Just a heads up, this will be the longest post in the history of time. I put the whole cruise into one post.
We got to go on a cruise with most of Tyler's family, to celebrate Tyler's graduation, and just for fun! This first picture is of me, waiting at the airport. The sweet green luggage strap, and the super cute hula girl luggage tag were birthday presents from my mom!
Flying into Chicago for our first lay over of the day.
I told Tyler the light was too bright, but he still wanted to take a picture! See the super awesome, bright green headphones Tyler got me for m birthday?
Flying into New York for our second layover of the day. See the statue of liberty?!
Chillin' in New York, eatin' pretzels.
FINALLY on our way to Miami!
SO, we get to Miami and go to the hotel. On the way to the hotel, the shuttle driver asks if we're with this "polka group" that's staying at the hotel. We think that's funny, laugh, and say no. Then we get to the hotel to check in. Ryan (Tyler's brother) flew in earlier than us, so Michelle and the kids went right up to there room. As we're checking in, the girl takes for EVER looking at the computer screen. We're not sure why, but after about 5 minutes of this, she tells us they don't have any non-smoking rooms left because the polka group came in with more people than they'd said, and they gave them ALL the non-smoking rooms that were left. We stare at them in disbelief, and they say there's nothing they can do. We check our resevation, and we reserved a non smoking room 3 months prior. THREE months. Still, they don't care. They tell us that we can take the smoking room, or basically, we can suck rocks and go to another hotel. So we get the key to the smoking room to see if maybe it's not so bad. I open the door, and I can already feel the lung cancer growing as the smoke screen smacks me in the face. How can hotels honestly have rooms like this? If I was a smoker, I wouldn't want to stay there. It was worse than any casino I'd ever been in. Needless to say, we refused the room. They were going to make us go to another hotel, but NONE of the hotels around had free rooms because it's the night before all the cruises load. Bryant and Robyn were supposed to be sharing a room with us as well, but their plane hadn't landed yet. When we finally realize that the people at the front desk REALLY aren't going to do ANYTHING for us, we made a deal with Ryan and Michelle that we'd ALL sleep in their room. That's 8 adults in 1 small hotel room. We left a message on Byrant's cell phone, and packed in for the night. When they got off the plane, they had quite a surprise waiting for them! The hotel people said they had at least 12 other groups that hadn't checked in yet, that they had no clean rooms for. POLKA PEOPLE SUCK. PLUS, I saw the freaking polka people smoking. Losers. I'll spare you the story of how the hotel lost our bag the next day and left it sitting on the curb for hours....
This is where I woke up for my 28th birthday. Yeah for me! Thank goodness Ryan and Michelle had a room!
My birthday outfit! Headband courtesy of Walgreens the night before!
My birthday burrito on the cruise
The room!
Watching the boat pull away from the dock.
The whole gang
The girls went down and danced! We won free margaritas (gross), free calamari, t-shirts, and these sweet color changing hair clips, all just for dancing!
Sunset as we head into the Caribbean
The girls
The Boys
Gorgeous!
My birthday dinner
The Johnson's drank milk for dinner EVER night...
My diet-orange-made-with-sugar-substitute birthday cake!
No, I didn't ask for this, this was the cake they had for the night, but I DID get a candle, and they're illegal on the ship so I felt pretty special.
Dress up night on day 2!
Obligatory ice cream cone
First port: Grand Cayman!
We hit a beach on our way to the boat headed to stingray island
On the boat. YES, I brought the cast to Twilight along. EVERYONE commented on how much they loved the movie!
Stingray island! It's really a sandbar where all these boats anchor
Stingrays
I'm TOUCHING it!!! They were so soft!
We did kiss it, although we don't have a picture of it
it's mouth
He asked for a volunteer and I raised my hand. I instantly regretted it. Turns out, I just got a free stingray massage!
The food. YES, I did feel it bite me when it took the bait!
After the stingrays, they dropped us off to snorkel
First iguana sighting. Do you see him?
That night on the boat, the girls sang karaoke. The boys would NOT get up there. Turds. Anyway, we sang, "Girls just wanna have fun" and I didn't realize, until we got on stage, that I don't know the words to that song. The chorus seems easy, but it's NOT!!
Dancing to 80's music!! I LOVE that almost everyone danced!
Next stop, Roatan, Hondurus
We got taxis for the day and they took us all over. Our first stop was to see the MONKEYS!! This little guys it their version of an ant eater.
Mamma and baby
They love getting into pockets. The guide told us that one of them had shredded a $20 earlier that day.
I had bobby pins in my hair, and he REALLY wanted them! See how he's just sitting on my shoulder? SO cool!! I'm pretty sure this was my most favorite part of the cruise ever.
Tyler, on the outside
Parrots
Mini parrot, I think
After the monkeys, we headed to a weird little place with steps into the ocean and went snorkeling. The snorkeling wasn't amazing because it was in the surf, so we didn't take many pictures in the water. Here's the cool shower right near the ocean.
Walking through the touristy part of Roatan
Eating at a small local quesedilla shop
This is the non-chicken-y bone that I found in my chicken quesedilla. I let Tyler finish it for me.
Our last stop was a sweet beach that we wish we'd spent more time at.
Getting back on the boat. I LOVE that it's all lit up!
