Summer Vacation Part II

The last pictures in the previous post were taken probably half hour before we boarded our cruise boat. We got to the boat dock half wet with sand in our cracks and our hair in shambles! Haha! We were both in our swimming suits and ready to continue with our vacation....in the Bahamas!

We got on the boat and the first thing we did....all you can eat buffet baby! We scarfed down some food and then began our self-guided tour of the boat. A couple of years ago we went on a cruise with Jordan's parents and sibling and the boat we went on was much more massive than the one we were on, but we still wanted to check things out and get a good idea of what the boat had to offer. We roamed around for a little while, napped, read, ate some more, you know all those kinds of vacation-y things.

After dinner that night we went to the triple feature show! The first show was a two person group called The Dancing Gauchos. It was a husband and wife couple that performed with drums and whips and some fire at the end. They were, as you can probably tell by the name, Spaniards and they had so much energy and they put on a great show! The second act was your typical acrobatic show and the third was a comedy show.

The entertainment was fun, but we were a little disappointed once we compared it the amazing cruise we went on a couple of years ago. At any rate, the pizza cafe we visited after the show was delicious! We, once again, stuffed ourselves and headed back to the cabin to get some rest before we arrived in the Bahamas.

WELCOME TO THE BAHAMAS!!

 

Our view from the ship

Gearing up to go on our adventure for the day

When we arrived at the island we had to sign up to go on one of the excursions set up by the cruise line. Since the boat was tied up at a ship yard 12 miles away from the nearest town we really had no choice but to sign up for one of the excursions if we wanted to get off the boat and see the Bahamas. We signed up for the cheapest possible excursion which, for us, ended up being a wonderful day! Our excursion took us to one of the resorts that was right on the beach. In addition to having the beautiful beach to walk on and the ocean to swim in there was a rockin pool area, a little restaurant, a volleyball area, and a shopping center just a ferry ride away. The picture up above was our first sight of the Bahaman beach we spent the rest of the day at....gorgeous huh?

 

After pinching ourselves, we picked a little tiki hut and set up camp for the afternoon. Oh, it was bliss! The weather was gorgeous, the water was warm, and the sand was white white white!

We spent probably an hour and a half or so on the beach and after some swimming and napping we wanted to try out the pool area. This was the lazy river/ shallow pool area we sided up on.

This was the beautiful resort right next to the pool area...I think this is where we'll book our next vacation!

As we were checking everything out like the lazy river and the volleyball net over the water and the cool tanning slabs that were submerged in the water, we found these cool man-made caves that you could go in and get out of the sun!

This was an entrance to one of the several man-made caves that were in the swimming area.

 Here was one of the smaller caves. 

 

 Looking out of the cave.

 

Oh yeah, there was a water slide too!

My crazy husband shimmied up a palm tree and pulled off a couple of coconuts just so he could drink the milk! 

Once it was time to head back to the ship we hopped on a little water taxi (above) and traveled across the water way to the shopping area and bus loading station. Our day on the island was so beautiful and we could not have asked for a better time! If we had the option of going back one day I would absolutely go back in a heartbeat!

Back on the ship we cleaned up a little and headed to our formal dinner. Delicious salmon and a wellington was for dinner and for dessert we got a special "Happy Honeymoon" dessert!

After such a good dinner, this is what we came back to! Such a nice surprise for our last night on the boat.

 

The next morning we got off the boat and headed about 2 hours up the coast of Florida to Orlando. We found our hotel, dropped off our stuff, and headed up to Disney World to meet up with Jordan's cousin, Lyndon and his sweet wife Chelsie.

 

"Where dreams come true!"

Oh ya know, just boppin' around the shopping center of Disney World and we so happened to bump into Buzz!

Stitch was spitting out water and it felt so nice on that hot muggy day.

 This is a family made completely out of LEGOS!

Another lego creation...

 ...and another!

As I said before, we spent several days with Lyndon and Chelsie. Most of the time I didn't have my camera with me because it was just too heavy to lug around so unfortunately I didn't get pictures of some of the things we did and saw. Jordan and I decided not to pay to go into any of the parks, although I would have loved to go to Epcot, but despite that fact we did actually go around to almost all of the resorts and walked around and saw what they had to offer. We walked around Downtown Disney a couple times and went in all the shops, we visited the resorts The Grand Floridian, The Swan, The Dolphin, Animal Kingdom Lodge, Fort Wilderness, Port Orleans, the Polynesian Resort, Old Key West, Yacht Club Resort, and that about covers the resorts we visited! Each one was unique in its own way and it was so neat to see how different they each were.

