Trip to the Eastern Caribbean

Boy, oh boy! With the nice weather we've been having, I've been trying to spend all my free time outside working in the yard, and I am so behind on pictures to share.

About a month ago, Branch and I had the exciting opportunity to take a week long cruise to the Eastern Caribbean. Specifically we went to the Dominican Republic, St. Thomas, Puerto Rico and Turks and Caicos, plus two days at sea. Did I mention that it was sans baby? I mean how lucky are we!?

Our trip started SUPER early in the morning. We actually spent the night at my mom's house because she was kind enough to offer to take us to the airport at an ungodly hour. I don't even remember how early it was. I blocked it from my brain. But I think our flight was at 5:30am if that tells you anything.

We arrived in Tampa to meet with my Dad and Stepmom at the airport. We had about enough time to load Easton's things up in their car, install his car seat, give everybody a big hug and say our goodbyes before heading back into the airport to rent a car to drive to Port Canaveral, where the ship was docked.

The drive was pretty uneventful, but we did end up behind this guy...


...Makes you wonder why "live" is in quotes!?

We made it to Port Canaveral in the early afternoon and had plenty of time to drop off our rental car and make our way to the ship.

We quickly settled into our new relaxed way of living and spent the remainder of the day, and all day the next day, taking it easy, reading, napping and enjoying our time together.



Our first port day was in Amber Cove, in the Dominican Republic. Out of all 4 excursion days, this was our least favorite. Amber Cove was built within the last year specifically to be a cruise destination, so right now there's not really a lot to do because it's literally just a cruise port in the middle of nowhere.



Like we had done a couple times on our last cruise, we decided to rent a car so that we could explore a little bit. Unfortunately, driving in the Dominican Republic was not nearly as easy as it had been in Mexico or Honduras. Think lots of motorbikes/Vespas with entire families on the back of them, zooming every which direction. 

About a half an hour away from Amber Cove is a city called Puerta Plata. Apparently it's where the cruise ships used to go 30 years ago. It was a colorful little city with one way streets narrowly crisscrossing through it. 




We stopped for lunch, but my nerves were pretty shot from the harrowing drive so we got it to go and headed back to the cruise port.

 The landscape looked straight out of Jurassic Park. So beautiful!

One nice thing about the cruise port was that it had an amazing pool! (Probably because there wasn't anything else to do there ;) We spent the rest of the afternoon lounging and relaxing. While it's not really immersing ourselves in the local culture, it was still a much needed break!







Around 3pm it was time to head back to the boat. Next stop St. Thomas!




Love y'all!



Comments

  1. How lucky are you is right!! I'm super jealous! Matt and I are both slightly terrified of taking a cruise, but your pictures could sway us. And who cares if you're not immersing yourself in the culture when you have a beautiful pool to lay beside??

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular Posts