Cruise Day 6 - St. Kitts

After feeling carsick after a long tour day in St. Lucia the day before, I wasn't so sure about going through with our next tour in St. Kitts. We were going to make a decision the morning of, well I woke up feeling great so we decided to go with it! It was a much shorter tour, and once I saw that we were in an actual mini bus rather than just a 12 passenger van, I felt better about that too. Also, Tyler was able to recruit a few other people to join our group because there were some empty seats. He worked a deal with the driver and while waiting for all the people to board, he met some people with no plans that day. This was able to knock about $50 off our tour price which - made it even that more enjoyable for Tyler haha.

In our initial planning for St. Kitts, I really wanted to visit Nevis. St. Kitts and Nevis are two neighboring islands that are actually the same country. My parents visited this resort in Nevis back when I was young and it was their first big trip away from Paige, Michael and I. I remember them coming home and seeing pictures and hearing about how amazing the Caribbean was, I always wanted to go there some day! But with a little research, although Nevis is only 2 miles away, it would have taken a long time to travel via taxi and via boat just to make it over there. And then the hotel was not so cheap if we wanted to get a day pass there, so we opted not to go but just seeing it was fun :)

We booked a tour that would take us to two really neat historic places on the island, the first was Romney Manor. It was a beautiful garden with grounds and ruins from the estate of Sam Jefferson, one of Thomas Jefferson's great grandfathers. We both loved the huge beautiful tree that was over 350 years old.

The one thing a little random about our tour, was the guide - he was a character, totally likeable guy but he was totally into botany and stopped to show us every plant and flower. We learned a lot but it was getting a little old after a while... A couple times he stopped to pick flowers for the ladies on the bus, then handed out some leftovers to some ladies we saw at later stops. Quite a character for sure, he'd honk and wave at people walking by, we thought he knew them, turns out he was totally just flirting.

Roosevelt our tour guide, at the start of a botany lesson :)

The next landmark (and honestly the main reason Tyler wanted this tour) was Brimstone Fortress. At the top of one of the tallest hills in St. Kitts is a fortress used as a lookout from the 1700s. The views were incredible from up there!

At the bottom of the fortress, looking up to the main structure above

View from the tippy top!

amazing views

The whole east side of the island is a rain forest, completely green and tropical, but the popular beaches are all on the west side of the island, which overlooks to Nevis. Tyler and I both agreed that the west side reminded us of Southern California coast - a little more dry but then hills and cliffs drop off the a beautiful beach. Our tour guide drove us back over to the west side and dropped most of the tour group off at a beach for the rest of the afternoon.

View from the cliffs on east side, before we drove down to the beach

 We weren't really sure where he was dropping us off, but it was a really fancy Carambola Beach Club. It served nice but overpriced drinks and food which we had none of but enjoyed the fancy lounge and access to the beach. We brought our snorkel gear, just in case, and I'm so glad we did because there was a great reef just off the beach. We ran into some friends on the beach and left our stuff with them at their cabana and took a walk down the beach for a while before getting in the water and snorkeling all the way back. I saw about 7 starfish, lots of sea urchins, cool coral and plenty of colorful fish.

Nevis is behind us, over my left shoulder

We then chilled in the shade for an hour or so until we got picked up. I brought my book, "The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter & Sweet" for my cruise read. Tyler brought "The Start-up of You."

It was really a great day and just as all the other days had been, perfect weather!! Roosevelt had brought some local fruit for us to eat in the bus, and I had brought some snacks from the ship. But at one of our stops I had to break down and buy some SunChips because sorry they just sounded so good. But other than that, we never once paid for food or drinks that week! We got back to the cruise terminal and got right back on the ship for a late lunch! We were able to facetime with the kids who were getting excited for Grandpa to make it to Connecticut that night :)

Cruise Day 5 - St. Lucia

St. Lucia was our middle island, 3rd of 5 - but was the one Tyler was most excited about. After seeing pictures of it, he always wanted to visit this island - he had even looked into doing a honeymoon there or this babymoon there even! The main reason, the Piton mountains that just set it apart from all other Caribbean Islands :)

When we found a cruise that visited St. Lucia and worked out best for our Sunday - Sunday schedule, it was a done deal :) Anyways, we decided to book an island tour for this day so we could make sure to see all the sights. Tyler booked through Cosol Tours which had incredible reviews on TripAdvisor. Turns out lots of people on our boat booked through them, we met several other people earlier in the week who mentioned they were on our same tour. They had about 7 large vans of tourists on the tour and we saw many of our new friends along the way.

We stopped at several different locations for pictures along the way but there were 6 major stops. The first stop was at a banana plantation, which is the major industry on St. Lucia. We got to sample fresh bananas and learn more about the process, their bananas are all shipped to England.

