patrick and Jared might like. Of course, since those were about the only two good ones in the store, they didn’t have the right sizes. I was so disappointed. I was excited to find something I thought was cool for the boys and I was even willing to spend some of my saved up “mad money” (Jeff and I each get $10 to spend on whatever we want each month) to pay for the shirts since they were a little more than the budget we had agreed on for the gifts. Sadly, we had to move on because none of the other shirts were worth buying. We looked through a couple more shops with no success. But then, lo and behold, another Del Sol! I don’t know why there were two so close together, but I didn’t care. I hurried in there and found the shirts I wanted in the sizes I needed. And of course I had to get Katrina some color changing nail polish in addition to her earrings so she could have a magical color-changing thing too. I was happy with my purchases and Jeff and I spent a little more time exploring the shops before we headed back to the ship just in time to catch a tender that was about to leave so we didn’t have to wait on the dock at all.

Margaritaville, right up our ally ;)

This parrot knew how to say "Hello"

And it wanted to take Jeff's ear off

Immediately after we dropped our bags off at the room, I wanted to go up and get a frozen yogurt cone on lido deck. Then we took showers, had dinner and watched a weird movie called Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist on the big screen before bed.

In our room modeling our Cayman Islands shirts

Wednesday was another sea day and once again, we spent the day lounging around without much to do. We worked out in the morning and took our time getting ready for the day before going to around to get some pictures of the ship. Then we spent a long time lying out on lido deck, reading, playing computer games, going down the slide, and swimming. In the afternoon, Jeff and I went to “The Marriage Show”, hosted by the cruise director, Noonan. He brought three couples up on stage and asked them personal questions. He brought up a newly wed couple (I was hoping Jeff and I might be picked, but he wanted a really newly wed couple so he picked some honeymooners), a middle of the road couple (married 25 years), and the couple married the longest (55 years). He asked questions like, “Name everything your spouse is wearing right now” and “Give the date and place of when you first met” and “What is something your wife does that annoys you,” etc. If they both gave the same answer to a question, they got points. It was very entertaining. Later that night, we went to a hypnotist show. It was the hardest I’ve seen Jeff laugh in a while. The hypnotist did things like make all of the men believe he was a rich prince and they were all belly dancers who must win his affection and all of his riches through a dance contest, make everyone think they had lost their belly buttons on stage, and make one guy believe the hypnotist was a beautiful girl, whom he would dance with and try to kiss, but not be able to get past her horrible breath (he grabbed “her” butt instead). It was all really funny so Jeff and I decided to go back for the next show 45 minutes later so I could go up on stage be hypnotized. Unfortunately, despite my efforts to cooperate, the hypnotist only managed to get me really, really relaxed. So when he came by and tapped me on the shoulder, I did collapse involuntarily onto the person next to me like all of the people that the hypnotism had actually worked on, but I was still too aware of what was going on so I rejoined Jeff in the audience. It was another entertaining show. This time, instead of making all the guys think they were belly dancers, he made them believe they were in labor. He started out by telling them the contractions were getting stronger and stronger and it was crazy to see them all react like they were really in pain. One guy even yelled out “make it stop!” After the show, Jeff and I headed to bed to be sure to get some sleep before Cozumel in the morning.

This giant chandelier constantly changed colors

Does that screen look black to you?

Behind one of the bars

Thursday morning, we arrived in beautiful Cozumel, our favorite port of the ship. Since we didn’t have any excursions planned, Jeff and I decided we had plenty of time to walk to one of the popular beaches along the coast instead of taking a taxi. We weren’t even really sure where we were going, but we had a map of the island that showed a place called Chankanaab National Park, which Noonan had mentioned when he discussed Cozumel on Sunday, and we decided to head in that direction. The map made the distance look very short, but we ended up taking a long, hot, and sweaty walk along a road near the coast following signs to Chankanaab It probably took us about an hour and a half to get there, but it was totally and completely worth it. It was GORGEOUS! We had to pay $16 each to get through the gates, but we could see by the map of the inside that there was plenty to do in there and when we got inside, we were blown away by how beautiful and well-kept it was. There were beautiful man-made white sandy beaches (all of the coast near the port is very rocky and covered in reefs rather than sand) with tons of palm trees, umbrellas, and wooden lounge chairs, and the bluest water either of us had ever seen. At the front of the park we saw the Dolphin Discovery area and after we saw those dolphins, it didn’t take long for us to decide we were going to do one of the Cozumel excursions after all! We got a pamphlet explaining the three dolphin swim packages: Dolphin Encounter, Dolphin Adventure, and Royal Swim. We decided that if we were going to do this, we were going all out and signed up for the Royal Swim at 10:00. We were SO excited and pleased with our impromptu decision, but we had an hour to kill so we explored the park a little bit, walked along the beach, tried out the water, played on a playground, and swam in a very nice pool until it was time. We met up with the other “Royal Swim”-ers (two cute kids, brother and sister, from New York), got our life jackets on, and watched the instructional safety/signs and signals video before heading out to the dock where we met our two dolphins, Romulo (male) and Malinche (female). I couldn’t stop grinning. I’ve always, always, always wanted to do this! Every time I’ve ever fed the dolphins at sea world, I’ve seriously considered and imagined just jumping into the feeding pool with them. I LOVE dolphins. Jeff was pretty stoked out of his mind too. And just as we expected, we loved every second with those dolphins. We probably spent about 45 minutes in the water with them and in that time, we got to hug and kiss them (and have them kiss us on the cheek), shake hands/fins with them, sing and dance with them and take turns doing the “dorsal tow” and “superman” foot push. For the dorsal tow, we would each swim out a distance and then stop and float in the water in a “T” shape with our arms straight out to each side and our legs straight down. Then, the two dolphins would swim up behind us on either side and put their dorsal fins right into each hand. All we had to do was hang on for the ride while they towed us in. It was awesome! It’s amazing how strong dolphins are! They would get going fast pulling each person through the water and you could feel their strong tails beating back and forth the water by your legs. The foot push was even better! After swimming out, we would get into position floating on our bellies with our legs straight out behind us and our arms stretched out in front like Superman. The dolphins would come from behind and put their noses against our feet and push us fast through the water so that we would end up standing up. The only work we had to do was make sure too keep our legs straight by locking our knees. The dolphins did the rest. Once again, they are SO strong. Swimming with the dolphins was an incredible experience. I can’t help but wish that they had actually cared about us and were playing with us cause we were friends and not just doing tricks for fish, but that may be a little much to ask. J Of course Jeff and I had to buy the DVD afterwards.

