Hello all! I'm back from Vacation! Hubby and I were lucky enough to go along with his parents for a week-long cruise! It was my very first cruise so I wasn't really sure what to expect, but I had a BLAST and would definitely cruise (especially with Royal Caribbean!) again.
Our cruise was a Friday-Friday and left out of Baltimore which is about 2 1/2 hours from our house and pretty easy to get to (well, as long as I'm not driving) We cruised on the Grandeur of the Seas with Royal Caribbean and it was a fabulous first experience!!
Our boat was on the smaller side of cruise ships, but I mean it was still freaking huge. Here's hubby and I on board when we first set sail:
I really liked how formal things were. Even on the "casual" nights for dinner there were no shorts in the dining room and all men had to have some type of collared shirt. I didn't feel like wearing pants, so I literally packed seven dresses for this trip. THIS is when my dress obsession and rack-stalking every week at Ross comes in handy.
We went for the all inclusive drinks package (which was totally worth it!!!) So we made good friends with the bartenders haha. Yogesh and Kevin - best bar tenders ever!!!
They made us yummy drinks with fancy straw shapes
(Mine's a sea serpent)
Being on the boat was fun. We had an interior cabin with no window so we didn't spend much time in there (it was like a little box!!!) but it was fine because there were tons of other places on the boat to chill out and relax.
We had three stops - Port Canaveral Florida, CocoCay, and Nassau Bahamas. CocoCay was Royal Caribbean's private island and it was by far my FAVORITE port. The beach was SO beautiful. Crystal clear blue water. I snorkled a lot!
All there was to do all day was swim, enjoy water activities, eat, and drink at the beach bars. This was all perfectly acceptable to me haha.
I've decided living on a private island would be just fine with me!
The trip to the Nassau was fine, but if I did it again I would have booked an excursion. We just kind of walked around and got real hot and sweaty and then went to the beach and I went in the water for an hour and hubby sat on a large piece of concrete. He's not a big beach guy. Silly. It got better when we stopped at Senor Frogs for some frozen margaritas before getting back on the boat though!!!
After all three ports the last two days were just spent cruising. I enjoyed dressing up for formal night!!!
And I seriously LOVED going to dinner every night. The food was so fancy! And you could order as much as you wanted! (Good and bad thing...) I tried lots of fancy things I would never normally like this duck pate
and this seafood salad. Surprisingly I liked them both!! I felt so exotic.
We even met two other great couples to hang out with. I love vacation friends! We miss you guys already!
So all in all, it was a fabulous vacation. It was a nice escape - I didn't have phone service or internet for pretty much the whole trip which was surprisingly awesome. I didn't even think about work or blogging once :) I'm sad that it's over!!!
