"Our Vacation"

With Micah's graduation this year and it being our ten year anniversary later this Summer we decided it was time for Micah and I to have a vacation for just the two of us. Micah had a business trip planned to Florida and we figured why not start our vacation there. I met up with Micah in Tampa after his conference. We asked a few people who were from/lived in Tampa for suggestions on what to do the night before our cruise. We received a few recommendation to go to The Columbia restaurant. It was an authentic Spanish restaurant that had been there for more than 100 years. In there main dining room they have a show with Flamenco dancers. We kept thinking during the show that it would be hilarious to have our girls with us because we know they would have tried to imitate the dances at home.

I forgot to bring our tri-pod, so almost all of our pictures are us taking a picture of ourselves holding it out in front of us. Cheese!!!

Both Micah and I had never been on a cruise before. What an experience! We were constantly amazed by how HUGE the boat was, and how many people were on board.  They mentioned that there were 2,052 guests and around 900 staff to keep everything going. AMAZING! The other thing I found amazing was that this was not even one of their biggest ships.

The staff was so incredible.  We were a little nervous about our seating arrangements for dinner considering we knew no one on the ship, but it worked out great.  They sat us with four other couples who were there by themselves and around our age.  We had a great time getting to know the other couples and the food was sooooo good.  I gained several pounds to prove it.

For all of you that have been on a cruise I'm sure you recognize the towel art.  We spent most of our days just laying on a lounge chair drinking cold drinks.  We hit a few of the comic shows, and even just loved walking around to see the entire boat. I did win a free scalp massage which was nice, and we both took advantage of the spa services. Being on the boat was so great because we had no choice other than to relax. The cell phone was off, and I couldn't even call home. So I had no choice other than to sit back and not think about anything.  It was fabulous!

We did have a one day stop on Grand Cayman. We chose to do an excursion that day and it turned out to be the best part of the trip. After a crazy bus ride (on the wrong side of the road due to it being in the British West Indies) we took a small boat ride (25 minutes) out to a sand bar in the middle of the ocean. The sandbar was called Stingray City.  There were hundreds of stingrays there that we got to hold, pet, and swim with for some time.  They were really friendly and would just swim around us. Not to mention the amazingly soft sand and crystal clear blue water.

I can't believe I am even posting these pictures because they are so bad, but that's what you get with a water camera and humidity on my naturally curly hair.  I'm actually really grateful that we did only take the water camera because it did rain quite hard while we were on the excursion. It soaked everything on the boat. 

These truly were amazing animals, and the tour guides were very knowledgeable so we knew just how to handle the stingrays without them or us getting hurt.

They would lift up the stingray and it's little mouth would squirt water like a squirt gun.  The tour guides were really fun and outgoing.  I loved that they were saying "ya man" all of the time and blasting the reggae music.

 
After the stingrays we were also able to go snorkeling on a coral reef.  I had never been snorkeling before and was surprised that I could really do it.  It took some getting used to, but once I had the hang of it I didn't want to come up. It's amazing what is down there that you can't see from above the waters surface. I think Micah and I both took in a few mouthfuls of salt water. It was so salty it literally made us sick. Even to have it on your lips was disgusting. Below is one of the only pictures we have of our snorkeling adventure and it's an awful picture.

After six days we really felt like we had a great break and were ready to see our girls.  They of course had a great time with both sets of grandparents and a few aunts. I was really nervous about leaving my kids, but they did well (or so they tell me). They had plenty of adventures of their own to tell us about when we got home. 

Leaving the boat took a lot less time than we had planned for. Therefore we spent several hours at the airport waiting for our flight. This is another great picture of us holding the camera  out for a picture (we have a lot of those). We found this great lounge area at a hotel that was attached to the airport. We were not suppose to be there considering we were not staying at the hotel, but they didn't ask questions. We figured we had so much time to spare we may as well be comfortable. 

We had a great time--can't wait until we can do it again.