Sea Day which means just chilling on the cruise ship.
Sea day to me means sleeping in day. So we slept in, but not so much that we missed breakfast. Then we went back and lounged in our room then we did different activities around the ship. Plus we read and relaxed together, which was nice until it started sprinkling rain. At first I thought it was just a big wave...but then my mind thought uhhh a big wave? We are up on the top deck. A wave wouldn't hit here.
Matson after a man did a demonstration of how to carve ice. This is an Indian (hence the reason why Matson put indian feather fingers on his head).
We watched the "Sexy Hairy Chest Competition"...interesting.
I kinda made Matson read Hunger Games. He started it on this trip and by this day he was already way into it.
After our relaxing day, we got ready for the formal night. We got dressed up and ate a yummy dinner of lobster and filet mignon.
Girls Turn!
I love that Matson & T* are hard core and C* is the little dorko (no offense, C*) on the end.
SO the night before this the dinner photographer told us as couples to take pictures by saying "Ok now the honeymooners turn." So tonight he said the same thing but talking to all 3 of the boys...they obviously thought it was too funny.
Then to us girls he said "Ohhh Charles Angels. So we all put our guns up?" So cheesy.
After dinner we went to another comedy show of Percy Crews and then played Mormon Bridge/Fingers/Oh Sh**! (or whatever your family calls it). We were all getting a little crazy and laughing like children...somehow the game turned into spin the bottle/truth or dare.
Playing the "1 Round" of Mormon Bridge
In the comedy act this night the comedian made fun of everyone taking pictures with their towel animals, so we went right to our room and took a picture with it. The funny thing is we didn't do it until this night after he had already made fun of it.
Next post=Barbados, yes friends the home of Rihanna I only know all of this because of F*, she was pumped that Rihanna may actually be there because she had a huge concert there like the week or two before.
again peoples you do not have to read this. this is for me and I guess for the die hard Every Saturday Is Waffle Day followers...so just look at the pictures and videos and maybe leave me a comment telling me that I am cool because my blog post slash me entertained you for 30 seconds of your long life.
Day 3: St. Thomas St. Thomas-I did not know what to expect and I had no high expectations or anything, but I look back now and it easily could of been my favorite port (and not just because I got my new favorite purse there at a flea market).
Welcome to ST. THOMAS. best thing about this picture=Matson's eyes are closed. Did I not tell you that he closes his eyes in every single picture...we will need a whole post about my husband's closed eyes in photographs disorder very soon.
We started the day shopping at the shops right by where we got off the ship but that was expensive and in other words is a waste of my time but we did look around just for a little bit anyway.
a white rasta man I found for sale in a shop
seriously so many guys in the Caribbean pull this look off well. Me=not so much.
Like I said earlier we decided to leave the shops fast cause once I saw one of those horrible quality, nasty, shrinks after one wash "someone who loves me went to St. Thomas and bought me this t-shirt" shirt for $12 I knew it was time to hop out of the tourist shopping area.
Yeah it doesn't say St. Thomas..but you are catching my drift ya?
That is when we decided to walk the quick mile to the flea market, but MAN it was toasty hot.
Just walking on St. Thomas's boardwalk with all the pretty yachts and our cruise ship behind me
We saw this iguana just chillin' on the grass. Matson tried to get close and touch it but it just kept crawling away. Man those things crawl so weird looking (like a croc or gator) but they are surprisingly fast!
Us with (I think) St. John behind us
Matson stepped in something and so he needed to wash his feet off in the ocean. I promise on my life he did not make that cement dock sink down like that, it is just like that. I mean it was only our 2nd day of the cruise we hadn't eaten that much yet.
Our taxi driver "Supa" found us at the flea market and he ended up being pretty cheap and totally worth it he took us on a beautiful drive even though it was a little scary driving so close to other cars on winding hilly roads and he helped us decide not to go to St. Thomas's neighboring island St. John by saying, "If I am on St. Thomas I stay on St. Thomas. If I am on St. John I stay on St. John. Soooo you are on St. Thomas so you stay on St. Thomas." So there you have it people St. John is similar to St. Thomas so forget the $5-$10 ferry/boat ride over there and stay on St. T. Supa played his rasta music "supa" loud and told us all about the island including all his baby mamas (who happen to actually live in Florida?) And craziest thing, the other people on our taxi ride with us was a nice LDS family from Vegas that knew people we know there ♫ it's a small world ♫ Here's a video of us on the way to Coki beach from the flea market.
Coki beach may have been one of my favorite beaches that we went to on our trip. It had some of the funnest snorkeling (Matson, C*, and T* saw a shark...not just a little one but a real one. They were 20 feet away from it!) and we only rented the gear like $5 per person. There were a lot of pretty colored fish, I wish we had borrowed my parents under water camera.
Us in our snorkel gear!
