Cococay, Bahamas

Our last day was spent at this paradise. It was basically a small island, owned by Royal Carribbean. There was nothing there except our cruise ship and the people tha run the fun there. You walked off the boat and all you saw was endless beach chairs, ocean, and the best yet...hammock's between palm trees. Amazing. We didn't do much but that was the point I guess. We all camped in this little hacienda with padded chairs, and sheers for privacy. Why would you shut those though...I mean really, you're overlooking a very blue ocean!

Anyway, Aaron and I rented snorkel gear and went out pretty early. We saw some pretty sweet fish of course along with some sting ray. Aaron really loved the snorkeling...and proceeded to pass around the other set of snorkel gear providing guided tours for the rest of the family. When he finally came in I think his body temperature was a few degrees colder. So I took Ben out after that and then Brett and John went out together. Unfortunately for them, John planted his hand on a sea urchin and had to seek a little medical advice. Looked pretty nasty. Had me reminiscing back to my jellyfsh debacle last fall. Other than the snorkeling, we read, laid around in the hammocks, and bought cocoloco's from the guys walking around selling this tasty frozen drink. Oh Sweet Paradise!

After our relaxing day at the beach, we got back on the boat to enjoy our last formal dinner, shows, and music.

This vacation was amazing...I mean at this point after all you've read I'm sure that's not a surprise to you. It was just non-stop fun. We came home pretty high on cruises, telling everyone we know that they have to go on one in their lifetime. After some reflection we decided that the vacation was fantastic but it wouldn't have been nearly as fun if we weren't there all together. The company makes the experience.

Cruisin' Key West Style

well, its taken a few days for me to get back to blogging but i'm back...with more stories to tell!

so our first full day was "cruising" as they call it. we spent the day out at sea and took advantage of the fun the boat had to offer. hit the trampolines, took a salsa class, hung out at the pool, hit the casino (with only the change in the bottom of my purse for the slots), and had our "formal night" for dinner. the boat had more than enough options to keep us busy.

So after a full day out at sea waiting out the weather, we port at Key West the next morning. aaron and i had signed up for an excursion called "snuba" in the afternoon so we went walking through key west in the morning. we had fun just the two of us walking to find the beach. the town's pretty cool looking. lots of beach-town-looking shops and boutiques and stuff. i mean, don't get me wrong, i'm not gonna go to key west and waste my time shopping, but it was a cool atmosphere to walk through.

after about an hour of walking, aaron and i got to a beach. it was fairly sketch though. a bunch of homeless people loitering around and such. but we walked past this guy who gave us a coconut that he had peeled and stuff. apparently he was a chef in new orleans until katrina hit. now he sleeps on the beach in key west. as he put it, "i guess i traded up". quite the outlook after losing everything. we tried to take it back on board with us but they wouldn't let us so we had to have some fun with it before we got back on for lunch.

after lunch we found our excursion spot...only to have it cancelled!!! such a bummer. but it was nice of them to cancel it cause they had taken people out in the morning and i guess they couldn't see anything so it would've been a lot of money and time to not see any cool sea life. i was pretty impressed that instead of taking our money and saying "oh well, sorry we couldn't see anything", they just told us not to waste our money. so we ended up hitting the beach (a not so sketchy one) for the rest of the day it was a nice afternoon on a pretty beach!

random side note for you...and on our walk back to the boat we saw these dogs that had legit dreads. weird.

so back on the boat. ben, aaron and i hit the rock climbing wall before we got ready for dinner again. i'm sure many of you will not balk at this story but i'm telling it anyway. i forgot socks for the climbing wall. picture going bowling, getting the shoes that the rest of the world does, and having to put bare feet in those publicly used shoes. i'm still hoping i didn't catch some gross fungus from it. i still have a hard time believeing i actually did that. i mean, my mom did raise me to fear all germs, especially in public places. i wish i had pictures of this cause it was cool but along with my socks i forgot my camera.

and the next and last update to come...cococay, bahamas. let me just warn you, i just let out a whimsical sigh just thinking back about it :-)

BING-BONG! Faro Family Christmas Cruise!

"bing-bong" is what the cruise director, mark, said everytime he concluded hosting something or making an announcement on this cruise this past week. sounds like it might be annoying, yet it wasn't...i grew quite fond of it by the end of the trip. for those that don't know wha i'm talking about, we just got back from the faro family christmas vacation today. they took the family on a royal carribbean cruise to key west and the bahamas for christmas...and it was amazing!!! we had such a good time!!!!

this post would be redicuously long if i talk about everything tha was amazing about it so i'll go in stages in the next few days so keep tuning in! :-)

we flew down to florida on tuesday (yup, the day they had that cold snap and freeze warning) it was cold and we were wondering if we would be that cold on the cruise too. regardless, we were still too excited to be let a little cool weather stop us....i mean really, we're new yorkers. so wednesday we board the boat and waste no time getting in the hot tub. we were one of the first ones on and the whole rest of the day people were boarding the boat with their sweats and coats on while we're outside in bathing suits in the hot tub. we got lots of "you're not from florida, are you?" comments. obviously not. we were glad we flew in the day before and got on early cause we basically got a whole other day on the boat.

we spent the rest of that day scoping out all the boat had to offer. 11 decks, climbing wall, bungee trampoline, pools/hot tubs indoor and out, lots of different lounges and bars, a sweet fitness center, and of course lot of places to eat...whenever you want. so it was pretty cold and cloudy but we didn't care because we were excited to get started on all this fun!at night we all got dressed up nice for our fancy dinner. our waitress for the week was from lithuania. her name was inga. we learned lots of stuff from inga...like they work six straight months without ONE day off! how crazy is that!?!? and they work all day long. they must have crazy standards for service because all the people working there (and there was over 800 of them) were so helpful. you could tell they weren't american as sad as that is for us to say. the international feel with all the people from all over was really sweet. it made you feel like you were far away even when we were still docked in fort lauderdale.after dinner we went to the orpheum theater for the opening night dancing/singing show. they were really good! just like sitting in on a broadway show. and then it was on to karaoke. good times. we were supposed to head down to key west the next day but weather changed our plans so we spent thursday "cruising" as they call it...just out at sea on the boat all day. i'll write about that another day!