Jason and I didn't really go on a honeymoon after we got married. (Well, the fact that I was leaving for a nursing study abroad in Ghana, Africa two weeks after we got married didn't help with honeymoon plans) We agreed when we got married that we would save our money for a big trip after we graduated a year later. So this trip was a celebration of our marriage, our one-year anniversary, graduation, and it was our last hurrah before medical school. So we went all out. We went on a Royal Caribbean cruise to the Eastern Caribbean.
It was really amazing.
Our cruise started in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Then over the next week we stopped in the Bahamas, St. Thomas, and St. Maarten.
Bahamas
The Bahamas was...okay. We stopped there on a Sunday, which was a bummer. So we didn't really do much. We walked around the city and played around on one of the beaches. It was cloudy. Then it rained.
Then we dressed up fancy for dinner on the ship.
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| I ate the entire thing. |
St. Thomas
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| Pulling into St. Thomas |
Once we docked in St. Thomas, we got onto a little ferry and went to a nearby island called St. John. We could have stayed there for the rest of our trip. It was quiet, not crowded with tourists, and incredibly beautiful.
We snorkeled on this beach for almost an hour. It was fun to see all sorts of little fish swimming around us. The two hours we had at Trunk Bay on St. John went by way too fast. After we finished snorkeling, our time on the beach was almost up. We were wishing we could stay there for the rest of the day, relax on the beach, and watch the sunset from the soft sand on Trunk Bay. We'll definitely go back there in a few decades, you know, maybe as a celebration of getting out of medical school debt and all that.
When we got back from St. John, we still had a few hours to kill before we had to be back on the ship. So we made a spur-of-the-moment decision and decided to take a cab to Magen's Bay on St. Thomas. This is one of the most popular beaches in the entire world. The timing of everything worked out perfectly; we got to Magen's Bay in the evening after the rush of people on the cruise ship had left. We basically had the beach to ourselves!
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| Lovebirds. |
St. Maarten
Our next stop was St. Maarten. This day was really fun as well. Months before we went on our cruise, we looked into some excursions on the islands where we were stopping. Jason saw that there was an excursion on St. Maarten called "The Extreme," and he really wanted to do it. It involved ziplining through the jungle, obstacle courses, and rope walks. He then proceeded to tell me that he is "really good at obstacle courses, honey. One time when I was in high school, I did an obstacle course and I got second place in the whole school...and I even had to run back and finish the last obstacle that I had forgotten, which added like 10 seconds to my time!" How could I say no after that story? We signed up for the The Extreme.
And it turned out to be one of the highlights of our trip.
We rode up this huge hill to the highest point on the island in the back of a jankity truck and got all hooked up and strapped in for the ziplining. Then we ziplined and walked on ropes all the way down the mountain back to the lodge where we started. The ziplines progressively got longer and longer as we went down--one of the last ones we rode was 1200 feet long! I had ziplined before in Ecuador and done some pretty crazy positions, so I asked the instructor if we could go down backwards on the long line. He was hesitant at first, but then he said that we could. So on the 1200 foot zipline above the treetops, I rode with my back parallel to the trees, my head hanging backwards, rushing toward the next platform. Jason followed suit right after me. It was such a rush.
After ziplining we still had several hours before we needed to head back to the ship, so we decided to check out Maho Beach. We had heard about this beach and had looked at pictures online, but were skeptical about it (okay I was the skeptical one). This beach is located directly behind an airport runway, so planes take off and land right over the beach where all the people are. The planes get so low, it's amazing. So we went to check it out for ourselves.
Well, the pictures we saw online were real.
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It was pretty amazing to see the planes landing and taking off so close to us. The landing was really cool and fun. But the taking off. Oh my. The thrust from the airplane send sand flying everywhere. And fast. It felt like we were in a horrible sand storm. The sand was burning our skin as it was being blown from the airplane thrust. It was awful. But still worth it. I'm glad we went and checked it out.
Here are some highlights from our days on the ship
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| Watched sunsets |
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| Took a cha cha class. Don't worry, mom, the instructors told us to do that pose ;) |
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Our favorite thing to do on the ship was the flow rider. We would get there at like 9:00 am when it opened. We mostly boogie boarded, but we also tried the stand up surfing, too. SO. HARD. We wiped out big time and had bruises on our bums to prove it. By the end of the week we were hopping up on our knees, jumping to our bums, and attempting 360s (never succeeded. Guess we need to go on another cruise to keep practicing ;))
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| Watched some water/diving performances |
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| Won the doubles ping pong tournament and got some rad Royal Caribbean medals. |
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| fell deeper in love and savored every moment we had together. |
I'm so grateful that we did this. We had the best time. It was the perfect celebration of life and love and achievement. It felt good to do something that made us feel like we are living the life we imagine now. Cause that life is really, really good.
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