Cruise day 1 to 3

Alright, there's so much to tell, and I don't know where to start, so I decided to just start at the beginning. Makes sense, huh? Hopefully through all the ramblings and photos, I'll be able to express all the important details of our trip.

We flew to Fort Lauderdale bright and early Saturday morning, March 27. There were no issues with the flight except for the fact that our luggage was way to heavy. We tried to off load some gear into our carry-on's, but we still had to pay $70 in over weight charges. Sucky! The funny thing is we still had tons of room in the luggage. Anyways, this is us on the airplane. A little tired, nervous and a lot excited!

We finally made it to our boat and we're shocked by how big it was! This picture doesn't do it justice.


The Crown Princess has 19 floors, 4 pools, an outdoor movie theatre, an indoor production theatre, a million hot tubs and lounge chairs, well over half a dozen different restaurants, 3 huge buffets, a couple of night clubs and piano bars, numerous shops, and holds 3200 passengers and 1200 crew. We were happy to get a room with a balcony though - our own little private getaway - and enjoyed the view a lot during the vacation.



Pretty quickly after boarding we had to do an emergency evacuation procedure. This only prompted Greg to goof off with the life vest forever. I, of course, had to pretend not to notice and act annoyed in order to not encourage him.

As we were leaving port in Fort Lauderdale we saw Royal Caribbean's Oasis of the Sea. It's the largest cruise ship in existence and holds twice as many passengers as our ship did. We (read Greg), of course, had to take a million pictures of it.

That night we said good-bye to land - won't be seeing that for a while.

We ate a good meal that night - it regularly took us over 2 hours to get through the 4 courses - and headed to bed fairly early since we had been up since 4:30 AM.

The next day I woke up to this view:

Pretty sweet deal if you ask me! We started our day off with a dip in the hot tub - it rocked!

Rather than fight the crowds for one of the lawn chairs to lay in the sun, we pretty much just tried to figure out our way around the ship for most of the day. We walked around it forever, locating the restaurants, and pools and everything else. We ate lots this day, and Greg especially enjoyed the buffet. LOTS of good treats in there.

It was our first formal night on Sunday so we had to get all dressed up. I don't have a picture because I knew we would get one taken professionally around the boat this night. We did do just that - by the grand staircase, and we looked quite hot - but the photo cost $25 US to buy the one 8x10 and we thought that was a royal rip off. We had a great dinner, this time dining alone rather than joining others. There was also a champagne water fountain and we got to hear the Captain speak (Greg has a major man-crush on him). We went to a SUPER funny comedian this night, and I haven't laughed so hard in a while, especially at the airplane and cruise ship jokes. It was great! We settled in for the night with this as our view:

Seriously, pinch me, huh? It was awesome to sleep with our balcony door open to the sound of the waves.

We went through a bunch of time changes when we were on the cruise - so tough to adjust to - and since we had our first port stop bright and early Monday, I made sure I found the cafe on board. Sweet deal - specialty coffee on my balcony overlooking the Caribbean.

Monday's stop led us to Georgetown, Grand Cayman, part of the Cayman Islands.

We did some shopping and just walking around checking out the town before we got on our guided tour. Our tour driver was interesting, but didn't tell us too many facts. I know there are a lot of banks in the Cayman Islands, and I know there is the famous 7-mile beach as well. The island has lots of sea turtles and sting rays, and lots of rich people since folks pay NO TAX at all there. The island is very flat and dry and has no natural source of spring water, so it all has to get shipped in. The Cayman Islands are under the British monarchy and are also home to an actual place named Hell. We went to the town of Hell, which is basically one street with some shops. Hell got it's name because of the crazy limestone formations in the area - check it out:

Yup, that's Greg and I in Hell. And let me tell you, it was hot!

We had another 2 hour dinner this night and didn't catch much on the entertainment side of things, except for another dip in the hot tub and swim in the pool. We knew we had another time change coming and another early morning on Tuesday for our big trip to Roatan, Honduras.

My reoccurring thoughts and observations of the first 3 days:

- This boat is big

- I'm sweating hot

- I say "eh" a lot

- I miss Asher (I cried usually once a day for the first 3 days because of this)

- The Internet is really slow here

- There is a lot of food, but not necessarily a lot of vegetarian dishes (don't get me wrong, there was always food for me to eat, but often at dinner I had only one or two choices whereas Greg had about 8 - and atleast a couple of them seafood)

- There are a lot of rich people here from the States

- There are a lot of teens on this boat for Spring Break

- Man I wish I could have a glass of wine

- I like my husband

- Yum, chocolates on my pillow case every night!

- Taking the tender boats ashore when we can't dock makes me sea sick

- While I haven't felt sea sick at all on the boat, I am always aware that I am on a boat with the constant little movements and rocking

- Free room service rocks

- The staff on this boat are really multi-cultural, and seem to work quite a bit (Ricardo, the dude who took care of our room 2-3 times per day, worked every day we were on the boat)

Stay tuned for the next update probably in a few days - the best is yet to come!