Cruise Day 4 - Barbados!

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Surprisingly I woke up with not much of a hangover. Jason was not so lucky :-/  I convinced him to come on our adventure in Barbados anyways.  We met up with Mick, Julie, Marci & Jon and hired a cab driver - Mr Lowe - to drive us around for a few hours.  He was a funny old man that knew everyone on the island.

He took us to a few lookouts for photos and a church that the Reagan's had visited in the 80's.  After that we went for lunch with this view:

After lunch we hit up the Mt Gay Rum tour which was super strong to drink!

While we were there Mr Lowe got word that his brother died (so sad) so we headed back to the port. Again, nap time.  And more casino time. And eating.  And comedy show.

Cruise Day 3 - Fun day at Sea!

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

This was our only full day at sea so we opted to hold our annual Pub Crawl today.  Our new friends Marci & Jon joined us for part of it.

We hit every bar on the cruise and I honestly don't remember much of the day.  It was formal night and we had lobster. Or so we were informed the next day.  

I do remember hitting up the night club and Marci teaching me the Wobble.  Jason was a dance machine and wanted to dance all night!  

Cruise Day 2 - St Thomas

Monday November 18, 2013

We have a full schedule of ports this trip so we jumped right in to it - in St Thomas.  Shera & I had pre-arranged to meet up since she lives there now.  We met her and Noah at a coffee shop (and I got to share my good news)!

After she took us to the Mountain Top area for a gorgeous view of the water.

Then we went back to her place to change and headed to Hull Bay for some sun and snorkeling. It was nice and relaxing and we had some yummy fish tacos and local beer after!  

We went back to their house and I camped out in their hammock. They have such a kick ass view, I could have stayed there all day!  We had to get back on the ship by 4pm so Shera dropped us off.

We had a nap and got ready for dinner in the regular dining room.  After we hit up the casino and the comedy club!  We stayed up a bit later (and met Marci & Jon - more on them later) at the casino and went to bed!

Cruise Take off day - Day 1!

Saturday & Sunday, November 16 & 17, 2013

And we're off!  A Stone Beer from the new bar at Terminal 2 San Diego first

and then red eye flight to Newark.  2.5 hours there in the United Club (free food & wifi - yay) and on a plane to San Juan Puerto Rico.

We landed around noon and took a $23 taxi to the cruise dock.  We thought we would just drop off our bags and explore Old San Juan but our room was ready. Sweet.  Nap time!

Woke up around 6pm and met Mick & Julie in the sports bar. The ship wasn't set to sail until 10pm and we had 7pm Steakhouse reservations.  Yummy dinner of course, so stuffed.  Had a nice after dinner surprise - a proposal!  I was so in shock that Jason popped the question and on the first night!  I have been on cloud 9 ever since.

After, we had to immediately go to the Muster station for the mandatory drill.  Lame.  After we celebrated and said goodbye to Puerto Rico!

Miami Day 4 & cruise take off

Saturday, January 12, 2013 

We slept in til the very last minute before checkout.  We couldn't board the ship until 1:00 so we went to lunch to kill some time.  We had seen this old diner down the street so we ate there.  Turns out it had been on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.  It was decent.  After we grabbed a taxi on the street to take us back to the room for our bags...and then our driver got pulled over!  That was a new experience.  He ended up getting off with a warning and we were on our way!

The boarding process for the cruise was pretty uneventful.  They did give me the wrong card color so I got teased by our group for being a 1st time cruiser.  (I got it fixed quickly)  We were able to get our beer on as well which was a nice surprise!  We met up with Mick, Julie, Eli + Jen as soon as we got to our room. We did the normal mandatory embarkation drills and sat on our balcony as the ship took off and the sun set over Miami.

I wanted to relax a bit before dinner.  We had reservations at the fancy steakhouse.  Dinner was at 6:30 and we all went together (our rooms are right in a row).  The steakhouse was Ah-mazing!  We all got the surf and turf meal with lobster and filet mignon.  We also got a complimentary bottle of wine (two of them!) Then the table next to us sent over their leftover wine too...score!