The next stop was for a brunch at a scenic building. This was the only time we were at the same place as all the other vans of people and it got a little crowded. But they had tables of several different local foods for us to try, some of our favorites were the fresh mango, pineapple, passion fruit, and fried fish with different dipping sauces. They also had water bottles, sodas and the local beer for everyone to try. I guess we were too busy eating to take pictures, but it was near this view :)

We drove through several little villages and fishing towns and it was neat to be able to see so much of the island and how the people lived. The next stop was the waterfall, the water was pretty cold so I opted not to get in. Tyler stepped in the water but also opted not to get in the freezing cold polar plunge. If we had stopped later in the day when we'd been wet already or had been in the sun, I might have done it - but just pictures were good for me :)

From here we drove to the highlight of the trip  - the Pitons! We got out of the van and transferred into a water taxi that took us to a beautiful beach in between the two Piton Mountains. In all the pictures and even from the other side of the island, the two mountains appear to be right next to each other, but in reality they are a couple miles apart. So we were able to go snorkeling between the two mountains. They allowed us one hour over on the beach, and the only regret is that we didn't have more time there. The snorkeling was pretty good, we saw lots of Sea Urchins, Coral and colorful fish, something unique was a sea snake! The beach we were on was next to a very nice hotel where Matt Damon and his wife renewed their wedding vows recently. Our boat driver told us they rented the whole hotel and made it a private event for celebrities a whole week.

The views were amazing on the boat ride over.

Snorkeling between the Pitons!

A first for both of us, seeing a sea snake!

beautiful shades of blue

say cheese!

View of the beach, down by the fancy hotel

Here I am!

"sittin on the beach with our toes in the sand"

 Our last tourist stop was at the extinct St. Lucia volcano, just about 10 minutes from the last stop, called the sulphur springs. It was described as a hot mud bath, in a natural hot springs. I had slightly different expectations for this place before we got there. Like the water is actually really really hot, hotter than a hot tub and probably too hot for a pregnant girl to get in. And even if you get in the water, the mud doesn't really stick to your skin unless you rub it all over yourself from the mud puddles upstream. So we decided to just go wading through the stream and try to get some mud on us the memory and for photo opp purposes. Tyler got pretty far down the stream, but once again - the water was way hot! And without shoes the rocks were killing my feet so I just let Tyler get some mud and he helped me get it on part of me at least :) I think it is supposed to rejuvenate you and have healing properties of some kind - not so sure about that... Then we rinsed as much as we could off and headed back.

The boiling hot sulfur water

Not quite covered, but stinky enough!

Very surprisingly, Tyler was bothered by the smell way more than I was!

It really was a fun day and if at that point I could have snapped my fingers and been back on the boat, I'd have had the perfect day. But now we had a 45 minute ride back to the cruise terminal through the winding roads and I did not do too well. Luckily we had been sitting in the front row of the van, and I was in the middle so I could totally see out, but I was so grateful when we finally stopped at our last stop. We didn't even know where we were headed but he took us to this beautiful home where we had our last food / drink offering of the day. We got fresh baked bread and cheese and it totally hit the spot! We used the bathroom in the house and those in our van just wanted to spend hours in this place. It was kept perfectly clean and had amazing views of the mountains and water. I didn't realize until later that it was the lady's house who had prepared all the food for our brunch and had baked the bread.

It's silly but this bread and cheese made me so happy - and what a fun shape of bread, kind of like a turkey leg.

 Anyways I felt so good and refreshed after that stop it was hard to get back in that van, but it was only about 25 more minutes until we were back at the cruise terminal. We had an hour or so before we had to be back on the boat - so we called home and were able to facetime with Jackson for a bit, Abbie was still sleeping. But then I headed back to the boat to lay down while Tyler hung out off the ship for a little bit longer.

So Tyler calls this his favorite day of the cruise whereas I can't make up my mind about the favorite! I probably would have liked this one but that van ride back kind of put a damper on the end. I never got sea-sick the whole week luckily, so I guess a little car sickness as the only ailment of the trip isn't too bad though!

Cruise Day 2 - 4 St. Thomas, At Sea & Barbados

We woke up on Monday at the beautiful St. Thomas! This was one of the stops of our honeymoon cruise and we were excited to be back!

Since this was our first day of vacation, I requested we have a chill day on the beach this day. St. Thomas is so beautiful, completely green with rolling hills and mountains. We went to Magan's Bay which ended up being the most picturesque setting for a beach that we went to all week. It was a bit crowded but we walked about 200 yards down the beach from the parking lot and found a more quiet spot that even had a picnic table and some shade.

We spent the day laying on the beach, in the water, walking along the beach ... that's about it! We ate a big breakfast and packed some snacks and fruit from the boat so we really didn't need lunch. We stayed until early afternoon and then headed back to the cruise terminal. The only thing I bought for myself the whole trip was a beach hat in a tourist store at the cruise shops here. I wore it every day for the rest of the trip :)

Right after being dropped off by the taxi, we're in paradise!

