Bahamas Cruise Part I

Wow, what a trip!  We LOVED going to Florida and then sailing away on our first cruise! 

Our first stop was the Fort Lauderdale Temple.  We arrived that morning as we drove through the night.  Our appointment was at 10:00am.

The weather was amazing!  

We talked to a guy that left the church when he was young, but came back during COVID. He said he remembered what his parents taught him and that helped him come back.                                             

After the temple we found our free COVID testing site, got swabbed and tested, then headed to Esterlin Park in Broward County for camping! It was a fun campground right in the middle of "everything". We could even hear the I-95!

Haley brought Reed and early birthday present.  She redid a pack of soda.  One of the cans had a Baldy Basics "can" with a toy in it.  I think you can pop the top and discover what mystery toy Baldy gifted. It was a fun and clever idea.

Shanna found this flavor at the grocery store.

Lots of geese.

A squirrel that has been fed before!

I love palm trees!  Shanna had fun taking pictures.

Campfire fun.  I love campfires.  The weather was so nice that morning and then it turned cold and windy in the afternoon. 

I love these mini string lights I bought on Amazon!  They are battery operated so I don't have to worry about whether or not we have electricity while camping.

Sunday morning we headed to church and Lois and family went to find a COVID test for Reed. 

We met up with the Heit's that afternoon in an area where Jeff served his mission and saw some awesome houses in Boca Raton.

We then walked around at Blowing Rocks Preserve. 

We weren't there at the right tide time for the water to rush in and the blow up through the rocks.  Some water did spout up, but not very high...just a few inches. 

We stopped at a park for a little while to visit and then say goodbyes. 

These boys were gifted character soup for dinner, haha.  Courtesy of Aunt Lois. 

Back at the campground at Esterlin Park. Reed and Cal cracked open a coconut and we ate some! We hung out that evening around the fire and the picnic table.  At some point during the day we did home church and scripture reading. 

The next morning we woke up pretty early to break camp and head to Miami.  We stopped at Walmart along the way to grab some last minute items before we headed to the cruise terminal.  We bought Elden a fun floral shirt too. We arrived at the terminal!  It was pretty crazy. People were leaving their luggage in a huge pile and tipping people.  It seems like a couple of guys told me to leave our luggage there for Norwegian.  I told them I didn't have any cash to tip them but they said to just leave it anyway. Lee dropped us off then headed to the parking garage. He caught a ride back to the terminal as the parking garage offers free shuttle service.  When he came back he saw that the stop he needed would be practically the very last stop. So he got off and jogged to where we were waiting.  By that time the line was moving and we were getting inside the building. Then we were basically at the place where they started checking our documents and Lee came in!  Perfect timing.  

Going through security for a cruise is no joke.  We went through about 4 different checkpoints.  When we finally got to the place to get your key card, there was quite a line.  But then the lady working there just told us to go through the priority lane. That was nice!  We got up pretty quick. Apparently at some point you received a ticket and maybe you get on the cruise ship when they called your ticket number?  We were feet away from the ship, passing through a corridor, and they wanted our ticket.  We never had one.  But we had our room key cards. One person wanted us to wait and another one said that we'd be fine since we already had our room keys. Whew!

Our first time on a cruise ship!

Looking good Miami!

Once we got on we couldn't go to our rooms so we walked around and soon found the buffet.  So fun!  And I didn't realize we could just leave our trays and such at the table.  Absolutely no cleaning up.  That was so nice. 

We found ping pong, basketball, the pools and hot tubs.  Shuffleboard too but we never used it. 

Also we found a very important place...the ice cream cone station!

Since I booked with Costco we received some gifts like wine and chocolate covered strawberries in each room.  One bottle of wine I left in a room, the other bottle I gave to some random people walking by our room. 

Every night we received a newsletter of sorts for the next days activities.  I loved getting that and looking over it. 

When we finally set sail it was cold and rainy.  Yuck. We went back and forth between inside and outside. Once the boat started moving I could tell I was feeling off.  We brought a good first aid supply which included a lot of motion sickness reliever pills. I took some of those and eventually felt fine.  After that, each afternoon when we got back on the ship I took some about an hour before we set sail and I seemed to do fine with that. 

Our first night we ate at The Crossings.  I have heard before how you eat with other people on a cruise ship and what not, but I was glad that thanks to COVID we just got to eat by ourselves! And didn't have to look all fancy either. 

It's crazy that we got to order whatever we wanted when we wanted.  There were some items that were extra, but we just stayed away from food items and restaurants. 

It was windy going out on the jogging deck!

Usually around 10pm every night we would get a bedtime snack.  I loved that they had hot chocolate!

The fun part about the cruise, which made it tiring, is that we were up late and then up early each morning for excursions. I figured out that we could get ice water delivered to our rooms for free. And we could get basic breakfast stuff like muffins, chocolate croissants (basic, right? haha), danishes, yogurt, juice and milk also delivered to our room for free each morning. So each morning we would get water and fill up our water bottles. And then two mornings I had food delivered that we ate for lunch. Then we would go eat breakfast, grab our stuff and leave the ship. At breakfast they had things like oranges and apples that you could grab and take. I had brought some plastic sandwich bags to store food in but I couldn't find them!  I found them when we didn't need them anymore...in Cal's suitcase.  Ugh. We had a couple of gallon zip bags so I used those and wrapped up the food in the cloth napkins that came with the food.  Then just made sure we brought them back to the ship. 

Our first stop was Freeport, Grand Bahamas. The area was not at all what I expected...not very populated with buildings and such very spread out, and also run down almost everywhere.  Our first activity was swimming with the pigs. To get there we rode on a double decker bus which was fun!  The bus driver gave us a running commentary while driving.   Oh and right by where the boat was docked there were some little shops.  Haley bought a really neat sea biscuit. 

We arrived at the swimming with the pigs place!  The weather looked questionable but it turned out fine.  I thought it was funny that people were buying drinks at 11am.  

Swimming with the pigs is an experience....a gross one. It was interesting to experience it and I'm never doing that again! One the pictures they show these cute piglets.  They weren't.  They were HUGE and HAIRY! We received instruction on how to feed the pigs the apples and not our finger.  Then we walked way out into the water and they set the pigs loose.  The pigs bowels were loose too.  Yuck! Lee was wise and enjoyed from the shore.

After was the chance to hold them.  I did it for the picture.  Cal and Reed also held pigs.  They were so smelly!

I had to wash my swimsuit out in bathroom back on the ship. It smelled that bad.  And the pig decided to be loose again.  Can you tell where I edited the picture?

We stayed for about another hour and a half at the beach.  We ate our lunch of muffins, croissants and whatever else we had.   

We did some more driving and the driver took us to a shopping area. We bought some t-shirts, a hot pink shark one for Clark.  And a hoodie for Haley. We also walked over to a fake lighthouse. 

Back on board guess where the kids went?! It was funny the first day Cal went back to his room to grab something and while waiting, Reed stopped in and grabbed some pizza.  It was so funny.  Food at your fingertips!  It felt kind of glutenous. 

We hung out for the rest of the afternoon.  The kids were registered for the Teen Club "Entourage" the night before so they were looking forward to that. 

Tuesday night we ate at The Palace.  

The dessert below, After Eight, was SOO good!  A chocolate mint mousse! 

Hot tub time!  They met up with some people from Entourage. 

Elden also swam in the pool.  Brr...

That night there was a dance party for ages 18+, but Elden, Reed and Cal were out having a blast.  They also did a dodgeball tournament that night in the basketball court. 

It's a lot of work to have a lot of fun!