James & Lisa Lee & Co.: March 2011

We had a wonderful trip to Orlando and the Bahamas. We spent the first day flying. We had a nice little hotel room and rented a car to explore. Our GPS is awesome. We spent a day at Disneyworld. It was tough to be there and not feel almost guilty we weren't with the kids. Niether James nor I are big ride fans and with James' shoulder, we did some things the kids might not have been that excited about. We loved the Tribute to the Presidents and we did the 3-D Mickey movie twice. We walked around a lot and enjoyed both parades and a couple of shows. We mostly had fun hanging out with each other. The next day we took a bus to Cape Canaveral on the day the Space Shuttle was being launched. The traffic was bumper to bumper. It did give us an opportunity to see how WET orlando is. There are pools of water everywhere. They just build their houses, malls, restaurants around them. It was kind of funny. Anyway, we got on the ship about 3:00 and had an amazing lunch. The food really was incredible. I decided right up front I would have all the rest of winter and early spring to drop my gained pounds. It was totally worth it. We were able to see the Space Shuttle Launch. It was quite amazing. The cloud formations as a result were cool. I don't have any really great pics because I was video taping it. Anyway, that night we explored the boat, met our cabin steward, our captain, our cruise director and had more food; an excellent dinner in one of the dinnig rooms. That night we did visit the service desk to get some sea sickness pills. They worked like a charm and lasted 12 hours. We stayed on them the whole trip. The next morning we pulled into the Bahamas, Nassau to be exact. It was beautiful. The water was incredible. A color ao perfect I can't even describe it. We spent some time on the beach, which I still would rather look at the beautiful water than taste it. I don't think I'd ever get use to the salt. We loved the people and how attentive to and ready to meet our every need. For $4 each we could have traveled by anything, but chose the taxi. What a ride. They said on the ship not to rent mopeds and forge the city ourselves. I now know why. We would have been killed. I couldn't tell a one way street from a two way and I'm not sure the drivers really abided by those descriptions anyway. The drivers pretty much just go if they think there's even a small chance they'll make it without causing too much excitement. We went back to the ship for lunch and to change out of our wet, but mostly sandy attire. We then went back into Nassau and shopped. All the stores close at 6pm. We then walked around to see the real Nassau. I never saw a building that wasn't painted a pastel color. Their government buildings were pink. We also were honked at a lot by willing taxi drivers - most of which were probably just people doing their side job after closing their shop at 6. None of the vehicles actually had the word TAXI on them anywhere. As the evening progressed and the sun was setting, we had more insisting offers for taxi rides. I think they were getting a bit concerned about us being that far away from the tourist strip that late at night. So, we eventually made it back to the ship to dress for our formal evening in the dining room. We always sat in the same area, if not at the same table. We got to know our waiters well. Our favorite was from Thailand. He was 35 and single (a recent break-up with a girl on the ship after dating for 18 months). He was heart broken but getting over it. All his family live in Thailand and he bought property next to his parents and built a house. He moved his parents into his house and his older married brother and his family into the parents house. He was planning on staying with the cruiseline for another 5 years and then returning to Thialand to try to start a family. He was so awesome and so genuine. He spends 9 months on the ship and 3 months in Tibet (hurricane season). Our cabin steward, Bobbi, was from Mongolia. He was also awesome and willing to attend to any need we had. He made all these cute towel animals which I attended a demonstraion with James(our cruise director who was from England) and my James came also but stayed in his seat. I'm proud to say that James (C.D.) choose my swan as an example because it was so good :) Anyway, I bought the book that shows how to make over 40 animals and now I never have a towel in the bathroom because the kids are always making animals. SO - the last day was spent sailing back to Florida and we spent a lazy day on the ship eating and lounging by the pool and hot tubbing on the Serenity Deck (the hot tubs were chlorinated hot water versus the cool salt water in the hot tubs on the Lido Deck). We had a 24 hour pizza/ice cream bar. What fun it was to have an ice cream cone any time you wanted it. Well, the cruise ended and we took a much shorter bus ride back to the airport to spend all day flying back to snow-covered Spokane. We thought it was funny we were heading to the pool when the kids informed us on the phone they were home on a snow day. I must admit, 80 degree weather in February is pretty tempting. Despite the snow, we were happy to be home to our babies and it only took 3 days for James and I not to feel like we had morning sickness. Motion sickness is a wierd thing. Oh, James wants me to inform you all that he felt like he had altitude sickness, not morning sickness :) It was great. We highly reccommend a cruise. We hope to do another one sometime in the next decade. Enjoy the pics.

Our room on the ship.