One of the coolest areas we visited was The Boardwalk. We visited this on our last night there and were able to see all the night time lights, street performers, and even went in some really neat souvenir shops!

In addition to walking around and seeing what there was to see at Disney World we also traveled out and about while we had the rental car. We drove about an hour east of Orlando to Coco Beach and spent the day out there wave jumping and building sand castles.

Chelsie and me

Lyndon and Chelsie

Body surfing/sand up the shorts

Me and my hubster

 Action shot

While we were in the Coco Beach area we stopped by a manatee preserve and luckily enough I got a picture of the elusive animal!

This was the beautiful boardwalk that also doubled as the observatory.

The Manatee

Yup, you bet...that is the fin of a manatee! Haha, I know you can't tell what it is, and it could even be a fish jumping out of the water, but I'm just going to say/hope it really is part of a manatee.

So folks, that is our vacation! We had a blast and we would definitely go to Florida again! The weather was gorgeous, the people were great, and there was so much to do.

Hope you enjoyed reading about our vacation!

Summer Vacation Part I

Just a couple posts ago I was saying that I had started planning our summer vacation. Now, as I'm writing this, our vacation has come and gone and I want to go back! Anyways, here we go, prepare yourself!

Sunday we flew into Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. We got there at 2 ish in the afternoon and I wasn't really shocked by the weather...sunny, beautiful, and humid to boot! We got our bags and our rental car (which, by the way, we were upgraded from an economy car to a brand spankin' new Nissian Altima for freeee!) and we were off on our adventure!

Once we found our hotel we were both ready for a nap and just ready to relax, so we did just that. We hung out in our hotel room, ordered some room service, read, watched a movie, and really just started our vacation off right by relaxing.

The next morning we had breakfast outside, by the pool and the palm trees.

 After breakfast we packed up the car and headed for the Gumbo Limbo Nature Preserve, right on the coast of Florida. Before we left on our trip I did a ton of research on cool places to visit and neat things to see in the area and so I was really excited to see this place, plus it only costing $5 bucks for us to get in was a good thing too!

This "environmental complex" was such a neat place to go because not only did it have tanks with sharks, puffer fish, eels, gigantic lobster, and stingrays, but it was also a sanctuary for loggerhead turtles. Some of these turtles had been very badly injured and would have died if not for this place. One turtle we saw only had one fin, the rest, they told us, had probably been severed off when then accidentally swam into fisherman's nets. How sad is that?!

This guy was in one of the feeding tanks. We got there right as they started doing the feeding and it was so cool to see the sharks eat and the stingrays zoomin around.

This was one of the turtles in the recuperation/exercise tanks....her name was Lexi.

This was the biggest loggerhead turtle that we saw. The keeper told us he was close to being fully healed and ready to go back to the sea!

Another neat aspect of the preserve was that they had these really cool boardwalk paths through the forest. This one was surrounded by dense trees and bushes and was the boardwalk to the observatory deck.

Pretty much at all times that day there were giant looming rain clouds. Pretty cool to look at, but sucky to get caught in.

This was the top of the observatory tower, about 40 feet in the air. Just behind us was the ocean, pretty darn close!

All along the boardwalk were these giant spiders with their nasty webs and Jordan almost walked straight into this web. Ugh...gives me the heeby jeebys!

Once we finished up at the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center we got back in the car and headed to West Palm Beach. Part of the reason Jordan and I were able to afford going on this trip was because we agreed to listen to a presentation on time shares.....so we spent a good part of our day doing that, but our tour guide did show us some pretty cool things along the way.

First, she took us down to the marina and we were able to see the charter boats, the gift shops, a little place called Peanut Island, and we met Captain Morgan!

This was taken right on the beach at sunset. It was as if we had walked into a magazine, the water was so calm, the temperature was perfect, and you could see for miles down the beach!

The picture above was probably our favorite part about the whole trip. This here is a loggerhead turtle nest. After the turtles come up from the water, dig their nest, and lay their eggs the nests are taped off and labeled. On the back of the notice it said when the eggs were laid and approximately when the babies would dig their way out! These nests were scattered all over the beach and the care that people have gone to preserving these beautiful creatures is truly inspirational. The hefty fine associated with messing with these sand piles is pretty insane, I'm sure that helps people from messing with them!

The next day we went back to the public beach in the same area and it was even more beautiful then the night before.

 

Oh, what a beautiful place to set up! The water was so clear and calm, we were even able to get some good underwater pictures!

 

Once we were done shell searching, swimming, just plain tanning, we walked across the street and went into all the beach side shops. Once we were done shopping we cleaned up a little and hopped in the car to head over to our cruise boat! We could not have asked for a better place to hang out for a few hours before we started our cruise.