Cruise to the Bahamas -- Part II

Our dinner time on the boat was 6:00, so shortly after leaving we went and got ready to eat in the main dining room. We were at a table with 2 couples from the Philadelphia area. They didn't know each other. One couple had been married for 15 years and had 5 kids and the other couple were newlyweds with a baby on the way. We enjoyed getting to know them.



The food. The food was awesome!!! We had 6-8 appetizers to choose from each night, 8-10 main dishes, and 6-8 desserts. The first night Kris had a rosemary chicken dish with vegetables (the only night he didn't get a steak) and I had pork tenderloin medallions with mashed potatoes. Wonderful! For dessert, we both picked strawberry pavlova! YUMMY!!!

This is a picture of the Chorus Line Theatre. They had singers/dancers perform 2 of the nights and 2 comedians perform the other 2 nights. One of the comedians did impressions. He was absolutely hilarious. We laughed and laughed!

The first morning I woke up at 4:30 really feeling the boat move back and forth. It never made me sick, but it was kind of weird. Both of us were up, so we went and watched the sun rise on the top deck!

The first stop was Nassau, Bahamas.

We ended up taking a ferry ride over to the famous hotel Atlantis! There was a beautiful public beach where we spent several hours.

Check out how clear blue the water was! I am not an ocean kind of girl. However, since I could see into the water, I braved it!!! It was so fun!

The hotel Atlantis. Apparently the arch part of it is a private suite owned by Michael Jackson. It goes for $25,000 a night with a minimum of a 4 night stay--that's $100,000! It is apparently booked 5 years in advance. Just crazy.

We spent the rest of the day shopping/bargaining at the straw market. That night was formal night for dinner so we got to get dressed up.

They had several photographers set up for you to get your pictures made. They turned out so well, we bought several of them. These are scanned in pictures so the quality is not as good.




One thing I loved about the cruise was how the room attendant came every morning and made up your room. Then while you were at dinner, they would come turn down your bed and leave you these cute towel animals.

The second stop was Cococay, Bahamas. This is Royal Caribbean's private island. They parked the boat a ways from shore and then ferried us over to the island. We got some good pictures of the boat this way.

This was the day we chose to do most of our excursions. The first one we did was parasailing. It was awesome!!!! We were the only ones going at the time, so we got a few extra minutes up.

Really high--400 ft!

Coming down! So much fun!

Our second excursion was Kayaking! We had a two-person kayak and kayaked from Cococay to another island nearby. I did not get pictures cause we were afraid to take our camera along. It was fun but work. We had a hard time staying straight partly due to the strong current and partly due to one of us not doing it right. I won't say which one of us it was cause we both thought it was the other one. :)

The rest of the time we spent relaxing on the beach or on a mat in the water! Beautiful place!

Another dinner picture. More delicious food. One night we both had a filet with mashed potatoes and a mushroom gravy. It was so good that Kris had a second plate! Probably the best steak we both have ever had!

On the boat there were all kinds of things to do. They had a basketball court, gym, shops, casino, restaurants, a day spa, pools, and a rock climbing wall among other things. We decided to give the rock climbing wall a try. This is nothing new to Kris. He used to rock climb alot back at Harding. This was my first time. It is harder than it looks. I really enjoyed the challenge though!

The last day was spent at Key West, Florida. We saw dolphins as we were arriving. You can barely see them under the water in the picture.

Key West

Here we rented scooters and rode around the entire island. This brought back memories for me cause we had one of these growing up that we rode all over our neighborhood.

Southernmost point in the Continental US.

Back on the boat, the girl on the left was our waiter. She was so nice. In fact all the staff on the boat were super nice and friendly.

This was our room. Pretty small but it was fine.

We had a WONDERFUL time! I loved every minute of our time together! It was good for us to get away. I was ready to see my kiddos though!

We got in late Friday night and drove to Branson to meet the Keims and the kids. We rented a cabin for 2 nights there. We went to this restaurant called McFarlains for brunch on Saturday. Little did we know Grandma had something up her sleeve. For some reason she asked for a round table when we got there. I didn't think anything of it at the time. After we had been eating for a while, Kris said something about the table getting awfully tall.

You can really see it in this picture of Lincoln! The people in the table next to ours were laughing so hard!!! I guess this place is known for this. They say if you can't get a round table, then you can just laugh at all the people sitting in one when they realize something is just not right!

We went to see Noah the Musical while we were in Branson. It was very good! Highly recommend it!

So, I can't say enough about Grandma and Grandad. They helped us out sooooo much. It was absolutely unbelievable to us all the things they did with the kids. They did crafts every day, had a bible story everyday where Grandma made characters out of toilet paper rolls to tell the story (it was awesome), cooked, and played with cousins/friends. They sent them home with a big box full of all the things they had made. Unbelievable. Thank you Grandma and Grandad SO much!

I missed my kids! But I am so grateful to Kris for making it possible for us to make these special memories together!