Bahamas Cruise and Florida Beauty!

We had a short but sweet vacation and I'm here to share all the deets with you! Special thanks to mom, dad, and the DeLongs for watching Clara for us (and Jason and Katie for taking her to Brigham for us). 

We took a 5pm flight to Fort Lauderdale on Friday and got to the Ramada Inn around 3:00 am (1:00am UT time). 

 This is the only picture I got of the "resort" at Ramada Inn. A good sized hot tub, pool, and bar. They do include all of your meals but there was much to be desired --especially after the way they describe it in the emails and make it sound fancy as an "all-inclusive resort". It was super old and there were little tiny bugs running over the counter in the bathroom. Ah well, we didn't care because we wanted to explore Fort Lauderdale anyway!

Slept in a bit Saturday and woke up in time to grab breakfast at the hotel and do a segway tour at noon. We had an hour tour of the Hugh Taylor Birch park. It was such an awesome place with so much to see. A fun, tree covered bridge, bannion trees, and a trail that ran along the intercostal waterway. Segways are the coolest little motorized thingies! Definitely do a segway tour the next chance you get. 

 Did a little exploring on a cute street called "Las Olas Boulevard". They had way delicious homemade gelato and a bakery. Our diet pretty much went out the window for the cruise and it was way crazy because I would get super bloated after meals or too much sugar, like think 4 months pregnant (TMI?). Anyway, we are back on track now and feeling much better. But the gelato was AMAZING.

We went for the beach for a couple of hours and took a snooze under a palm tree. Then we played in the waves for a bit. It wasn't great for swimming because of the current and huge waves coming in. 

A Gondola ride was a great was to end the evening. We went all around the intercostal waterway. We saw tons of amazing homes, boats, yachts, etc. and really neat vegetation. We saw several iguanas pretty close up too!

Sunday we drove up to Palm Beach and boarded the Grand Celebration for our 3 day cruise. The ship departed around 5:00pm and arrived in the Bahamas early Monday morning. 

A picture of our room. Don't mind the mess ;). 

Our favorite thing to do on the cruise ship was to enjoy the live music. There was a piano player who played and sung some James Taylor and other similar artists, a saxophone, latin music, and it was fun to get a sampling of it all! There were also some shows with a few cool magic tricks and acrobatics. 

There was plenty of partying, drinking, gambling, etc. going on as well. We didn't feel like we were missing out at all by not participating! We did watch our friend from dinner play "Craps". He made at least $300 when we last saw him. 

I also won a free 15 min neck/shoulder massage- woohoo!

 My favorite room on the ship! They call it the library. This is where we played checkers while we listed to the saxophone player and singer.

 Sunrise breakfast at 6am! Totally worth it.

We spent our day in the Bahamas (Freeport) with the CocoNutz Cruisers! It was an electric bicycle tour. We LOVED it! Our tour guides, Alfredo and Genie were the most personable, funny people ever and they included everything we need in their tour price ($89) including pick up and drop off, providing water, a snack, lunch, snorkeling gear, even sun screen and towels. 

Just a house I thought was cute.

Dolphins! We rode by this place. They do dolphin shows here and they also rehabilitate dolphins from the wild here.

We stopped at this amazing beach and learned the history of the Bahamas. It was quite fascinating! It was discovered by Columbus and taken over by pirates at one point, including the famous Blackbeard!

We stayed at this beach to receive an in depth Conch lesson. Then we ate a scrumptious conch salad (fresh tomatoes, green bell pepper, onion, conch, lime juice. Conch doesn't have a strong fish taste. It might actually be my new favorite shell fish--especially in a fresh salad, mmmmm!

Then it was time for lunch. We went to Banana Leaf bay. The food was wonderful and the view was even more spectacular. 

Josh impressed everyone with his mad coconut climbing skills. Do you see the height of that tree?! We opened up one of the coconuts right there and tried to take the other one home with us but they took it at customs because they were scared of bugs. 

 

We ended the day with snorkeling. Not really a lot to see but it was still fun! 

Found this random tire swing and naturally we had to get a photo!

Our ship arrived back at Palm Beach Tuesday morning around 8am. We decided to continue exploring before our flight out of Palm Beach at 3pm. 

So we went to the Mounts Botanical Garden and it was paradise!! I could have spent all day at this place. 

The butterfly garden was so pretty and we saw tons of butterflies.

 Jackfruit.

Our last adventure was at the McCarthy Wildlife Sanctuary. This place is owned by an Elderly Couple and they actually live on the property. You have to have a guided tour to enter the sanctuary.

It is REALLY neat because you get to hear the stories about how each animal came to the sanctuary and as you can see from the pictures, you get to hold several of them!

Kinkajous are my new favorite animal ever ever. 

 



And that's a wrap! We had a great time and saw and did more than we expected to!