Just Cruisin'...

Seven days. One ship. Fourteen decks. Seven hot tubs. Four ports of call. 2319 nautical miles. 4.5K people on board. 10,000 eggs per day (!!). One fantastic week.

Our cruise ship, Freedom of the Seas, docked at. Labadee, Haiti.

How one jumps into the pool...

Labadee, Haiti. Gorgeous clear water.

Labadee, Haiti. Aqua Park... Heaps of fun!

Labadee, Haiti. Just chillin'.

Exploring the ship... Pharoah's palace.

Nightly towel sculptures courtesy of our room attendant, Livingstone.

Grand Cayman... Oh so nice...

Grand Cayman sand... So white.

Beach Queen... Couldn't get this chick out of the water!

Grand Cayman... We had to take tender boats from the ship to the port!

Rockclimbing wall on board.

Our 'stateroom' ('cabin' would definitely be a more apt term!)

This cruise was definitely a fun time. We settled into the groove of cruising after a day or so, and grew used to the small amount of rocking of the ship, the free ice cream machine on the pool deck, the complimentary room service, our room attendant's cool animal towel sculptures each night, our friendly dinner waiter - Slama - and the multitude of wait staff hovering over us at every meal offering to get us whatever we wanted, having our beds made and fresh towels given each day, on board activities like Trivia and the Scavenger Hunt (our best placing was second in both!), and of course trying an amazing array of different types of foods on offer each day. Our shore excursions were mostly fairly laid back with a couple of beach days on gorgeous beaches, and our more active adventure participating the 'The Amazing Race Cozumel' (where we came in at 5th place out of 11 teams!). It was also lovely to soak up some heat again after a month of cold winter weather!

Our 'stateroom' ('cabin' would definitely be a more apt term!)

 

Posted with Blogsy

Orlando snapshots...

Nine full days in Orlando... Nine full days of full-on, serious fun with Aunty Jo and Uncle David (and not a lot of time for much else!)

We've done:

Two days at Disney - one day at Magic Kingdom and one at Hollywood Studios.

Shopping at the outlets (brilliant post-Christmas sales and bargains).

An airboat ride on a nearby lake/swamp:

A day at Discovery Cove swimming with dolphins.

Seaworld:

Legoland, including the New Year's Eve fireworks.

Universal Studios.

Wherever we went, we wore lots and lots of different styles of 3D glasses:

Kennedy Space Centre.

We've had a full-on time here with Jo and David, and have loved every minute spent with them. We've all loved different elements of our time here: Beth, our thrill-seeker, has loved all the thrill rides and adult roller coasters she can now ride; Liam loved using his camera at Seaworld, Discovery Cove and all of Legoland; Andy and I loved the Kennedy Space Centre; and we all had a ball during our airboat ride.

But I think it will be that we did these things together in the short time that we had that made everything we did that much more special. Thanks Aunty Jo and Uncle David for spending this time with us, organising everything and being the greatest group leaders we could have wanted. We've had an absolute ball.

 

Posted with Blogsy

A most unusual Christmas...

I don't think we'll soon forget our Christmas Day in New York 2013. It was by far the coldest, yet clearest, day of our stay there, with a top temperature of about -2 degrees. Brrr...

We took a bus trip to the northern part of Manhattan to see some areas we'd not seen yet. Stopping in a park for morning tea, we realised it wasn't the smartest move as even though the sun was shining, it felt as though it wasn't even there at all. As we wandered around, we noticed that even puddles on the street were frozen solid.

Back on the bus, we went through Harlem and stopped off at a 'soul food' restaurant for lunch. This turned out to be one of the top meals of our trip - good, clean whole food. Yummm...

With full, warm tummies we made our way to Central Park where we found the Lasker Rink and proceeded to ice skate in the freezing cold for a long as we could stand it. Actually, it wasn't long before the sun began to set and the temperature grew even colder, so we began to make our way home. On the way, we witnessed a most spectacular Christmas sunset.

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Wrapping up New York... Final days...

With just a couple of full days left in the Big Apple before Christmas Day, we had a number of things left on our list of things to do: The Museum of Natural History, a return to FAO Schwartz toy store, plus some last minute Christmas shopping.

With rainy weather on the Monday, we decided it was the ideal time to visit the Museum. Unfortunately, so did many other New York families, as it was the first day of the Christmas school holidays, and so the museum was packed! We had to queue for quite some time to gain entry, but we had some cool dinosaur skeletons to astound us as we waited.

It was a taste of more things to come as we spent the next 4-5 hours wandering around all the exhibits. We all seemed to enjoy different elements of the museum: Beth loved the astronomy, Andy liked the dinosaur skeletons, Bec loved the earth science and animal displays, and Liam enjoyed the gem hall....

At one point we paused to admire a view across to Central Park, only to notice that the queue we had been in before was now snaked all the way out of the entrance foyer, down the front steps and down the street in the rain! We felt ever so glad that we had arrived early!

On the following day, Christmas Eve, we had a long list of objectives, which included making the most of a most glorious day and taking last minute pictures of the everyday New York sights we came across...

One of those sights included this picturesque bridge in Central Park...

We managed to revisit the amazing FAO Schwartz toy store where we purchased a few little Christmas pressies...

And we indulged in some most decadent and lovely treats at the chocolate fountain in Dylan's Candy Bar...

Yummmm... At just $1 a treat, it was hard not to go back for seconds.

After a long day of shopping, we returned home to our little apartment where we facetimed and talked with family back home, and then each wrapped up presents and placed them under our very own living Christmas Tree. Lacking Christmas wrapping paper, we recycled our shopping bags and used a Nikko marker to label each gift.

Despite looking like a pile of rubbish with our little Tree poking out, we all went to bed in anticipation of the most unusual Christmas that awaited us the next day.

 

Posted with Blogsy