Cruisin' 101: Part 2

In case you missed my midnight posting last night, here's Part One of our recent cruise adventure! 
And the saga continues...

Not what I wanted to be wearing when it was perfect shorts &
tank top weather, but I also didn't want to burn anymore! 
Sidenote: the Key Lime Pie was amazing!

4. SUNSCREEN...LOTS OF IT! I know, this seems obvious. We left from Jacksonville, spent a day at sea and arrived in Key West on Wednesday, spent Thursday in Nassau, Bahamas followed by another day at sea on Friday before arriving back in Jacksonville early Saturday morning. Clearly it's going to be warmer, and the sun will be hotter than winter in Indiana. Case in point: it was about 25 degrees when we got to the airport in Indy Monday morning; it was 90 when we arrived in Jacksonville 8 hours later. But still, it's the first week of March so I figured the intensity of the sun would be similar to what it is during July-August in the mid-west. Wrong. I lathered on the SPF 15, found a comfy chair to sun bathe in and pulled out my People magazine to find out how Kate Middleton was handling the Royal Wedding planning. It took less than 3 hours, with sunscreen on, for me to become painfully burnt...and we were somewhere along the eastern coast of Florida not even halfway to our southern-most destination. Needless to say, I spent the rest of the week in either a long sleeve tshirt and long capri pants or, if I dared put on a bathing suit, I was lathered up in my SPF 15 and sitting in the shade! 



Warm Chocolate Melting Cake!  I actually made
this for Nick's birthday dessert last night.  Still
perfecting it, but it was a good first try!

 5. ENJOY THE EXTENSIVE (and Extremely Tasty) CULINARY CHOICES! We ate breakfast in the main dining room most mornings because that's where they served their awesome omelets and Belgium waffles. Lunch was on the Lido Deck where we could get burgers (the veggie burger was delicious!) and chicken strips or some Mongolian fare. The Pizzeria was open 24/7 – the Le Chevre (I think, it was goat cheese and mushroom) was sooo good!! We opted to eat dinner in the main dining room each night because, again, that's where you could find the best food! The selection was excellent, 5 or 6 different main entrees to choose from each night along with several soups, salads and side items that also varied nightly. There was always some variety of seafood (the lobster was my favorite) and an Italian dish because all of the Carnival ship captain's are Italian. (Your strange but interesting factoid of the day!) One night, while enjoying the live music on the Lido Deck we were treated to a midnight Mexican Buffett. In general, I'm not sure how good Mexican at midnight is for the digestive system but the food was amazing and the desserts were even better! Speaking of dessert, Nick also discovered his new very favorite dessert: warm chocolate melting cake. Essentially a chocolate brownie with melted milk chocolate inside topped with powdered sugar, it was a huge hit with my chocoholic husband! By Day 3, Nick didn't even have to order dessert; our server just looked at him and laughed and wrote down his order. One of our fabulous tablemates even found the recipe online, so now I guess I have to try replicate this to the high standards the kitchen staff has set for warm chocolate melting cake! 

6. PACK LIGHT AND CHOOSE CAREFULLY. While most of my cruise wardrobe consisted of shorts, tee shirts and bathing suits I was very excited for dinner in the formal dining room. Honestly, when was the last time I got to wear a dress (and my favorite peep toe wedges) and not have to worry about how impractical it would be for chasing three kids? Plus, I was proud of my newly toned body thanks to P90X so I was sure to pack my skinny jeans next to my bikinis! A word of advice: don't pack anything that may be a little too snug if you gain, say, 5-6 pounds in 5 days because all you are doing is eating and drinking and laying by the pool...including (and especially) skinny jeans. I tried to be good, honestly I did. I took my running shoes and 3 days worth of workout clothes. I got up on our first morning on the boat, ready to get my heart rate up. After a healthy breakfast (egg white omelet and English muffin) I hit the gym...and waited for almost 10 minutes before someone vacated one of the ellipticals. I would have gotten on any cardio-centered machine; this was just the first one to become available. Finished my 40 minute workout feeling great and quite pleased with myself for following through...but never made it back to the gym the rest of the week. Given the number of calories I consumed that week, I should have been going twice a day!



