10 Year Anniversary Cruise

Doug and I just got back a week ago from an amazing 10 year Anniversary cruise on Jewel of the Seas through Royal Caribbean. We had enough points built up that the cruise was basically FREE and all we had to do was pay a few dollars, airfare, and whatever we spent on the boat and at the ports. Not a bad deal! The Wednesday before we left my mother fell and hurt her ankle and was unable to help with Will while we were gone so Lou and Steve (Doug's parents) ever so graciously agreed to take him for the whole week, instead of dividing the week up with my parents. It was crazying trying to readjust his schedule in such a short amount of time and I was stressed out to say the least. But Lou and Steve took great care of him and were able to get him to all his activities the week we were gone. To say the least they were exhausted by the time we got home to pick him up.

Doug and I headed to Birmingham after work on Friday to eat at our favorite restaurant, Bonefish Grill, then we headed to our hotel room to sleep and get up early to catch our flight out to San Juan, Puerto Rico the next day. Our flight left Saturday morning to San Juan with a short stop in Orlando. By short stop I mean we had 30 minutes to leave our first flight to catch our next flight to San Juan. Luckily we landed in Orlando 15 minutes earlier than we were supposed to and then we were about 5 gates down from where our next flight was to leave and we got there in plenty of time. We raced to our gate just in time for a potty break and to board the plane. Trust me we were nervous because we could not miss the flight to San Juan and if we did the boat would be leaving us that night. So thank you Southwest Airlines for being on time for both flights!

We arrived in San Juan about 4pm that afternoon, found our luggage and our shuttle to the boat, checked in for the boat and found our room. We had the best room ever, a balcony suite! It was so spacious and the balcony made it all worth it because we could actually look out and see the cities as we departed and ported to them. It also made it all worth it knowing we had 7 days on the boat. We found our way to dinner about 6:30 and then the boat departed San Juan around 8:30 that night and headed to our first stop, St. Maarten.

Chocolate covered strawberries and champagne waiting on us

Our balcony view

Some views of San Juan

San Juan

That thing sticking out of the boat was where all the captains looked out everytime with his binoculars as we departed every port

We passed a Carnival cruise ship as we were leaving

Now on to the next day, St. Maarten!