This Is The Life

I fell in love with cruising last August when my family spent a week traveling up and down the Alaskan coastline. I think it was less than a month later that I booked a Western Caribbean cruise with a couple friends. This Boise winter has been cold and snowy and cloudy and long, so I had been looking forward to my escape for a while! Well, the waiting ended last Saturday when Jen and I boarded a plane for Miami, FL (Jen's sister Brooke met us in Miami). We cruised out Sunday afternoon on the Norwegian Jewel, and headed to the Grand Cayman Islands and Cozumel, Mexico. There were really rough winds the first morning at sea, but after that, we enjoyed nice weather, sunshine, and no sea-sickness :-) Here are some of the highlights:

I still don't understand why people like slot machines so much. Incredibly boring if you ask me. Jen and I blew through $10 in like 10 minutes.
Here's the porthole I bragged about in an earlier post :-) Yes, it was small, but it was SO nice to be able to see outside from our room and to have some natural light!

In the Cayman Islands, we swam with stingrays! Crazy, huh! Well, these stingrays are tame and are around people all the time. We were able to pet the stingrays (they are incredibly soft), feed them squid, hold them, and even kiss them :-) One funny thing - I had Brooke take a picture of me holding a squid before I fed it to the stingrays, and a bird came down and grabbed the squid from my hand!!! You can see the culprit in one of the pictures below.

After the stingrays, we got to play with a dolphin - watch it do tricks, touch it, get a kiss from the dolphin, and even hold the dolphin. I'll update this post with a picture as soon as Brooke scans it and emails it :-)

Our day in Cozumel was probably the warmest day we had. We enjoyed 80 degree weather as we rode ATVs through the jungle. We also got to see some Mayan ruins. I was expecting to see a whole temple, but we basically only saw where different structures had once been, with only certain cornerstone rocks remaining where the pillars had once been. We got SO dirty! The trails were dusty and super rocky, but it was still tons of fun.
And of course we took time to lay out, enjoying the sunshine and a good book...
... and enjoy some fabulous food (and more food, and more food). Our favorites were Cagney's Steakhouse (where we celebrated Jen's birthday in style) and the Chocolate buffet! And you've gotta love all the fresh seafood! We also enjoyed some authentic Mexican food while in Cozumel.
The on-board entertainment was excellent. We loved the comedians, the acrobatics, the juggler, and more. We got our pictures taken with the juggler (David DiMuzio - who also happens to be a singer, songwriter, and comedian), as well as a signed poster :-)

We had such a great time, that we're already planning our next cruise. We're thinking about Greece next summer if anyone wants to come :-)