Back from Vacation

As I mentioned yesterday, the reason you haven't heard from me in a while is that life got a little hectic and stressful as we were preparing for our vacation.  Mix in a large work project, shopping, packing, getting the house in order, a passport rejection letter as well as the sudden need to buy a new motorcycle and you have a recipe for a lot of stress with no time to write!

As I mentioned last year, we decided to take a family vacation this year.  It's been five years since our last big family vacation so Mike and I took the kids on a cruise to the Caribbean last week.  We spent seven days on the Serenade of the Seas and had a wonderful time.  Our itinerary included: Grenada, St. Lucia, Antigua, St. Croix and St. Thomas. 

I thought I'd share a few photos from our vacation with you.  In the near future I'll be doing a travel series talking about planning a vacation, checklists of things to do before hand as well as going into more detail about the various ports of calls.

The ship we were on sailed out of San Juan, we decided to fly in the day before so we could relax a little before boarding the ship.  Unfortunately, there was a little snafu at the airport with our transportation which made to a stressful start to our vacation.  Here's a picture of Mike and I enjoying ourselves at our hotel's beach.

Our first port of call was Grenada, an absolutely beautiful island.  We chose to do an island tour which we really enjoyed.  The stops included a spice plantation which is where this picture of the four of us was taken.  We also stopped at Crater Lake, Fort Edward and a waterfall where I got the opportunity to snuggle with a monkey!

Our second port of call was St. Lucia.  The island tour on Grenada was so enjoyable that we decided to do it again. However a second day in the car was a little to much for all of us.  Belle tends to get car sick and a lot of the information was the same.  However, we did get to see some pretty neat scenery like the volcano in Soufriere.  I wish I could package the smell for you, it was quite atrocious.  The picture below is Mike and the kids standing in front of the caldera.



When we decided to take the cruise we discussed what sorts of things we wanted to do on the islands.  Zip lining was high on three family member's list, just not on mine!  However, I was told that skipping the zip lining was not an option so I agreed to do it.  Even though I had stressed about having a panic attack, it was actually fairly enjoyable.  Here's Belle doing her first run.  Afterwards we did a rope challenge which was even more fun than the zip lining.

After three days of activity, we were all looking forward to a beach day.  A co-worker of mine who had taken the same trip last November recommended Rainbow Beach.  We were the first ones to arrive and had the beach to ourselves for about an hour.  Snorkel gear was available to rent at the beach so the four of us spent some time snorkeling.  We also got to see quite a few dolphins and soaked us some rays before it started pouring, sending us back to the ship for a dip in the hot tub before taking a nap.  Below is a picture of our ship from the beach.

Our last port of call was St. Thomas, home to one of the the most beautiful beaches in the world according to National Geographic.  It was quite pretty as you can see by the panoramic picture we took.  This was the last day of our trip so we wanted to do nothing but relax.  After leaving the beach we stopped in at the Harley Davidson store across the street from the pier and purchased our very first Harley t-shirts to commemorate the purchase of our new motorcycle. 

After arriving back at San Juan Saturday morning, we left the ship at 9:30am.  Unfortunately, the trip ended very much the way it started.  We had to wait outside the airport until noon, they couldn't find our reservation and one of us over loaded her suitcase requiring us to quickly reallocate items from one suitcase into another while a throng of people were waiting behind us.  You can't take some people anywhere!

As much as we enjoyed the trip, we were thrilled when we finally walked in the front door at midnight and crawled into our own bed.  Home sweet home!