Bahamas Cruise!

 Hooray for the cruise post!  I have needed to get caught up on my blog to be able to put this post up and now I'm there.  Bear with me as this is rather lengthy, but I know you all want to see every picture here and experience a little bit of paradise.  

The cruise was a birthday present for Ryan.  He has talked about one before and was wanting to get away.  I have a hard time spending money, but decided it was time to take a vacation with him.  We ended up going during our 6th anniversary which was also fun.  We were leaving out of Miami so we decided to spend a couple days there first.

 Miami

 We got into Miami on Sept. 3rd.  For those of you who are Boise State fans you might remember that it was their opening game against Georgia.  Ryan and I both wore our new BSU shirts to show our Bronco pride. (forgot to take a pic)   We got to Miami and made it to our hotel, which I loved!  It was a fun, modern little hotel that was perfect!  We were about a 2 minutes walk from the beach!  And, yes we did watch the game that night in our hotel room.  In fact, I had called ahead to make sure they got ESPN. The beach was also very nice and the water was so warm!  We also learned that the sun is a little warmer, and unfortunately burned after only 2 hours outside!  Needless to say we were a little more careful afterwards.

We also went to an outdoor mall down in South Beach which was fun.  The best part was people watching!  They seriously live in swimsuits down there-not that I blame them, it is so hot and humid!  We ate at a fun outdoors restaraunt, went to a movie, and just shopped around.

Our bedroom

Light display in lobby

This was the sign in our elevator. :)

The Atlantic Ocean in Miami

Miami Beach

No comments on the seriously sweet tan lines!  hahaha!

The Cruise

Monday morning we took off for the Port of Miami.  We were sailing on the Norwegian Sky.  Everything went smoothly other than after the taxi left Ryan realized he had left his BSU hat.  We're not sure if it was in the hotel or the taxi, but he was bummed.  We made it through all the check-ins and security and finally got to see our ship!  They are seriously so HUGE!  Its crazy!  They had music going, the staff was dancing, and you felt excited right from the get go.  We wandered around to try and find things and then went off to eat.  Afterall, thats what you do on a cruise, right?

We had fun going to the shows each evening, eating the yummy food, and just not having a care in the world.  It was great.  They would even clean our rooms twice a day!

Our ship

Leaving Miami

Us sitting in the Stardust Theatre

Our cute little...donkey? Pig?
(We're not sure)

We dressed up one night, this was my
new dress.  No pic of Ryan, because
he forgot his shoes.  :)

Heading to dinner another night

Freeport, Bahamas

This was our first port.  We were really excited about this stop, because we were going snorkeling.  Now, neither Ryan or myself is really fond of water, but we knew we had to do this.  I have been before and obviously survived.  :)  We made it to our excursion and all was going great.  The boat ride wasn't bad out to the reef and it was a beautiful day.  Once we were in the water it was just amazing!  The fish were everywhere!  It is so hard to try and get pictures with those stupid cameras though, but we did manage to get some.  After the snorkeling at the reef we were heading to a deserted island for lunch and time to hang out there.  Well, on the way one of the motors went out on our boat.  No kidding.  So, it was a little slower going.  Now this may not seem like a big deal, which at first it wasn't, but you see, I had to pee.  I know, I know, you may not want to know this, but after a little bit I seriously thought I was going to die.  The only thing I can compare it to is when I've had to drink a bunch of water before my ultrasounds.  Finally, we discovered that there was a toilet in the back of the boat.  Now, on any other occasion I would have said "no thanks", but I was oh so relieved.  No pun intended. 

The fun doesn't end there either.  Due to the lack of a motor it took us a little longer than planned to get to the island.  We ate lunch, and had a few minutes to spare before we had to leave.  On the way back, guess what....the other motor dies.  Luckily for us we were close to the inlet back to the dock and the tide was coming in so we just rode in on the tide.  It was still a fun excursion and certainly one we won't forget.  :)

Look how small I am next to the ship!

The little market in Freeport

Our boat was Sunshine

We found lots of fun little shells here to bring back

Us at the deserted island

The deserted island

This is where lunch was served.  It was pretty good.

Two cool things about our excursion: They got fresh conch from the ocean and made us a conch salad.  Pulled the slimy thing out and cut it up and we ate it.  They also dove down and got some starfish for us to look at- they were awesome!

Conch shell

Conch- very popular there!  The salad was actually pretty good

The starfish

Ryan throwing it back into the water

Nassau, Bahamas

This was our second stop.  Here is where all the good shopping is, so thats what we planned on doing.  We got a lot of fun little souvenirs as well as rings for Ryan and myself.  We tried to spend as much time as we could in the jewelry stores, because they had air conditioning!  When we were outside we would instantly start dripping- the humidity is a killer.  The locals kept telling us that it was actually cool too.  Ha!  

One of my favorite pictures!  I could wake up to that every morning!

Great Stirrup Cay

This is Norwegian's private island, and our third stop.  We did a little more snorkeling this day, but mainly just relaxed on the beach.

We had to "tender" into the island and these were the boats we used.

Okay, so we found this beach chair way out while we were snorkeling.  Come to find out it was thrown out there from Hurricane Irene.  So crazy!

Snorkeling pictures are the best!  :)

So there you have it!  It was so much fun to spend a week in paradise!  I definitely want to go back again!  I think our next cruise will be an Alaskan one though, change things up a bit.