Today we were docked in Dominica. We had a river tubing excursion that was a lot of fun. We drove on a bus up into the hills and got on tubes (with ridiculous helmets and life vests) and floated down the river. The water level was low, so there was plenty of excitement in rapids and rocks that could be bounced into. We had a blast, and my experiences in tubing on the Prairie River in Merrill growing up definitely helped here. There were a lot of people just strewn throughout the river stuck on various rocks and in places where water wasn’t flowing, but we managed to avoid most of that and had a great time.

Beach. Nothing more to add.

Justin saying hello to a Sea Turtle.

Turtles saying hello to us.

Incredible.

And after spending a day here, swimming with turtles and spending some time on a beach, floating in the sea, I know I will be returning to this paradise.

We are on Holland America for the first time, and the cruise line offers a few nice things that are new to us. The first is that each room has a DVD player and they provide a pretty comprehensive selection of DVDs that can be delivered, which is great, since we don’t usually go to the shows each night. The second nice thing is that to go along with the movies, they offer a “Ship Flicks” package of food – 4 sodas, 3 snacks (Snickers, Twix, chips, pretzels, etc..), 2 bowls of mixed nuts, a bucket of ice, and 2 packs of popcorn, all for $10, which in the cruise world is a smoking deal. Also, each afternoon they drop off a door hanger for breakfast, and you can pick what you want delivered, and at what time – fruit, juice, muffins, yogurt, and all sorts of other stuff. Very convenient, especially on days when we have shore excursions right away in the morning. Saves a lot of time having to elbow old people out of our way to get to the buffet.

Yesterday we hung out in our cabin a lot. This is the first cruise where we’ve had a balcony, and we are definitely using it as much as we can. It’s great to be able to just open a door and step outside to read or get some sun. Julie and I agree that we like this better than we expected to. Last night we dined at the specialty restaurant on ship – the Pinnacle Grill. We weren’t as impressed by the specialty restaurant on this ship as we have been with similar restaurants on other ships. Service was slow and overly “showy”. The food was, of course, very good, but we’ll probably just stick to the dining room from here on in. The food in the dining room is much better than what we’ve had on other cruise lines, so that’s an easy trade off. We’ve also enjoyed spending time reading and playing Scrabble in the library, although, as you can tell from the picture, the Scrabble set they have is a hodge-podge. This is what I am blaming for my losses the last two days.

Today we had our first on shore day, in St. Maarten. We had a shore excursion right away at 8:30, only about 10 minutes after the ship was docked. We were driven to the highest point on the island. We got a lot of interesting history about the island, which is actually split into French and Dutch sides, each with different currencies, laws, and culture. After we got to the top of the peak (about 1400 ft. above sea level), we hiked down through the rain forest (Buddy included), hearing all about the history of the island and it’s various exports in the past – sugar, salt, rum, etc…

We got dropped back off at the pier and stumbled across a patisserie right by the boats, so we treated ourselves to some macarons and spent the afternoon relaxing on the balcony.

Couldn’t ask for a better day!

A beautiful way to start the day!

Quite happy.

]]> http://fravelicious.com/2012/02/14/a-valentines-day-at-sea/feed/ 0 jbgasper first morning julie 2-13 http://fravelicious.com/2012/02/13/sail-away/ http://fravelicious.com/2012/02/13/sail-away/#comments Mon, 13 Feb 2012 21:56:04 +0000 jbgasper http://fravelicious.com/?p=3163 ]]> We’ve boarded the SS Noordam, a Holland America cuise ship, this afternoon, and we’re super excited to be headed out in just a few minutes for the Southern Caribbean.  This will be our fifth cruise, but first with Holland America.  Hopefully we’ll be able to connect to the internet here and there and give you some updates as the days go by.

Our stateroom, with a balcony! Always had inside cabins in the past.

Immediately enjoying the balcony!

Exploring the ship, looking out over Fort Lauderdale.

Instead, we drove to a nearby theater and watched “The Artist,” which we both really liked and would highly recommend.  We also grabbed dinner at a recommended seafood joint, Captain Charlie’s Reef Grill.

It was a funny little old-fashioned place, but the steady stream of people in and out and the great local seafood combined for a nice find for a meal.

How our day started... a bit of a slow start.

And after a few hours of driving south from Daytona Beach, stopping on the highway for a good amount of time because of an accident, and dealing with stressful work issues, we arrived in Palm Beach.

And all became right with the world.

Stress Release!

The waves were warm and fantastic to play in! And apparently, extremely frightening!

Good-night, Palm Beach.

Thank you for making our day a bajillion times better.

Julie, braving the elements on the beach.

Buddy got a chance to sit out on our 1 foot balcony before dinner, but sadly it’s now raining pretty hard.  Didn’t stop us from venturing out to the beach, if only for a few minutes.

Buddy, high up

Since we had a slow day, I’ll share some of the photos from my phone we took yesterday at the Atlanta aquarium.  Please to enjoy.

Julie, petting a shark

There were quite a few fish in this tank

Julie, getting touchy-feely with a sea anemone

This sea otter had a bucket that it loved

These things can live to be 100 years old and have a claw-to-claw width of 12 feet!

This tank was the best - they had 4 whale sharks

My day was made when we saw a life size Lady Rainicorn

Look! There's a fish in the window!

We walked from our hotel over to the Georgia Aquarium, only about 5 blocks.  We were able to slowly wander through the exhibits, worked at steering clear of the herds of 5 year olds, reaching into tide pools to touch sharks, rays, and sea urchins, watched an extraordinarily awkward dolphin show (less singing, more dolphins please!), and in general enjoy exploring this aquarium.

What a funny perspective! Justin is in the lookout dome, though it looks like he is in a tank with the fish looking at him!

It was rather funny to be behind this group of little kids as the moving sidewalk went through the Whale Shark's tank. All the pointing fingers, gasps of awe, and little shouts of "look at that!". It is a pretty impressive portion of the aquarium.

There is a special frog exhibit going on right now, and it actually was one of my favorite parts! Though this particular frog twitched funny and Maria might have almost tipped over!

After the Aquarium, we walked around and through Centennial Olympic Park and stopped at a little hamburger stand, Googie Burger, for lunch.

Buddy, enjoying the freedom not being a plant offers.

We really weren’t expecting too much, but these burgers and fries were a hit!  Buddy, recently emerged from his brown shell as a real pig, enjoyed Googie Burger as well!

CNN Headquarters

From the park we walked over the CNN Headquarters and purchased tickets for the studio tour.  It was pretty interesting to listen to the director produce the live shows, watch some of the live feeds, and see the news room floors.  I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so many monitors in one place in my life!

Interior of CNN. The Studio tours starts by riding up the escalator to the 8th floor, inside the globe.

This escalator was Justin's dream come true. Maria's, not so much.

CNN's newsroom. Where all the news from around the country and world gets filtered down to what actually makes it on the air.

As close to Anderson Cooper as we could get... in the gift shop.

In all, we had a fun day taking in some of the Atlanta sites and visiting with Maria.  We’re glad we took the extra time for this stop!