.day at sea .12.10.16.

We finally got to sleep in this morning!! We slept till the last possible second before going upstairs for some breakfast, we had to get there before they closed the kitchen to start setting up for lunch! After breakfast we shopped for some more T-shirts for T and Dad since there wasn’t many in their sizes the day before. The family was still pretty sunburnt from the day before so they stayed out of the sun for most of the morning. I wanted to soak up as much sun as possible before having to head home to the snow, so I did the complete opposite. M came and joined me in the hot tub for most of the morning, she sat in the shade because she was slightly sunburnt while I sat in the hot sun. wWe sipped lemonade while watching ChiveTV and the trivia on the big-screen. 

Dad was our drink waiter, what a good sport. 

Sunburnt T not wanting any pictures of herself.

Since it was our day at sea the cruise director had a bunch of activities going on around the pool, one of which was a "belly flop contest". M and I had got front row seats to the flopping, it was hilarious watching the old men dance and "muscle pose" before they jumped in the water. Without pre-planning the whole family ended up in the kitchen at the same time for lunch! Since it was our last day to enjoy the strawberry ice cream we decided to eat as much of it as we physically could bear. Mom and T weren't feeling well so they went down to their rooms, Dad joined them to spend time with Mom. M and J went to the cinema to watch ghostbusters while I went back to the hot tub and watched the end of the pool volleyball tournament. 

When it was over I moved to the sun-chairs by the pool trying to catch a quick nap but they started the "sexiest man competition" so obviously I had to watch that. Especially since one of the male nurses form Canada was participating, with my favorite "sexy lady" as one of the judges; ironically she was from BC!! Small world! The other contestants were on our excursion in St.lucia. They danced for the judges and then were told they had to dance again.. this time it needed to be sexy dancing, which was hilarious because they'd thought they were pretty sexy the first time around. In the end they chose the Canadian guy because he was definitely the sexiest compared to the two older gentlemen from our excursion. After the competition I laid by the pool soaking up the sun until T and M came back to the pool. We sat in the hot tub watching chive TV and chatting about what we had all been up to. When the sun started to set we went up to the top deck to take some pictures. We tried to get some Polaroids, but the film didn't work... huge bummer.

Since we had an early morning departure we had to go down to the room and pack up our things. 

Right as I hopped in the shower the family went down for supper. I quickly tossed on a dress and came down to supper with soaking wet hair. The waiters sang us a song again since it was our "last supper". Unfortunately we had to leave supper early, skipping dessert, to get seats for the show! The night before the cruise director had mentioned that they were showing a video of some "hidden camera footage" that they had collected over the course of the cruise, it turned out to be videos of all the different events that took place; how disappointing. We were in none of those videos, so we skipped out on dessert for nothing! The comedian they had that night was hilarious though so it made up for it. Dennis, our cruise director, did a monologue of his own and sang us a song after the comedian. At the end of the show they brought out all of the managers from the different departments on the ship they lined the hallways, saying goodbye to us as we left the theater. We decided to go outside and enjoy the warm ocean breeze, while eating copious amounts of strawberry ice-cream! Once we all congregated on the outside deck we realized that J wasn't there. Dad and M looked around for him but couldn't find him anywhere. It turned out that he had a bit of an "accident" so he went back to the room to change. Mom, Dad, J and I went to the dance floor to sing some Christmas carols, it was the perfect way to get into the Christmas spirit while we were in paradise. 

When we went back to the room it was a little chaotic and someone was cranky, again I wondered why people get cranky when they're in such a beautiful place!! I turned off the TV in an effort lessen the tension when suddenly someone erupted. I walked out and went straight upstairs to the hot tub, I was tired of always the villain in their stories so I chose to just leave. Besides no one needs that kind of negativity while their on vacation.

 I grabbed a towel, hiked up my dress and sat on the edge of the hot tub. There was aquatic life videos playing on the big screen, a nice warm ocean breeze, and the moon was so bright it lit up the entire sky; everything was peaceful. I kicked my legs in the water enjoying the last night I'd have in the hot tub when I caught sight of the Norwegians out of the corner of my eye. They walked up the stairs and did 2 laps around the upper deck before disappearing back into the ship. I hadn't seen them for a while so I figured they just went down to bed. Chive TV came on the flat screen so I was engulfed in  the little clips when I saw the Norwegians step out of the elevator with their swimsuits on! Ugh. They came over and sat in my peaceful hot tub (when the other hot tub was vacant). I smiled at them when they sat down but quickly turned my head to continue watching the clips. A few minutes later the same gentlemen who T had motioned to in the gift shop asked me if I was staying for the second week of the cruise (I really wish I was). They introduced themselves, apparently they are from Belgium not Norway. Their names were Terrance, Peter and Roderick. I sat and chatted with them for almost an hour discussing travel dreams and our respective careers back home. Eventually M came to see where I had disappeared to and joined us in the hot tub. All of a sudden it started pouring rain, M & I quickly jumped out of the hot tub, swapping Instagram usernames with our new friends before heading down to bed. M's back was sore from her bed so she slept down below between T and I. 

.barbados .12.09.16.

