Poppies, Puppies, and Pearls: Cruising the Seven Seas....well the Caribbean.

Sorry I have been on a bit of a hiatus from the blog. I have had a whole bunch going on, mostly exciting things! Cole and I took a week off of work a few weeks ago and went on a cruise with my best friend and her boyfriend (also Cole's Friend). We took a seven day Carnival cruise, and we all had an absolute blast! The ports we went to were Nassau, Bahamas; St. Thomas and San Juan, Puerto Rico. We were supposed to go the Grand Turk, Turks and Caicos as well but do to some health concerns we were unable to port there the day we were supposed to. The following are photos from the amazing trip! I am excited to see what other trips are in our futures together.

Aren't they adorable!

Sam and Deidre ready to start vacay

Cole and I, enjoying our first day of Vacation!

The view of Miami from our ship leaving

All of us cute excited besties on the first day!

The Bahamas:
Originally we all had planned to do a clear kayaking trip in the Bahamas. Unfortunately the first few days of our trip the water was very choppy so when we ported in the Bahamas the recommended that we cancel our trip and we would receive a free refund. To quote the gentleman we talked to we could do the excursion but " you'll all be very very sore the rest of the week, after you fight the choppy current." So we decided to get our refund and just explore the island. We all enjoyed the port but if I were making recommendations or I were to personally go back to that specific port I would definitely make sure to do an excursion...the island is not exactly the nicest, and there really isn't a whole lot of tourist options in town other than bars and shopping. We ended up wandering around through the town for a while, and ended our time in port hanging out in the good ole Senor Frogs. For those that don't know Senor Frogs is a bar/restaurant franchise that has all of its locations at well known tourist beach locations. (There is one in Myrtle Beach, SC too).

Deidre and Me at Senor Frogs

Sam and Deidre :)

Besties!

My boo! Love him!

One of our FEW group shots!

Starfish!

Day at Sea:
We ended up having three days at Sea while we are on the cruise due to our last port being canceled. The majority of our time was spent at the hot tube or enjoying some drinks in the sun at the adults only deck during our days at sea. Also during the days at sea there were several shows and such for entertainment. Cole and I chose to pay more to enjoy a nice dinner at the Steakhouse on the cruise. I must say when we originally planned to pay extra money to eat at a nice restaurant on a cruise where we already had paid for all of our meals seemed kind of strange and silly to do but we figured we might as well see if it was worth the money and enjoy a nice dinner together. The extra money spent was definitely worth it, the meal was amazing! Surprisingly the meal was also very very large. I was so stuffed by the end of dessert I was miserable, but I really enjoyed the dinner with my boy!

Me and Cole after dinner

Don't we clean up well?

St.Thomas:
I was looking forward to St. Thomas the most out of all the ports we were supposed to stop at, and it definitely did not disappoint. When we got into port we had to get a taxi across the island to do our excursion. Our excursion we chose to do was a ride on the Skyride. The skyride is basically what it sounds like, its a sky lift up to the highest point in St. Thomas called Paradise Point. The views were breathtaking. When we got done taking in the views we went to the bar there and enjoyed the islands specialty drink, it was called a bushwaker. It was delicious, it tasted like a mudslide but better. After we wandered around the island some on our own and made a stop at a tiki bar we tried to get a cab ride back to the ship. Well our cab ride turned into a cab tour through the whole island and our cab drivers buddy gave us a full on tour and took us to several beautiful overlooks on the island.

all of us at one of the outlooks.

San Juan, Puerto Rico:
Our last port of call we were able to go to was San Juan. We decided to go to the Bicardi distillery as our excursion. The actual tour of the distillery was pretty cool, and it just added to the tour that at the end we all got to try two drinks for free at the bar at the distillery. When we got done with the tour we found a little hole in the wall restaurant in the downtown area and man was it good! Trying little local restaurants is probably one of my favorite things to do in new places.