Caribbean Cruise Pt. 1

So excited to blog about our cruise! It was with Royal Caribbean on the Freedom of the Seas, and 7 nights! The ship left from Port Canaveral, Florida and the ports of call were Haiti (Labadee), Jamaica (Falmouth), Grand Cayman (Georgetown), and Mexico (Cozumel).

Just Boarded the ship! After our long overnight journey from LA! (First and LAST Red Eye ever)

The real reason I went on the cruise, to see how much this man can eat with no limitations. Needless to say, my entertainment was excellent! "Come on, you can eat one more plate I know you can" "Chug chug chug"

Our cabin!

 Our travel agent got these sent to our room for "graduation" (she is seriously the best) SO YUMMY!

 We spent some time exploring the ship and went up on deck as we pulled out of port.


We were suckers for all the shows, seriously I think we went to all of them. They had a MAGIC SHOW! Who doesn't love a Magic Show....



Day One was spent "at sea" so we discovered some hidden talents of ours. First all, napkin artistry. Reese is really a visionary when it comes to folding those table linens. Second, Salsa dancing. I begged Reese to go to a class and he ended up loving it, but I loved it more. HAHA!


HAITI! 

 This port was really unique! R.C. bought all the land in this port and fenced it off, so it was like getting off the R.C. ship to the R.C. island. They brought lunch out and all the activities were by R.C. which made it convenient. I wouldn't say it was an "authentic" Haitian experience at all, but it made for a really fun beach day! The water was beautiful and the beach was amazing. We played some sand volleyball and walked out "Dragons Breath" point but spent most of our time on the beach. We didn't book an excursion here and I wouldn't advise it! Everything is there for you. My best advice would be to get off the ship early to make sure you get a nice shady spot on the beach, those went quick!

 This was 10 seconds after we had showered ourselves in sunscreen, which was a daily occurrence.

 The first formal night! It is so hard to walk in heels on a rocking cruise ship! We were cracking up, so glad I survived.

 JAMAICA!

This place was crazy! In a strange turn of events, we found out our excursion got cancelled the night before we were supposed to get to Jamaica. AHHH! We were lucky and were able to re-schedule an excursion that night. We ended up going zip-lining and river tubing and it was fun! PROBLEM: We weren't allowed to take pictures because the excursion guys wanted us to buy the ones they took of us, so we had to hide our camera and we only snuck this ONE. So, lame right?! Oh well.

The zip lining was really fun and so beautiful! HIGHLY recommend doing it! The river tubing is where it got interesting. Reese and I had a guide who paddled us down the river, he was facing us and talking to us the whole time. I'm not going to lie I totally felt like a lazy American watching him do all of the work, and I wanted to grab a paddle the whole time, but that's what they do there so I rolled with it. Anyways, it was straight out of a movie! The jungle was so cool and the views were amazing. Then, it started to drizzle, then rain, then POUR. It was RAINING LIKE CRAZY! All the bugs in the swamp were going nuts and there were RED ANTS crawling all over my tube and I was flicking them all off one at a time (once again, feeling like a dumb American as our Jamaican guide was laughing at me). Meanwhile, thunder and lightning were RIGHT on us and I felt like a piece of meat ready to get roasted. Totally scary but seriously awesome. I thought it was pretty funny when our guide said "this is just a light drizzle in Jamaica" as I was watching the river level rising. Anyways, the lightning got so close our guide started to get worried. Luckily we were almost done and got out of the river. We were the first group to finish and our guide said "we can either wait for the truck, or we can run back to the lodge". Obviously we ran, it was so crazy! It had to be one of my favorite moments! We were running though the Jamaican jungle in a crazy rainstorm with this Jamaican dude who was seriously SO FAST (claims he is BFF with Usain Bolt, I actually believe him after eating his dust)! After that we got on our buses and went back to the cruise ship. All in all, pretty memorable.