My alarm went off around 8:30 so we could still make it to "fancy breakfast", which turned out to not be as tasty as we thought it would be. The highlight was having eggs Benedict, at least for Dad, Mom and T. M and I had French toast, it was absolutely delicious! It was thick but still crispy on the outside and lightly sugared, we topped it with with thick  whipped cream and strawberry syrup. The whipped cream is more like "solid milk with sugar”.

After breakfast we tossed on our swimming gear and headed off the boat. Someone had told me that there was a beach beside the port in Barbados so instead of taking a taxi we decided to walk to the beach. Unfortunately his opinion of the port being "right beside the beach" actually meant it was a 30 minute walk, or short taxi ride to the beach... We’d already walked about a kilometer to get out of the port, what’s a few more right? The side walk to the beach was beautiful, it trailed along the ocean with large trees to provide shade from the piercing sun. When the pathway ended we walked along the street until coming to the boat harbour where we quickly turned to the boardwalk to get away from the busy streets. After what seemed forever I saw it. Through a little crack between the buildings I saw sand and water glistening through. I yelled down the road to the family who had gotten ahead of me, I  waved them over to follow me.

When we walked through  the small entrance was we were immediately greeted by a vendor trying to sell us a "shipwreck/sea turtle" excursion package. We declined repeatedly and walked straight to the water, the beach was almost empty so we got the water to ourselves for most of the morning. We all immediately dropped our stuff and ran into the water, it was a long walk and we were all overheating from the burning hot sun. So far this trip this beach has been my favorite, it has  perfect waves for body surfing/wave riding and the sun. The only drawback is the sand is so fine it gets into every nook and cranny you can imagine! When we would ride the waves up the beach the crashing water would fill our bathing suits with sand. All of us girls were sporting very sexy “Sand Diapers”

The sun was so incredibly hot today, luckily there as some clouds in the sky to give us a little break; but as soon as the sun came out from behind the clouds it immediately started burning our skin. Poor T, she must have put on sunscreen a million times today and she still burnt to a crisp.

Since this has been a very go-go-go trip I tried to take a nap on the beach while the sun was behind the clouds, but as soon as it came out I felt it was biting my skin it was so hot.

 Later in the day my bathing suit was so full of sand that I couldn’t take it anymore. I swam out far where no one could see me and slipped my bathing suit off to clean the sand out. Word to the wise, don't take your bathing suit off completely when you’re swimming in the ocean; salt water is extremely buoyant... Mom saw me swimming out and was starting to swim towards me to see what I was doing. I tried to quickly put my bathing suit back on when a wave came and pushed me over while I was just getting my bathing suit around my ankles. Since I was in the ocean I got knocked off balance by the waves, my butt floated to the surface… mooning the beach, and a party boat that happened to be passing by!

 I don't think anyone on the boat saw, but Mom sure did! When I finally got my bathing suit on I swam over to here, she was laughing so hard I was sure she was going to suck in some sea water! She asked me what on earth I as doing  and we had a good laugh about it. I learned a very important lesson that day, do not to take your one piece bathing suit completely off in the ocean.

Mom was swimming along looking at the sand below when a tiny fish swam straight into her goggles, it shocked her and she jumped back surprised that such a tiny fish would swim right up to her. That little fish spent the rest of the day with us. It would follow us around no matter where we went, its favorite spot was right between dads legs. If dad would move it would quickly swim so it was right between his legs again. It was so cute, I'm sad we had to leave it haha we all gained a small bond with the little guy! 

We snorkeled and played in the waves while soaking up the extremely hot Caribbean sun,  until it was finally time to go. We had soaked up as much sun as we could handle and Taylor's skin was starting to look like 2rd degree burns. With slight hesitation we began our long walk back to the boat, I walked barefoot most of the way because my feet were still covered in sand. 

We stopped in the main market to see what souvenirs we could find. I bought a "Barbados" wrap for the beach, and a Jamaican colored bracelet.

As we were shopping around for gifts for the girls boyfriends, T called my name to get my attention. She lip-pointed over to the Norwegian guys that had been hanging around us off and on the whole trip. I turned my head and said "oh yeah I already know". Apparently he had heard and seen the whole thing and started lightly chuckling. M made eye contact and gave him a raised eyebrow look, aren’t family hilariously embarrassing? When it was time to go back to the boat we ended up sitting right in front of the Norwegian men on the shuttle bus back to the boat. Thank goodness for that shuttle bus because we were all exhausted. When we got back on the boat we changed into dry clothes and we went up for lunch.  Today was the "Tshirt" sale on the boat so we went and got some cruise Tshirts to commemorate our cruise. These T-shirts were more involved with the cruise line instead of the individual ports, making them more meaningful because that's where we spent the most time!

T was sore from her sunburn so she stayed in the room to rest while the rest of the family dressed up and went to our final formal dinner. 

I fell down the stairs twice because of the heels I was wearing luckily J was there to catch me each time, then relentlessly tease me about not being able to walk in heels. After supper we went to "the show" off the night. It was called “The west end to Broadway” it was a bunch of singing and dancing with no story line again.

 After the show we came back to the room to shower and write in our journals. T and I watched a few videos on my laptop before we all passed out.