Day 5: Key West, Florida

We arrived at Key West for our last port of call. We went thru immigration and that was a breeze. Our planned excursion didn’t start until 11 am so we stumbled upon an ice cream shop and tried some key lime pie ice cream. That was the BEST ice cream ever and I’m not even big on key lime. Gotta have key lime in Key West, right?!

If you looked back over my posts, I cordinated all of our outfits so that if he was wearing pattern, I was wearing solid and vice versa, that is important to do when you are taking lots of pictures!  And is quite the task when you match outfits for a whole week and have multiple outfit changes in one day.  And you never want to make it look too matchy, then it looks too planned and frankly pretty silly.

Our excursion was a glass bottom boat tour and in my opinion it was a waste of time/money. Maybe part of my bad review is because they said the Atlantic was too choppy so we had to go to different reef then the one they normally go to and all we saw was a bunch of seaweed which was disappointing. I would have rather of done what our tablemates did, they rented motor scooters and did their own self tour of the island.

Moving on… after this tour, we were ready for lunch. We were looking for seafood and were recommended to Alonzo’s Oyster Bar. Aaron had a fried lobster sandwich and I had fried shrimp, very tasty! Aaron ordered a key lime mojito; I don’t generally like mojitos but this one was exceptionally good.

After lunch, we just walked Duval Street, which is where all the action is. Lots of shops and tons of bars; you could tell that this place turns into a big party at night. We loved the shops with the funny t-shirts, they were everywhere!

After having key lime ice cream and a key lime mojito, we were ready for the real deal, key lime pie. Although I really wasn’t craving it at this point, we still felt the urge to enjoy a piece. We should have just shared one piece because I did not care for it. I thought it was like biting into pure sugar. Way too sweet for my liking. The ice cream was by far the big winner.

We were realizing that we really couldn’t explore much further away from the ship as we were starting to run low on time at this point so we picked a bar to hang out at. Lots of ‘one man guitar singers’ at the bars during the day, you could tell the islanders were pretty chill and mellow type of folks.  I enjoyed the laid back vibe.

When we got back on the ship, we decide to relax by heading up to one of the lounges, order some wine and watch the sunset.  Which was actually quite peaceful, I can't remember the last time I watched the sunset... if ever really.

Notice that Aaron orders 2 mojitos at once to my one glass of wine, that crazy kid...

That night we did our usual dinner at 9 pm and said farewell to our tablemates. Afterwards, we went back to our room, packed up and hit the hay. I’ll have one more posting about the unplanned events we encountered on our trip home and just some overall thoughts of the cruise

Day 4: Coco Cay Bahamas

Day 4 was at Coco Cay which is Royal Caribbean’s private island in the Bahamas.  Beautiful place!  The Atlantis beach was our favorite but here water the was very calm, relaxing and just as beautiful in a different kind of way (if that makes any sense!?!)  This day we did absolutely nothing and loved every minute of it.  The cruise line provided plenty to do on the island but having a day completely free of any plans was a rare commodity to us that we couldn’t pass up.

First off, wowzas did they make the drinks strong here!  I couldn’t even drink mine it was so strong and I can usually handle a stiff drink just fine.  I was starting to get burned out on drinking anyways, up to that point in our vacation, if we were awake and our eyes were blinking, we were drinking so it was starting to lose its appeal by this point anyways.   

I haven’t mentioned yet that so far everywhere we’ve gone the water had been chilly.  Not terrible but chillier than I prefer.  Laying out on the beach though was perfect!  The weather was mid to upper 80s each day.  Aaron got in the water every time, the furthest I got in was waist deep, mainly because the water was so clear here at Coco Cay that I felt more comfortable.  I dislike not seeing what I’m swimming with.  I enjoyed watching Aaron though lurk with the sharks and creatures of the ocean while I sat safely on the beach.    

The cruise line served a buffet style BBQ lunch.  The food was good but by the time we got around to going up for lunch, I thought the food was a bit cold.  It was the first time in YEARS I ate chicken off the bone.  I didn’t know if I could do it but I did.  I tore it off with my fork.  I can watch people eat red meat and not be grossed out but seeing people eat meat off a bone with their teeth really does gross me out.  We definitely didn’t starve by no means over cold food… in general we ate a plenty last week.

While on Coco Cay, I just sat and soaked it all in. I wanted to pinch myself and kept thinking wow… I’m sitting on a beautiful beach in the Bahamas, clear water in front of me, the sun feels great, the silky sand between my toes, my husband at my side…it was a heavenly feeling. Everything I dreamt of leading up to the days of our vacation was coming to fruition at that moment. It really made me appreciate and was grateous we had the opportunity to go on this vacation and see this part of the world. I am also thankful that I got to share such memorable moments with Aaron.