Next stop, Belize
Our guides were crazy, but really cool locals
We went cave tubing up in the mountains.
The gang
We all jumped off the huge, sweet rock at the trail head before we started hiking
Before tubing, we had to hike through the rain forest. It was REALLY cool. The guides showed us a lot of cool stuff, and they had us taste things periodically. The boys tasted this NASTY leaf, and were were all hesitant to taste things after that, but nothing was ever as bad as the first thing.
Getting termites
For EATING. The tasted minty!
Getting in the water.
We had to link up in smaller groups, so here's the first half of us
And the second half of us
The caves were awesome! I wish the group behind us wasn't so loud though
As part of the tour, we got some native lunch. It was AWESOME! The rice and beans were cooked with coconut milk, and the chicken was cooked so long that it basically just fell apart. It was AMAZING!
Next stop: Cozumel
We got off the boat and headed to town. Little did we know, she shops wouldn't open for 2 hours. Woops!
One of the "beaches" in Cozumel.
They had these weird decorations all along the shore
Robyn and I got our free virgin-margaritas at Jimmy Buffet's. Margaritas are GROSS. I can't image that adding alcohol would have made it taste any better. YUCK!
Roger's Boots
We decided to pay for a small tour group to take us snorkeling. They told us we'd have a "private tour". Little did we know, that meant, "We'll stick you all on this super tiny boat." Then, they dropped us off right next to the cruise ship. Nice.
They gave us tortillas for the fish. They worked GREAT!
OK, So, Michelle (my sister-in-law) is going to kill me when she finds this, but I'll just have to suffer the consequences. Tell me something, if you're out in the middle of the deep ocean snorkeling, and you have to pee, where do you go? In the OCEAN, right? So, we went snorkeling TWICE off this little boat, meaning she had multiple opportunities to discretely empty her bladder.....
As we're driving down the coast in this little boat, Michelle starts asking, "how long until we get there?" The guys in charge tell her it won't be long. Then her questioning starts getting more urgent. We question her, and find out she has to pee. We all jokingly talk about how she should have gone in the ocean, how she can hang her butt over the side if she wants, how we'll stop and go "snorkeling" again, just for her. Then, all of a sudden, she NEEDS A BUCKET NOW. So we stop this little tiny boat, where we're all so close we're touching our neighbors from shoulder to ankle, and she climbs to the front of the boat to squat over the bucket that these guys clean snorkeling gear in. Within a minute or two, she's feeling, "much better" and we're on our way. Robyn held a towel up for her to "hide" behind, but this was a really little boat. She was so preoccupied, she doesn't even know that we took several pictures of her.
AFTER the incident, she tries to swear everyone to secrecy.
That is MUCH too late, let me tell you! :)
Back to the boat for our final day at sea.
This is a picture of the moon shining on the ocean, as seen from Byrant and Robyn's deck. Isn't is gorgeous!?
The last night on board, eating my chocolate melting cake (we each had this at least once a night).
They had some games on the ship, and Robyn and I each won a 24 karat, solid gold plastic ship trophy. Robyn won hers from "who wants to be a millionaire," and I played a game show where I went up on stage and had an electronic score board. I had to answer questions about music and TV trivia from the 80's and 90's. I'm lucky I got anything right! I had NO points at all until Robyn mouthed an answer to me and I totally cheated. The host stepped aside and asked me if I'd cheated, I told him, "YES!" No one else knew the answer and he said he was going to give me some pitty points anyway, so he said, "we won't tell anyone then." And it got better from there! By the way, the answer she fed my was David Lee Roth.
After we got off the cruise, we got a rental car and drove down to the Everglades.
Getting ready to go on our first air-boat ride EVER!!
Our crazy driver, feeding his wild bird friend.
The first alligator we saw! Can you see him? Robyn spotted him!
This guys swam right by the boat!
We're going REALLY fast here. Can you tell by Tyler's hair blowing back?! :)
It was REALLY fun!!
The driver got REALLY close to this alligator that he affectionately called, "Jumper"
This guy was CRAZY. He's holding a baby puma here.
When he collected everyone's tickets, he had this huge scorpion on his hand.
Yes it was alive, and yes it was gross! He would get REALLY close and touch people with it, then we would pretend to fall up the steps and it would land on someone. People were FREAKING out.
He also had a toad that he mad a lady kiss. This is the skunk that he proceeded to "accidentally" shoot people with as he talked about it. We thought it was real skunk juice for a minute. It was really water, but it had gone in Tyler's mouth and he almost threw up before he realized the guy was joking!
Then he brought out this alligator!! The alligator was SO soft! I'm seriously considering a purse or some shoes made out of one of these guys! Don't think badly of me, they can make it after they die- even this preserve was selling things made out of alligator skin.
Then we headed to South Beach.
Minor detail that I'm wearing a coat on the beach.
MaiTy 2010!
We were at the beach while I ship passed with the next set of passengers!
That night, we concluded our amazing vacation with a taste of some "real" BBQ. I put real in quotes, because this was my first taste of anything close to "real," but I'm sure it's not that good.
Yummy brisket!
OK, I think I'm finally done for now. We had a wonderful time, except that we both got sick, but you'd never know it from the pictures!! We had a BLAST!!
