We were on the cruise for Halloween, and whilst I was sad to miss out on all the neighbourhood kids costumes we did get to see the ship costumes and people really went all out. Here is Godzilla singing karaoke to “I’m sexy and I know it”.
Kim and I went as Wilma Flintsone and Betty Rubble. Jen and Andrew copped out with Halloween t shirts but they were in the minority. We saw an Addams Family, a Titanic couple, Beetlejuice, Dracula, super heroes, Jasmine and a genie half in a lamp (that worryingly had writing across it saying “rub my lamp”).
The next day we saw a showcase of all the different towel animals they make (I got slightly obsessed with towel animals).
After Halloween we stopped at Amber Cove in the Dominican Republic.
Amber Cove is just a cruise port and shopping center which I think is a good idea because it must stop the island from being over run with tourists from the cruises.
They had all the duty free shops like the other ports but of course we had an excursion booked. Now it was seriously hot and we were all signed up to do zip lining but Kimmy chose to switch us to go to a luxury resort and I was glad she did because when we got off the ship the last thing I felt like doing was climbing about the trees in the heat but Andrew and Jen went zip lining and came back covered in bruises but they had fun. They had a lot of excursions where you could swim with dolphins etc but since the Blackfish documentary I’ve felt a bit wary about things like that.
Kim and I went to a luxury resort where it apparently was mostly time shares where people had these big luxury villas and each villa came with a golf cart to drive around the resort in. I thought time shares were a thing of the past but apparently not.
The beach was nice but lots of little stones and seaweed about the place.
The beach bar had swings on it.
After a while at the beach we went to the pool which wasn’t very busy because apparently most of the villas have their own pools.
After that we browsed around the shops and headed back on the ship to a towel bear.
The next day was another day at sea, the highlight of which was the hairy chest contest where a series of men who didn’t seem to know what they’d signed up for got publicly humiliated for everyone’s amusement.
And that was it, time to go!
We left the ship in Miami and Jen & Andrew had organised a rental car for the day so we had a mooch about in a minivan that Andrew hated with a passion but also seemed to grow quite attached to by the end of the day.
Then it was back on the plane to Hartford on an evening flight. Have you seen this before? A water vapour air conditioning thing? I wasn’t sure if we were being gassed or if we were on fire (luckily neither).
So that was that, but we have our cruise souvenirs from Kim and I winning the Harry Potter trivia contest on the book case to remember the (mostly) fun times we had.
hayleyiraina 