Tuesday, March 20th--St. Maarten
Well, we had an interesting night last night. DD went to bed fine, woke up about an hour later and ran to the bathroom to throw up.
I was in the bathroom trying to make sure that there wasn't any "evidence" that Jonathan might find and then condemn us to our room. Go ahead and flame me! I might deserve it.
However, I will tell you that I had felt sortof ill since the second day of our cruise due to the motion of the ocean, AND DD had eaten about four pizzas by the pool this afternoon. I know DD, and I can tell when she is truly sick. Thank goodness she was much better after vomiting. She never got sick again and woke up fine in the morning.
We had to be in Rockin Bar D at 8:45 in the morning for our Under 2 Flags Island Tour. I had read some mixed reviews about this tour, but DH wanted to learn something while we were on this trip. Come on! Who wants to be educated while on vacation anyway?
Well, we were really glad that we did this excursion. It started raining part way through it, but we did enjoy it. We got to see both sides of the island and were dropped off to shop for about 45 minutes. We were amazed at how the animals there just roam about freely. We saw all sorts of animals, and not one of them was tied up or in a pen. In fact, as our bus was driving down the road, the bus driver had to put on the brakes. We look out the window and saw a herd of wild goats, sheep, a few cows, a bunch of chickens, and some dogs crossing the road and running right through the ditch beside us. You just don't see that sort of thing in Kansas!
We learned quite a bit about both sides of the island, bought a few souvenirs, and headed back to the ship.
We went and grabbed some lunch once we returned to the ship because we had a
DCL excursion to Orient Bay planned for the afternoon. It had stopped raining and looked as if it was going to be a beautiful day.
We showed up in Rockin Bar D by 1:30 for our Afternoon Beach Bash Tour. I had also read some things about Orient Bay, but remember, I'm a slow learner.
When we arrive by bus to Orient Bay, we approach the beach and find our beach chairs. I thought I was going to have to do a WWF Smackdown on some lady who decided to run right past us and grab our chairs, but I remembered that this was Disney--the Happiest Place on Earth.
So, we get settled in a few chairs farther down, and it starts to POUR down rain. Not just a little! It's a torrential downpour! Of course, the guy selling the umbrellas had just come by to offer me one for a measly $3, and I had kindly refused. What the heck was I thinking?
I'm sitting there thinking this just might end up being the most miserable day I've ever had when all of a sudden, it just stops. The sun came out, and it ended up being a gorgeous day. Who would have guessed it? That kind of stuff can certainly only happen at the Happiest Place on Earth.
The kids immediately get in the water, and DH goes to rent a couple of boogie boards for the kids to "ride the waves" with. They had a blast! I'm sitting there watching them have a great time when all of a sudden I look up, and holy you know what! I think I see a totally naked man coming our way!
I don't draw attention to it because I don't really want the kids to notice. The man gets closer and closer, and I realize that he is literally letting it all hang out, and he is very tan with no tan lines. I can hardly contain myself. I've never seen such a thing--I mean a 70 something year old thing. He didn't have a care in the world and kept walking up and down the beach.
Well, there were plenty more where the 70 year old man came from. By this time, DD and DS were working on building sand castles. I told DH about the man, and we both try to hide it from the kids. DS is deep in his sandcastle when all of a sudden he stands up, points, and busts out laughing!
Yep! He's spotted a naked one. We quickly tell him not to point and to be quiet. It worked for a while. He would continue to build his sand castle, stop, point, and tell us, "here comes another one!" A lady next to us was about to wet her pants watching DS. DD just tried to ignore all of them. I think she was embarassed by their nudity. Eventually, lots and lots of naked people strolled along our end of the beach. It got to the point that DH and DS were trying to figure out if some were men or women.
You really couldn't tell for sure on some of them. Most of the women had on thongs, but even some of the men had on thongs as well. DS fell into hysterics on that one. What a day! All I kept thinking about was what DS was going to tell his teacher when she asked how the trip was.
We did have a fantastic time at Orient Bay, and yes, it would have been fun even without the nudity.
After our educating experience at the beach
, we headed back for the ship. This was the night that there was not a scheduled show, but they were showing Bridge to Terabithia. DH took DD to see it. He has told me over and over again how sad it was. He tries to tell me what it was about and then gets choked up. I'm guessing it must be a real tearjerker!
We had dinner at Parrot Cay tonight, and it was Pirate's Night. I made us all dress up, so we could get a picture, of course.
The picture turned out great, and we had the kids get one together by the lifestyle portrait person. It turned out great! So, guess what? Looks like we'll be upgrading that Shutter's package again.
Pirate's Night was a lot of fun. After dinner, DD wanted to go to the kids' club, and DS wanted to go play basketball and visit the arcade. DH and I went to the Pirate Party. I couldn't believe the food setup! I had missed it on our first cruise. They go all out for this pirate stuff!
It was a fun night, but we were getting tired. We get the kids, head back to the room, and find a monkey hanging from our curtain. We needed some sleep because we had big plans for tomorrow.
I should also add that I think Jocelyn, the nice lady at the rebooking desk, probably thought I was stalking her. I had filled out one of the papers for rebooking onboard and dropped it in her box to let her know that I already had a booking but wanted to see about rolling it over to the onboard offer. She wasn't at her desk until Tuesday, but guess what? I was one of the first to go see her. She was much faster than me! She had already read my request, made the changes, and we were now booked (with a discount and $200 onboard credit
) for the Thanksgiving Double Dip in 2008! She had even rolled over our deposit, so there was no more money involved, and there was no cancelling our first reservation or anything. Jocelyn handled it all!
Next up: I think I've just found the most beautiful place in the world--St. John.
We had brunch reservations for Palo, dinner reservations for Palo, and Margarita Tasting.
We all slept in late again today, and to me, that makes the sea days fantastic!
We don't go out without the kids very often, so we intended on making this day our special day. To heck with the kids! They didn't care if we were there or not anyway.
I was pretty excited about this because if you haven't already noticed, I like "fru-fru" drinks. Boy was I surprised! I was thinking frozen margarita.
DH apparently really liked all the different kinds of tequila. He drank all of his, all of mine, and some off of the tray of another couple that was with us. We couldn't wait to watch him try to walk out afterwards. This ship was moving a little anyway, so we figured he'd give us a pretty good show.