We rolled ourselves out of there and straight to the casino.  I immediately found a slot machine called Glitter Kitty.  Perfect.  First "coin" and I won $40!  Wish I knew how to stop that early ;-)  

At 9:30 we headed to see the first comedian.  He was a cowboy who just recorded his first special on Comedy Central. Very funny.  Following him was a NY comedian who was also funny and very inappropriate.  We laughed, we cried, we donated more money to the bar.   

The dance club was right next door to the comedy palace, so we went there next.  It was busy, Julie, Eli and I got out and did the Cupid Shuffle.  It was past midnight by now so people started getting tired (ahem Jen) ;-)

Eli, Jason and I were the last ones standing and went to the Piano Bar.  If you have ever experienced a dueling piano bar, it was just like that..only with one person.  Super fun though, one of my favorite places on the cruise. The singer, Ben, was very talented and funny.  We closed that bar down and went to bed.

Miami Day 3

Friday Jan 11, 2013 - Miami, FL

Lunch at David's cafe

We slept in on Fri morning :)  Finally got out of bed around 1pm and headed to David's Cafe for more cuban.  OMgee it was great!  Highly recommend it!     We went to hit up Ocean Ave again...found ourselves at Mangoes for some more drinks and fantastic people watching.  We had planned to go hang out at the beach that day but it was actually a little chilly!  We walked out there and came back to the bars quickly.

mangoes cafe

funnel cakes at Mangoes

We ended up going to the Clevelander again because I really wanted a huge beer tube of Goose Islands 312.  It was half off at happy hour ($25).  We sat there for a few hours, drinking the beer.  The funniest part is when the tourists would take a look at the tube and stop and take photos of it...and us!  We got so many double takes.  After chatting with our awesome waiter, Frank we decided we were going to come back to the club they have at the Cleve. later that night.

We went home and took a short nap.  One of the things we were most looking forward to in SoBe was Joe's Stone Crab restaurant.  We saw it on Man vs Food.  They don't take reservations and it is always a wait so we decided to go an hour before they close at 10pm.  We still had to wait over 30 minutes!  We sat down and ordered the Large crab and some sweet potato fries.  They were so tasty but so expensive for how little we got.  We ordered some king crab after that and it was the best I have ever tasted (better than the stone crab).  We also had the tastiest key lime pie of my life.  I would absolutely go back there for the king crab and pie!

After dinner, we took a cab to the Clevelander and went in to the club. They had half of the pool converted in to a dance floor.  We had the best time just sitting near the dance floor and people watching.  The DJ announced that Ron Jeremy was there but we never actually saw him.  We walked back and went to sleep around 3am!

2012 Cruise - Day 1 & 2

***I'm still planning on posting the rest of Thailand...just need to find the free time***


Wed & Thurs Jan 9/10 - South Beach, Miami, FL

We opted to take the red eye out on Wed so we'd have an extra day to explore South Beach.  Our flight was fine, we slept a little bit.  Both flights weren't full so we had an extra seat next to us.  We arrived in to Miami around 10am and got a cab to our "hotel".  I put that in quotes because it was actually a persons apartment we rented on Airbnb.com

It was about 4 blocks to the beach (and Ocean Dr) which was really nice.  We couldn't check in til 3 but we were able to drop our bags off before that.  We went for a cuban lunch at Peurto Sagua (just okay, found it on yelp) and walked around exploring the area.  We stopped at Mangoes for a drink, which turned in to 2.  We found out that many of the bars have a long happy hour - which was still kinda pricey but better than paying full price!  After 2 drinks at Mangoes, we walked down to the Clevelander and got the two largest mojitos ever.

They took a few hours to drink and we were feeling pretty toasty.  We put our toes in the ocean and walked along the crowded beach.  At 3 we went back to the room and passed out until 8pm.  I checked out Yelp again and found out we were two blocks from the Europa Village area of SoBe.  I found a tapas restaurant (Tapas y Tintos).  The food was really good (as was the white sangria) but pricey!  We grabbed some gelato and found a brewery walking distance from where we were.  

The brewery was The Abbey and it wasn't very good.  I had the quadruple and J had the IPA.  It was so freaking dark in there!  We headed back home (walking) around midnight to fall asleep.