Later that evening after dinner, we decided to attend the Love and Marriage Show with the other couples at our dinner table which was pretty funny, our group wanted us to volunteer for the show and I’m glad we didn’t after hearing the questions, I don’t get embarrassed easily but could see how a few of those questions could’ve been iffy.  After this, we then headed out midnight buffet and dance party at the pool.  We weren’t hungry for the buffet but the food art was impressive! Also the poolside dance party was lively!  Very entertaining!  The cruise director who was leading the dance party was a riot, this guy continually cracked us up all week long!  Also had staff dancers and these people knew how to shake their booty!  I was getting a kick out of just watching them. 

Belly Flop Competition on ship, it was entertaining

Check out food art; ice dolphin, monkey climbing the pinapple, etc

Our dinner table friends

Midnight Poolside Dance Party

 Well this brings me to vacation Day 5 at Key West.  Stay tuned!

Day 3: Nassau, Bahamas

On Day 3, we woke up in island of Nassau in the Bahamas. What I love about the cruise is every day when you wake up; you are in a new place. This day ended up being our favorite day of our trip. On this day, we booked an excursion to the Atlantis resort. I was pretty excited to go to Atlantis as I have wanted to visit this place for quite a while.

Atlantis was just as I expected, immaculate and even better in person. Our excursion gave us access to everything except for their water park. It would have been nice to check the water park out but I really didn’t care to spend my time at a water park when we had the beach at our fingertips. Right away, we got set up on their private beach and then went to explore. We headed down to the underground aquarium (I think they call this the ruins lagoon). This is so cool in person! Sharks were swimming over top of us, stingrays; we saw all kinds of interesting ocean life. Such a unique underground aquarium-like tunnel that really is stunning. This totally made the excursion all worth it!

The grounds of Atlantis are beautiful. Everywhere you look is a picture perfect backdrop. Although a lot of what we were looking at was manmade, it is beautifully done. Since we were in the Bahamas and a sucker for a cliché moment, I was drinking Bahama Mamas and Atlantis makes the best one. Aaron said the Pina Colada was the best there too. While on the beach, we couldn’t resist a mixed drink out of a real coconut. A guy actually pulled out a knife and hollowed out a coconut right there on the spot and mixed our drinks right next to us on the beach. Pretty cool stuff.

Their private beach was the nicest of all we visited during that week. The only thing I did not like about it was they allow solicitors on their beach so about every few minutes someone is trying to sell you on jet skis, drinks, or hair braiding. We heard this was nothing compared to how bad they bug you on the public beach in Nassau so I guess it really wasn’t that much of a nuisance as they would just walk by and look at you and say “jet ski?” and I just shook my head and they kept walking on so it really wasn’t that bothersome although it would have been nice to just be left alone.

We did walk over to The Dig at Atlantis and found that to be disappointing. Maybe I just didn’t understand what we were supposed to be looking at but I thought it was a waste of a walk over to it.

That evening we had a separate excursion booked for a champagne catamaran cruise. Now this is not what I expected based on the description. They made it sound like they would be teaching you a dance and the atmosphere would be more lively on the catamaran. Instead it was like a leisure cruise around Nassau, no one really socialized and we did not learn a Bahamian dance. It ended up being okay though, it was more relaxing this way and we did get 3 free drinks with this excursion so I wouldn’t say it was a waste of time, we enjoyed it, it just wasn’t what I was expecting it to be. Would I book it again… no I wouldn’t, I probably would have rather put the cost into a nice dinner date at Atlantis that evening. Hoping this advice helps someone out who may stumble across my blog because I felt like I could not find any good online reviews specific to excursions.

By evening, we were exhausted. I have to say that I was really motion sick thru most of our trip. I was able to manage thru each day, but I was not feeling 100%. I’ll elaborate more on this later.

That evening was formal night on the ship. Well our dinner table was a little rowdy and we ended up all doing 5 rounds of shots and even celebrated a birthday at our table. As tired as I was and as much as I didn’t really want to start doing shots, I also didn’t want to be a party pooper. So I happily did 5 shots with everyone else. Then the plan was to head out to the dance club on the ship. Well we agreed to go with the group but luckily that got side tracked and we all ended up just sitting around and talking in one of the lounges, which I liked better because I got to know the couples a lot better during this time. When you’re motion sick, moving/bouncing around in a dance club doesn’t sound appealing.

Also loved the awesome towel creations in our room, if you can't tell... I was diggin' the cool vibes of this towel elephant. 

So that wraps up our first day in the Bahamas. Now I’m definitely not trying to drag out these blog posts but just bare with me… as this is a busy week for us getting back into the flow of things and it really helps to blog on one day at a time. Next post is on Coco Cay!