January of Traveling, Pt 2: Cruising (Princess Cays and Disembarkation)

Today was our last day! It was bittersweet. We have had a great time, but we're also a little bit ready to get back to normal life. (I imagine you're a little bit ready to get back to our normal blogging, too. For starters, less of it!)

We took a "tender" to shore today - that just means a smaller boat. (Actually, I think they used the life boats to do the ferrying. They were hardcore lifeboats.) So, you get off the ship into a lifeboat, and they run the ferry back and forth all day long. Today's stop was to a small island in the Bahamas that the cruise line owns. The island is called Eleuthera. Actually, the cruise line only owns part of the island, but anyway. It was nice to finally have a stop like I thought all of them would be - dropping you off at the beach. It was great to get to go to a beach without having to do any work or spend any extra money to get to it. My coloredy dress worked great as a coverup, to save my sunburned back. We looked at some shops, which were way better and cheaper than most of what we saw on our trip. I almost ALMOST bought an old blue and yellow Bahamas license plate for $10, and I'm still a little bit mad I didn't, except Jon convinced me that it would be cooler to just hang up license plates for places where we actually owned cars. This is Good Logic. It was just a relaxing day. The island is pretty much just an extension of the ship while you're there - we had burgers and BBQ and fruit for lunch that were all the same food as from the ship, and didn't cost extra money. We laid out and waded and swam and I did some snorkeling. (We didn't want to rent the expensive snorkeling gear, and while we were swimming around a lady offered to let us use her mask. That was so awesome of her. I got some pictures with our camera.) The water was ridiculously clear - we could see all the way to the bottom in the 15-20ft harbor that the tenders were using.

Back on the ship, we went swimming and then watched "The Sting" from the hot tub (it was on the big screen) while we pulled away from the island. I love that movie. Then we went to pack and get ready for our last night on the ship. We had to have the bulk of our luggage outside our stateroom door before we went down to dinner, so we spent some time packing (again, bittersweetly). Then we headed to dinner, where Jonny had steak and I had a Thanksgiving dinner sort of thing. (I wasn't very impressed with their tri-tip on the first night, so I didn't really get distracted by silly things like steaks for most of the trip.) We shared three desserts - that chocolate mousse brownie "princess dream love boat" thing that I got the first night, an "ice cream bombe," and some rhubarb and dark cherry sorbet. And then, later, I got an ice cream cone covered in as many rainbow sprinkles as the girl could fit on there. You gotta go all out for your last one. It was terrible, but you know. It was my last chance to walk up to the counter and get handed free ice cream with sprinkles. There's sort of a rush to that experience.

For the rest of the night we just wanted to take part in the entertainment on the ship, so we went club hopping (there were like four clubs with different stages and entertainment). Unfortunately, there wasn't anything great going on. We went to the piano bar again, which was fun for awhile, but he was doing a lot of stuff we didn't know, so we didn't stay long. The video below was the best song we heard - "Battle Hymn of the Republic," Elvis-style. The guy actually does have a good voice, but he does a lot of impressions and acts crazy, so sometimes you can't tell. (It was standing room only for awhile, though, and this old man was sitting next to where we were standing. When he got up to leave, he took me by the wrist and sat me down in his chair, insisting that I take it. It was adorable.) We explored the mini golf course and checked out some of the amazing views from high-up places with few people. It was a nice good-bye to the ship.



In the end, we just headed back to our room to watch one of our last movies we brought that we hadn't watched yet: "U-571." Which turned out to be surprisingly good, even with Matthew McConaughey in it (who has been my least favorite actor - because of his romantic comedies, where I always hate him - but then this movie made me like him a tiny bit because he was a believable character and he was not ever trying to be romantic). Though, it may have been mildly unwise to watch a movie where almost every boat sinks, while we were on a rocking boat. I had a slight complex over that, but it wasn't too serious :).

The next morning, we finished packing up, got our last breakfast, and then hung out on the deck by the pool until it was our turn to disembark. The process was remarkably smooth and well-organized. We were led off the ship to our luggage, through customs, and deposited into a taxi to the airport for our flight to Salt Lake, all in probably 20 minutes. It was impressive. And thus ended our cruise!

Ft. Lauderdale:

Guy in the airport wearing three hats: