Eastern Caribbean Cruise

We went on a carribean cruise on Holland America's Eurodam for a week, just the 2 of us.  It was such a wonderful vacation.  My parents kept our kids for the first few days, and then Tige's parents watched them for the rest.  Tige attended some anesthesia courses for continuing education on the ship, and I was just relaxed, read, slept, went to cooking classes, and basically did whatever I wanted.  It was so relaxing after many years of chasing kids around at home.  This was our first vacation without children in 6 years, so it was way overdue!

We lost track of the days and found it funny that the carpet in the elevator was changed each day so you'd know what day it is.  We hated to see each day go by, knowing that soon we'd have to go back to our real lives.  We enjoyed having people make our bed, cook our food, clean up after us.  The ship served ice cream cones from 11:30 a.m. until midnight.  We ate ice cream cones everyday, usually more than one.  Needless to say, we gained a few pounds.

 We ate a lot of great food.  Some of my favorites were the lobster tail, filet mignon, swan shaped cream puffs, and mango mousse. We were brave and tried a few new things too.

While Tige was in class, I ventured out to a few cooking classes.  One of them was for these salt-dough bread art.  I came home with a receipe, and one day this summer I'm going to let my kids make bread art, and we'll paint and lacquer them.  I also watched them make a salad with lobster tail and vegetable rissotto, both of which I'm been wanting to make, so now I have recipes so I can try them. I also took a back-stage tour of the kitchen area that was fun.

Every night, the room steward makes a different towel animal to leave on our bed along with some chocolates.  We snapped a few pictures knowing our kids would like to see them.

This was our first stop in Grand Turk.  It was our least favorite.  It was very windy so our originally booked shore excursion (seeing some ruins) got cancelled.  They gave us the option of just going snorkeling or getting a refund.  All the other excursions had already left, and we didn't want to not get to do anything, so we went ahead and went snorkeling with "Lucky" and his boat.  We should have just gotten the refund because the snorkeling was terrible.  We hardly saw any fish and were very disappointed.  After the snorkeling, I went shopping, but ended up only buying 1 bracelet for Abby because the prices were really expensive on this island for even basic sourveniers.  Tige, who is doing an Ironman in only 3 weeks, took the opporunity to run 10 miles around the island.  He said it was trasy and dumpy once you got away from the main tourist area.

Our next stop was in San Juan, Puerto Rico.  We immediately took a taxi up to the fort and had just finished exploring it when it started to downpour.  We walked back to the ship in the rain, ducking in and out of shops looking for souveniers for the kids.  I had seen a gorgeous ring in a jewelry brochure on the ship, and we ran across the store as we were walking, so Tige made me go in and try on the ring.  It was $7,400!  Crazy.  We heard jewelry shopping was cheap in Puerto Rico.  Obviously not for my taste!  Needless to say, I came home ringless.  We enjoyed this stop a lot despite the bad weather.  Once we got back on the ship, Tige was able to spend a few hours on the stationary bike.

St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin islands was our best stop. It was BEAUTIFUL weather this day. Finally! We went on a kayak, hike, snorkel and had a marvelous time, although I got a little sunburned despite my coating up with SPF 30.  We raced hermit crabs (I even picked one up!) and enjoyed the scenery and the exercise.  I've never been in a kayak before, but it was a double kayak and Tige helped us navigate like pros.  Afterward we did some shopping and found t-shirts for the boys and the obligatory Christmas ornament.

Our last stop was Half Moon Cay, which is Holland America's private island in the Bahamas.  I've never seen such beautiful, white sand.  It was pristine with no stickers, rocks, debris, or even shells.  The kids would haved loved playing in it! I relaxed on the beach while Tige swam in the open water until his goggles started leaking.  (He also ran about 15 miles around the deck of the ship, so all in all I'd say his Ironman training was successful despite being on a cruise).  We also did a snorkeling excursion here to see the stingrays, but that was only so-so.  We did a stringray excursion 10 years ago and Grand Cayman and I doubt anything will ever come close to comparing with that.  The weather turned windy and a little rainy, so we headed back to the ship for a nap.  This was our last day before heading home.  We laid down, and when we woke up, 4 hours had passed!  Wow!  Talk about a great nap.  That obviously can't happen at home.   

We enjoyed the onboard entertainment and shows and wished we could have stayed longer.  Throughout the week I observed some families bickering or even a comment about how you could get on your spouses nerves after so much time together, but I completely disagree.  I loved every minute spent with Tige.  I couldn't get enough of him!  I love him so much and am so thankful for this fabulous time we got to spend together.  I think we should do it every year! Somehow I don't think the tending grandmas would be up for that though.

We had an adventure on our flight home because we had a layover in Memphis, and ended up sitting on the runway for over an hour while they burned off fuel because we were "too heavy to take off."  This almost made us miss our connection from Salt Lake to our St. George flight.  After running from concourse B to concourse E, we barely made flight, which was very lucky since it was the last one out for the night.   We got home around 10:30 Saturday night and our house was quiet.  Our kids were sure happy to see us Sunday morning.  Kason & Abby climbed in bed with us, and when Taylor woke up, he hugged Tige for a very long time.  We missed each other.