Vacation

It's been a couple weeks since I blogged; primarily because last week I was on vacation, and the week before that was crazy busy.

Vacation in the Caribbean was amazing. The Freedom of the Seas is a huge ship: 14 decks (above the water line), a FlowRider, a rock climbing wall, at least 6 hot tubs. While the ship and the ports were fun, especially since it was in the 80's a lot of the week, one of the more entertaining parts of the trip was watching Jon and Aaron interact. Seriously, I started calling it the Jon and Aaron show a couple days into the trip.

I climbed the rock wall in about a minute, which I thought was okay considering it was my first time ever rock climbing. I also tried the FlowRider, not the stand-up surfing, but the boogie boarding was easier than I imagined, and I didn't even lose a contact lens!

Monday we were in the Bahamas, at Royal Caribbean's "island," CoCo Cay. That day the sun was warm, but it was windy. Once in the ocean, however, it was good. Emily, Jon and Aaron got on this mini sailboat and ended up shipwrecking into both the pier and the rocks. To their credit, the rudder was broken and the wind wasn't helping. Here's the video of the employee attempting to help them out:




On Wednesday, we docked in St. Thomas; we spent a large part of the day shopping; I ended up with probably 6 pendants, three pairs of earrings, and a ring. We also visited Blackbeard's castle, an amber museum (where we DID get into a discussion about Jurassic Park), and spent an exorbitant amount of time in taxis, which were essentially 5 rows of benches with a tent on the back of a pickup.

Thursday was the last port day, and we were in St. Maarten. Lisa and I took a catamaran ride and spent some time at a beach on the Dutch side of the island. The catamaran operator was this totally skeezy guy named Jason; don't get me wrong, he was nice, but I think he was under the impression that something was gonna happen with us. He clearly didn't know we were nice Mormon girls. In any case, the beach was nice: the water was not too cold and not too hot, although seeing wrinkly old ladies sunbathe topless was a little frightening. We also learned about the "bubble list." After that, Lisa and I got nachos at a local restaurant and then went on a search for postcards, which was surprisingly difficult.

All in all, it was a great trip: I flew 1st class for the first time, and ended the trip on a memorable note. All the pictures are on Facebook, so if you aren't friends with me, you should be. :)