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!