Cruisin'...

Mid-January, Robert and I took off for Miami for a cruise to the Eastern Caribbean. We had a blast! We arrived in Florida early the morning of the 13th and spent the day tooling around Miami and took a taxi down to South Beach for lunch. South Beach looked like an upscale version of Venice Beach - lots of street vendors and performers with a TON of upscale shops and restaurants. We boarded the Carnival Valor the next morning and headed out. We arrived the next morning in Nassau, Bahamas where we went on (and actually piloted!) one of the Americas Cup racing boats. That was SO much fun! Our next stop was in St. Thomas. We took a ferry over to St. John and spent the day at the beach. The sand there is so incredibly soft (like walking in talcum powder!) and the water is a gorgeous turquoise color. After a day at sea, we went to our final stop in St. Martin, where we went scuba diving. The water was warm and clear. We did a 40 foot dive to a shipwreck where we saw lots of sea life and artifacts. We then had two days at sea as we headed back to Miami. They had two "formal" nights for dinner (the food on the ship was amazing!) so we got dressed up and had our picture taken. Not that we do a great deal of hanging around petal-strewn pianos with Robert drinking martinis and me smelling roses but... what the heck... we got the picture anyway!
We arrived the morning of the 21st, rented a car and drove to Hollywood, Florida to have lunch with some new friends we had met on the cruise and then went to Ft. Lauderdale where we took a water taxi past the most incredible mansions on the waterway and went into the shopping district. Then it was back to the airport to head home. :-(