Cruising the Bahamas

A couple weeks ago Josh and I enjoyed another fabulous getaway to some white sandy beaches. This time we visited the Bahamas. Josh found a great deal for a 4-night cruise on the Majesty of the Seas. Doesn't it look majestic? It was a much needed trip away and it's so true that absence makes the heart grow stronger. I missed the kids a lot more on this trip but I absolutely loved spending lots of care-free time with my hubby. :)
So our cruise departed out of Miami. I'd never been there before but we didn't see much of it besides the airport.

Here we are about to sail off. Bye-bye Miami!

Here's our towel elephant our stateroom attendant made us. The staterooms were especially small on this ship but we didn't care. You basically just sleep in there anyways. And I sleep really well on ships. I think it's the subtle rocking all night that makes me sleep like a baby and wake up really rested.

A lot of people don't like the assigned seating that Royal Caribbean does but I actually really like it. It gives us a chance to make friends, which was especially fun this time because we kept running into them on our excursions.

This is Luke and Sonia who live in Florida.

This is Calvin and Kristen. We couldn't remember Kristen's name on the first night so we suggested we call her Hobbes. I told her about his the next day and she liked the nickname. So it stuck and we called her Hobbes most of the time on the trip.

Even though you can eat for free pretty much all day and night on the ship we decided to try out Johnny Rockets once just for kicks. Calvin and Hobbes said it was worth the $5 cover charge and I have to agree. It really was quite delicious. It was also a fun little diner styled in red leather and chrome like in the 50's and the employees would come out and dance for us every once in a while.

Day 2 of our cruise was Nassau. We decided to do a beach break on Blackbeard's Cay. It was beautiful! We just swam around in the crystal clear waters and laid out on the beach chairs. The white sand just makes the water look so amazing.

It turned out Calvin and Hobbes were also going to Blackbeard's to swim with the stingrays. We saw a couple of "wild" stingrays while we were out swimming too but Josh and I were too late to get in on the actual stingray excursion.

After relaxing on the beach we wandered around Nassau for a bit and did a little shopping.

Here we are at dinner that evening.

Coco Cay was our second stop on the cruise. This is Royal Caribbean's private Island. I think it was our favorite stop. We didn't book any excursions but we did rent floating beach mats and floated around the ocean. This was actually not good because the sun was very intense but it felt so good floating in the cool water that we didn't notice the heat too much. That resulted in a sunburn. We also found Calvin and Hobbes again and they showed us the ways of geocaching. We'd never done this before and it was pretty fun! Like a little treasure hunt. We're planning to take this up as a new family hobby. I'm so glad we joined them on the nature trail which took us to the other side of the island because it was nearly deserted there. We found a stunning beach with hardly anyone on it. You could walk out for probably a hundred yards into the ocean and still be waist deep. It was awesome.

Our final stop was in Key West. Due to our sunburns and the lack of beaches in Key West we decided to stay out of the sun a little bit that day.

We spent the first little while wandering around the town looking at all the beautiful houses and historic buildings.

The very first thing we did was call home and make sure the kids were behaving well for their grandparents.

We visited Ripley's Believe It or Not museum. And once again we ran into Calvin and Hobbes. I think they were stalking us. :) Ripley's was weird but there was air conditioning. I am not used to humidity so I was extremely happy to go somewhere cool and indoors for a bit. We did a little shopping afterwards and I had some killer Key Lime pie. I also got some Key Lime juice. I don't know if this is better than the regular lime juice I buy in the grocery store. I haven't actually made a key lime pie out of it yet.

Here is us sitting in the shade of a bush.

And back to the ship. Overall this was a wonderful trip and I highly recommend this cruise. Especially if you can get a good deal on flights to Miami. Thanks again to my parents and Josh's parents for watching the kids for us! And kudos to any of you who actually read this entire post. That was long!