The platform we were on was shaded, so the water was pretty
cold - very grateful for the wetsuit!



7. BOOK AN EXCURSION...or just show up and hope there's an opening! Acting on the advice of a friend who'd recently been on a cruise, we choose to explore one port on our own (Key West) and book an excursion at another. By far the coolest thing we did on the cruise was an excursion in Nassau that took us to Blue Lagoon Island, a private island that's about a 15 minute ferry ride from Nassau. Blue Lagoon is home to a picturesque private beach as well as the Dolphin and Sea Lion Encounters. I had tried to book the Dolphin Encounter two weeks before our departure, only to find out 3 days before we left for Jacksonville that the excursion (through cruises.com, where we booked our cruise) was full. Completely disappointed, we decided to head over to the island anyway to hang out on the beach for the day. When we got to the ferry pier, we saw a Dolphin Encounters office.  We went over, checked it out and found out there were still openings for the next encounter. YAY! After a rather bumpy ferry ride over, I was ready to see some dolphins! Though the water temperature in the sun was in the high 70's, maybe low 80's, our platform was in the shade and therefore very cold. Thank goodness they provided optional wetsuits! (Although I voluntarily let a strange man “size me up” to determine which wet suit I needed, and that was a little creepy, somehow it magically fit so he must have done something right. After our dolphin, Andy, did some tricks for us, he swam over to our platform and I got to feed him and dance with him, feel his teeth and super smooth skin, even give him a hug and a kiss. Yes, I actually kissed a dolphin on the mouth...and, of course, it tasted a little fishy. But it was awesome!



Andy - the star of the show!



8. GET TO KNOW YOUR FELLOW CRUISERS!  This was easy, especially at dinner since we sat with the same 2 couples each night at our assigned table.  One of the couples is from Evansville (his dad is a long-time professor at my parents' alma mater...small world!) and the other is from Atlanta.  We felt old when we discovered both couples were on their collegiate Spring Breaks, but that didn't stop us from having a great time together.  We enjoyed two comedians at the comedy club with one couple and a few evenings of live music or other ship activities (including the Midnight Mexican Buffett) with the other couple.  So fun!  It was amazing how often, on a ship full of possibly 2,000 people, we kept running into several of the same cruisers throughout the week.  One of my favorites were the two couples we met in the hot tub one afternoon, one from Green Bay, the other transplants from Minnesota to Jacksonville...some good-natured NFL trash talk (one guy thought if he could convince me to trade Peyton to the Jags it would actually happen) ensued. 



Our new friends and our amazing servers!



We had a wonderful time and I would highly recommend cruising as a very low-key, but fun-filled way to vacation.  The best part about it?  Unpacking once but enjoying different locales, the amazing food available 24/7, the never-ending activities and contests so you can be as busy (or as lazy!) as you choose and the fact that you and your spouse/friends/kids are all on the same boat so each person can plan on whichever activities suit them best without the hassle of coordinating who's going where and when.  The one major downfall to cruising is that, unlike practically everything else on the boat, soft drinks and alcohol are not included.  Nick and I are not big soda drinkers, so we did fine with water/tea/milk during the day along with the occasional adult beverage.  And of course, the drinks aren't cheap plus they automatically add 15% gratuity to each drink order to ensure the bartenders and servers get paid.  So suddenly my $7 frozen drink was closer to $8.50 - but the server came over and took my order and delivered it to me without fear of losing my cushioned lounge chair so I'm not complaining too much :) 

Formal Night!!

Key West

Nassau, Bahamas (and the Atlantis resort)

Nick's ideal vacation: this hammock and a bottom-less Corona

Blue Lagoon Island, home of the Dolplin Encounter

Midnight Mexicab Buffett!  SO GOOD!