You can watch it and the rest of the videos we took on the ship and at Dunn's River Fall on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/kirafisher?v=app_2392950137&ref=profile

We found this little hermit crab walking along the street on our way to Chakanaab

Playing on the playground

Iguana!

In the fancy pool

There was a divider in between two pools that made the water really shallow. I insisted we take a Shamu picture

Jeff had a hard time bending his back like that. I'm laughing at him.

"I dig a french bikini on Hawaiian island dolls by a palm tree in the sand"

My brilliant husband took these stills off of the DVD

After the dolphin swim, Jeff and I decided to go check out the gardens and Mayan replica’s we had seen on the park map. We didn’t realize that there were guides who would give tours of the replicas if desired, but lucky for us, one showed up with our little friends from the dolphin swim and their dad and uncle just as we were about to start on the trail of Mayan replicas. We joined their group and I was glad we did, even though by the end, Jeff wished we hadn’t. Our guide had an awesome Mexican accent and extensive knowledge of Mayan culture and history. I loved listening to him talk about each replica. A lot of the time Jeff was a little too uncomfortable in the hot sun to enjoy it, but I think he at least liked some of it, at least when we were in the shade. The path was beautiful, very green and tropical. Our guide was quite the photographer. He insisted on taking pictures of everyone with their cameras and he especially loved taking artsy ones with flowers and leaves in the foreground. He had all of the spots picked out. He would take our camera and say, “Come over here. I have a beautiful picture for you.” He seemed to particularly like taking pictures of Jeff and I because we’re a couple and he was a bit of a romantic. Jeff was a good sport and played along, but he had had enough by the end. It’s a good thing he likes me so much cause I think that’s the only reason he was willing to keep smiling for pictures after the first few.

The entrance to the Mayan replicas tour

Look! It's the game of the gods from the Disney movie El Dorado!

Our guide insisted on this picture

Free tortillas with yummy salsa-like stuff

Artsy photography from our guide

Our guide was really excited to tell us that this was a tequila plant and take our picture in front of it

The arch of fertility

Our guide thought this meant we would have twins

We are on the other side of this building and the guide is taking our picture through a little tunnel through it

My favorite

Our guide insisted on these too

He made me pose like this

The sun stone

Fish in the lagoon

The ones with the different colored scales reminded me of the children's book Rainbow Fish

The lagoon

One last artsy one

The water was so blue it made the ship look like it had been painted blue

After the tour, we decided to take a taxi back to the port and look around in the shops for a little bit before heading back to the ship. We didn’t find anything we were interested in so we headed back to the ship just early enough that we barely had to wait in line at all to get back on the ship, which was marvelous. After getting so much sun in Cozumel, we were happy to relax and take a long nap before dinner. That night, we went to a show called “Just Rock” in the Venetian that featured the same two singers and group of dancers that performed just about every night. We were a little disappointed. It wasn’t as much rock as it was flamboyant, cheesy musical. Sadly, the lead male singer seemed a little gay and made odd and kind of creepy faces while he sang so he didn’t even come close to pulling off the bad boy rock star thing he was going for. Oh well. Off to bed.

Friday was another sea day as we headed back to Miami. That morning, Jeff and I went to a debarkation info meeting with Noonan and learned about how to quickly and painlessly leave the ship the following morning. Then, we headed to lunch. After lunch, we decided to participate in a scavenger hunt that took us all over the ship and required us to be really obnoxious and disturb people. In high school, I would have been perfect for this. I didn’t have many qualms about being obnoxious, but Jeff and I felt bad bugging these poor people so after we had gotten pictures of 15 of the 20 items, we realized, a group much more willing to be annoying had probably already finished and we shouldn’t waste our time trying to get the last few particularly difficult and obnoxious tasks. We walked back to the lounge where we had started and just as we thought, a group was just finishing up having their pictures checked and they won. Jeff and I weren’t too disappointed when we saw that all they won were some little medals to put around their necks. We headed back to the room and packed and then walked around the on-ship shops to look at all of the final day sales on watches and t-shirts, etc. We didn’t find anything worth buying so we headed up to lido deck and sat at a table and talked and eventually got our laptops to start blogging and editing pictures and videos. After dinner, we continued this and then Jeff started to watch Quantom Solace on the big screen while I went down to the room. The movie had technical difficulties so Jeff joined me in the room and we watched some football and went to bed.

The next morning, we had breakfast and hung out until it was our time to get off the ship and head to the airport. We spent a few hours in the airport before our flight in Dallas and then spent a little time in that airport before flying to Salt Lake, where Doug and Tricia kindly picked us up around 8:30pm. Not exactly the most exciting way to spend our official one year anniversary day, but we figured we had done plenty of celebrating the week before to make up for it. And just so everyone knows, I married the most incredible man and I after a year, I still couldn’t be happier with that decision. He is wonderful.