So I’m just now finally getting around to posting about our vacation. Below are some photos of the places we went and things we saw, both on and off the ship. A few of the photos I sharpened a little too much after resizing them, my bad! I need to fix my blog’s upload limit so I’m not constantly having to resize the photos to post on it.

This was our second time on this boat, Allure of the Seas, and our third time in a row on ships of the same class. The newness has definitely worn off, so next year we are changing things up. We are going on a smaller ship that we’ve never been on, and to the Southern Caribbean for stops we’ve not been to (or been to in years). There definitely is some new things to do at these stops, everything from volcanoes to waterfalls. This ship, while smaller, really isn’t tiny. We’ve been on even smaller ships in the past, so I’m not worried about the size. Going to a smaller ship will however mean the lack of a lot of things we’ve come to enjoy, such as the diving show and all the smaller speciality restaurants. However I won’t miss the larger amounts of people on these bigger ships. The past few years have seen an influx of rude rude rude people from certain countries in South America that are on summer break in January, so the families and all their kids show up. It wasn’t my imagination that these people were rude and nasty either, from other passengers to even the ship’s crew, they all knew who the problem guests onboard were. It’s ironic because normally it’s the people from the U.S. who have the reputation of being rude and nasty, but we have nothing on these folks!

Aside from the rude people, I did have fun for about the first 5 days. I participated in a “flash mob” dance class, that pulled it off in public on the final night of the cruise. We went to see Blackbeard’s tower and a bunch of other colonial estates on Saint Thomas, which I never saw before. I also got a lot of good cooking spices on Saint Martins. However about day four is when I started to not feel so good. The ship was definitely rocking a lot, and that upset my stomach. Normally it doesn’t bother me that much, but this year it did. I spent most of one day in bed fending off sickness. I had almost no appetite for the whole of the cruise, several migraines, and I ended up developing a horrible rash all over my face and arms. Fun times!

Upon arriving back, both John and I ended up with horrible colds, which we are just now getting over. Anyways, next year will hopefully be much better. Enjoy some of the photos!