The guys being guys. Then before we knew it BAM...
they were mooning the camera. i seriously think this was my husband's idea. of course. and tali was too fast for my old camera to catch.
This is when all of us women realized our husbands are not our husbands but more like our childreni have actually always know this of matson but at this time on Coki beach it was truly apparent. If you don't believe me watch these next two video of them running into the water with their flippers on. They thought it was hilarious.
On our taxi ride back "Supa"for those of you wondering, his friends seriously call him Supa...so for now on friends in blogging world I would like to be referred to as "Uhmazing" waiting for us all day while we chilled at the beach then he took us back to our cruise ship but he took us on the scenic route and stopped to show us Megan's bay and other pretty places of St. Thomas.
Us all at a look out spot! I love that T* is video taping, even during a picture being taken. PS: just ignore my nappy part down the middle after beach but not cute after the beach hair look.
I promise my husband wears a shirt usually. he was just drying off after the beach. This is Matson with Megan's bay behind him.
We got back onto the cruise ship and got ready for our dinner. At dinner we met our waiter, Mario, and assistant waiter, J.R.. They were so cool and very nice!
After dinner we went and took those cheesy and SO not worth paying 24 bucks per print cruise photos with C* and T*. Just in case you can't tell...we took them as a joke.
Someone please buy Matson a little sailor hat for Christmas, it just looks so swell on him.
I believe this was the picture when our photographer said, "now look into her eyes." I am pretty sure he didn't say eat your wife.
To end our night we went to a comedy show in a lounge on the ship. The comedian was hilarious, seriously one of the best comedians I have heard in a long time. His name is Percy Crews II, we got a kick out of him so much that we went to all of his shows!
Cue the announcer voice Next on Every Saturday is Waffle Day you will read allllll about our 4th Day on our trip which equals Sea Day.
I said this in Day 1 post of our trip but I will say it again...this will probably be long so Read all you want or just look at the pictures which is what I do when I read magazines.
Day 2: San Juan Ate breakfast at the 801 restaurant in our hotel. We lied to our hotel saying that our "friends" met up with us at the hotel so we needed them to keep all our luggage. But really we all stayed at the hotel and shared a room and only told them that two of us were staying there because they charged extra if 4 adults were in a room and we are cheap young college student couples.After breakfast we headed to the San Juan Fort. Yes, it sounds boring and historical which is totally usually not me BUT it was really interesting and you could look out over all of San Juan and see all the pretty views.
I'll let Matson introduce to you about it and let T* tell you about pretty much our whole trip of dumb taxi drivers in the video below:
We were just about to go in the first tunnel of the fortress. Low ceilings..
In between the picture above and the next picture Matson took this video of us being goobers:
My husband is reallllly great at opening his eyes in pictures. NOT. I think we have just 10 of these from this trip.
All these cannon balls piled on top of each other=a manly picture?
Matson was super excited because it really was his first time even seeing a cruise ship! He just had to get a picture with it. I love experiencing new things with Matson he gets so excited about things and he helps me to appreciate things so much more, when normally I would just be like oh there's the cruise ship...
All of the tunnels and archways were very short. Matson loved that he was super close to hitting it, made him feel tall.
A well in the fortress. Started to make me think about drinking out of it. Yuck, thank you modern pipes and plumbing!
They locked me in this dungeon room where some explorer guy was locked in and drew ships all on the walls.
After seeing this side of the fortress there is a 2nd part to it that was a little walk away. I think to get into one it was 3 dollars per person or something then to see the other one it was 2 dollars.
On the walk over we looked down and saw this really cool basketball court. Matson wished there was like a hard core game going on to watch.
Me in front of El Morro. In the field behind me there were a lot of people flying kites and picnicing (I know not a word but I use it).
My disrespectful husband mimicking Mary in this picture. We took this fast because we did not want to get in trouble from an old Puerto Rican woman.
Matson and I sitting on the wall of El Morro looking at the ocean.
A cannon...rusted and old but still cool.
After El Morro, we left and headed again to eat at our favorite yummy Pizza place that I talked about in Day 1. Got ourselves pizza again. Then went back to the hotel to pick up our luggage they were holding. Next we went to the cruise ship and went through the 30 minutes of annoying junk to get on the cruise ship.
Matson and I in front of the Carnival Victory
We went on the Carnival Victory, I had never been on a Carnival cruise. They definitely have more to do at night compared to other cruise ships I have been on, but it is not as nice as Royal Caribbean cruises or Princess cruise (the only 2 cruise companies I have been on-3 Royal Caribbean and 1 Princess). Even though the other ships are a little nicer and a little higher class, if I went again on this ship trip I would choose Carnival again just because it is half the price as Royal Caribbean and they go to pretty much the same ports and you still have the same fun. Who needs a little nicer dining room or theater?
We ate dinner with our swim clothes on because our luggage did not get up to our rooms on time for dinner kind of annoying to be in yucky clothes at a nice dinner but it was ok we did not sit in our normal spots that night because the first night was a little more casual you could do what you want. So our waiter that night was Jimmy and he teased us to death all night. One time he came over with a plate and asked C*, "did you have the chicken tenders?" and C* was all "uh...no. Who got chicken tenders?" Then all of us shook our heads no and thought oh no there is a mess up. Then Jimmy places the plate in front of C* and we all started laughing because it was the fish that C* order, Jimmy was just messing with us!
We were all out on the deck after dinner when the ship was leaving the port.
Matson loves nighttime lights and such so he (I guess we) enjoyed looking at San Juan at night.
F* all you bad thinkers: this does not stand for a swear word...this would be an appreciation for our friend's name ok ok back to F*, she for some reason did a toe touch randomly then we both started doing cheer like moves. It was hilarious because later that night someone came up to F* and asked her, "were you one of those girls doing cheerleader moves?" Uh...yes we were one of those weird crazy "drunk off water" chicks. we were being watched...embarrassing cause those toe touches of mine were not cute.
(Get your announcer voices out again people) Next on Every Saturday is Waffle Day you will come along and learn about one of our favorite days of the trip in St. Thomas!
I am going to blog about our trip port by port for a few reasons, one so I can remember each little funny story and place we went to and also because I have had many people ask me exactly what we did in these places and things we liked so that they could know for when they may go in the future. So here we go. Read all you want or just look at the pictures which is what I do when I read magazines.
Some friends and us or do I say we and some friends?? Anyway, we all decided to go on a cruise. Matson as a child never traveled much and my family is big on traveling so I just want to show him the world and all my favorite places that I have been. BUT the Caribbean, I had not been to many places there so we decided to cruise there. Matson and our group besides me had never been on a cruise either so Matson was very excited to even just see our cruise ship!
Day 1: San Juan
we arrived in San Juan a day early before our cruise left so that we could tour around San Juan. I had been there when I was a little kid but do not remember that. So we got there in the afternoon and went to our Courtyard Marriott where we all ZONKED out. We were exhausted from our flight that left SLC at 1am. We woke up and right away left outside to explore San Juan.
Right below our hotel was this restaurant called "801". Matson loved that. Our phone #?
We were all freaked out that their gas prices were so cheap! 99 cents!? Then after walking a little longer we all realized it is in liters. DUH! I do not do math, so I do not know if it really is cheaper or more expensive.
We were all CRACKING up because we had been back from the airport for 3+ hours and Matson's sister, T*, had this sticker from her luggage stuck to her that long.
The video below might be a good little introduction to us just walking around San Juan and there is something Matson likes to zoom in on in almost EVERY video (my Dad also has done this to my Mom their whole married life), so I thought I would just go ahead and show you it now so by the end of our trip blog you will be use to my bottom. You'll also see how Matson and T* both record on their video cameras at the same time and video tape each other. T* was always recording, he even recorded taxi rides? One of the trip jokes was about how F* and T* are going to have 15 children so in their videos we always talked to their 15 children and gave them advice and told them about their parents.
So that first day in San Juan after walking around for a long time, we ate at a really yummy Pizza restaurant (because we all weren't up for some Puerto Rican style food) called Pizza e Birra in Old San Juan. Go there! So good. We actually went there twice before we left for our cruise. This day for dinner and then on Day 2 for lunch before we got on the ship!
T* and Matson waiting for their pizza.
Me, F*, and T* were all so happy to get into some AC after walking around sweating through every single layer!
We then headed to walk around Old San Juan some more. We went into the Coach store and somehow ended up at this cool park that apparently was the Pigeon HANG OUT.
This wall had hundreds of little boxed holes for the birds to stay in. It was actually really cool.
I definitely feel that the holes were man made, but I wonder if at first the birds started making them themselves?
It was super scary because we were walking around and all the sudden at 8pm-ish which is not very late (to me at least) everyone was off the streets and it was only local people or creepies. So San Juan shuts down when it gets dark, we learned that quick and headed right back to our hotel where some of us went swimming at the hotel pool and played the pool game, Categories. Apparently, I am the only true child out of the group because I had to teach everyone (even Matson) how to play. some of you right now are probably thinking...yeah, what is this Categories game? It's just like the games Colors where you try to get across the pool without the "it" person hearing you but you can do all kind of categories like candy bars, movies, clothing brands, etc. and now even some of you are still think what the heck is Colors? well sorry to you people, just come swimming with me sometime and I can teach you. We played for a while and it was hilarious watching Matson and our friend T* try to be all graceful across the pool. After swimming we all went to sleep so we could wake up for our next day of exploring San Juan.
(Read this like an announcer at the end of pretty much every television show) In our next post on Every Saturday is Waffle Day, you'll read more about our adventures in San Juan and our first night on the cruise ship!