It was pretty crowded on the beach to our right

But not too many people on our left

View from our cab ride back to the terminal, this was the only day we saw other ships

My baby belly and me as we sailed away

St. Thomas is right next to Puerto Rico so it was a quick little trip there, but then on our next day we spent at sea as we traveled to the most southern of the islands, Barbados. This was a pretty chill day - we slept in a bit and then headed to a fancy brunch in the dining room. We ended up sitting next to 2 couples that we ended up making friends with and saw repeatedly for the rest of the trip. One couple was my same age, LDS and were celebrating the end of Medical School, about to head off to Maryland for a Residency - so funny they ended up being seated right next to us. The other couple was also young, recently married and were both chiropractors from Melbourne, Australia. We ended up running into them everywhere on the boat, especially in the Serenity adult area just about every evening during sunset. We even did the same excursion as both couples in St. Lucia. Tyler is friends with them on facebook now. After our breakfast we laid by the pool and read our books for a while, eventually had some lunch and at some point ended back in our room for an afternoon nap. That night was a formal night and while the entertainment was pretty lame on the ship, one of our favortie things to do was to watch the people taking the professional posed pictures which were so awkward! We would look through the photo galleries and try to find the most awkward poses and people. Might sound lame but it was pretty hilarious.

Our next island day we spent in Barbados! Tyler had looked up what to do on all the islands, and we were most interested in doing the snorkel with turtles! We were going to book it with a boat tour company but then he realized the turtle spot is less than a mile off the shore from a really nice beach. So instead we spent the day at the beach, and paid much less to have a smaller boat take us out to do some snorkeling for an hour or so. It was awesome to swim with turtles! There were probably about 8 swimming with us, and they go to this area every day because they know they'll be fed, but they are indeed wild! One of my favorite moments was swimming along with a baby turtle alone for about 5 minutes. It left the main area and went off and I just followed him or her, and it probably wasn't really a baby but it was much smaller than the others so I called it a baby :)

We "splurged" and paid for the chairs and umbrella - much needed shade for our ghost white skin.

About to jump in the water with our underwater camera!

We could have paid $100 and been on this party boat all morning with unlimited alcohol - although Jackson would have loved the pirate ship, I think we made the right choice with our day on the beach and a $20 boat ride out :)

The boat also took us to 2 sunken ships to snorkel!

The view back to our beach

Tyler snorkeled out and found a star fish!

These pics of us holding it were Jackson's most favorite ones we showed him surprisingly!

We did our same routine of eating a big breakfast and brought some fruit to snack on during the day. We went back to the boat in the afternoon for a late lunch, then walked back down to the cruise terminal with free wifi and were able to facetime with our kids :)

Abbie was so cute, and excited to show us her new purple elephant :)

About to head back to the boat and say bye-bye to Barbados!

Southern Caribbean Cruise

The last week of April, Tyler and I went on an amazing trip to the South Caribbean. I guess you could call it a babymoon, aka the last time we'll go on a trip for at least a year or more without baby girl :) This was by far the longest and farthest I'd ever been away from my babies but it all went great. Jackson and Abbie spent 7 days with Grandma and 3 of the days with Grandpa too. They were so excited they hardly noticed we were gone. OK I think Abbie noticed a little bit, but Jackson had the week of his life it sounds like. We were able to get text and picture messages every day except our one at sea day (Tuesday) and even face-timed with them a few times. Vicki was so great to come out and take the week of work to be with our kids! 

We went to the first bit of church on Sunday morning, then left early while Abbie was in nursery and Jackson was in primary. This made the goodbye far less dramatic than it could have been at home which was probably best for all involved, especially me.

We got a direct flight on Jet Blue so made it down to Puerto Rico late that afternoon and boarded our ship, the Carnival Valor, an hour later. Probably one of the strangest feelings was flying without kids for the first time in over 4 years. I have been on probably 50 or so flights since Jackson was born ... all which included Jackson. And then Abbie too. So flying without extra bags, strollers, diaper bags oh ya and kids was pretty nice. I read, did Sudoku, watched a movie, closed my eyes - what is that?

Where is all our stuff?

Ready to go to Puerto Rico!

In the harbor - Old San Juan!

The ship didn't even leave the harbor until 10 pm so a little different schedule than the typical Florida cruise. It was a 7 day cruise with 5 different stops, the first was St. Thomas the next morning. I really didn't take any pictures on the boat. It was nice enough, but seriously we weren't there because of the boat - we went for the islands! We had a late dinner, watched the boat start to leave the harbor and waved goodbye to a dark San Juan. Then we headed downstairs, went to bed and woke up in St. Thomas :)