10th anniversary

Justin and I celebrated our 10th anniversary in June of this past year.

We had discussed going on a cruise, but felt like maybe we shouldn't spend the money to go after we had just gone to Disney the December before. However in February after we filed our taxes and realized how much we were getting back and we thought back to how much we saved on our Disney trip (by driving instead of flying, staying off Disney property using my parents' timeshare, and preparing almost all of our meals ourselves without eating out much) we decided to go for it.

My mom agreed to watch our kids and we booked a week long cruise departing out of Galveston that went to Cozumel, Grand Cayman and Jamaica. We decided to go the last week in May (left on Sunday May 25th and got back on Sunday June 1st) so that the kids would still be in school and that way it would be a little easier on Grandma. (What wasn't easier for Grandma was that she had no kitchen to use - the countertop was installed the Friday we were gone but even then our faucet wasn't installed until Monday or Tuesday after we got back. What a trooper Grandma was!)

Bye-bye Galveston with your ugly brown water

We splurged and got a room with a balcony. We LOVED having a balcony. The days we were at sea and we went to the pool, there were rarely chairs to sit in that were in the shade. So sitting by the pool and reading just didn't happen for us - we are too pale to sit in the sun for long. We sat on our balcony probably everyday reading books and enjoying the breeze off the ocean as we traveled.

Our view from our balcony while we read books

We didn't do many of the activities on the cruise ship, but we did do an excursion at each port of call (which is where things get REALLY expensive cruising). We also did two dinners at specialty restaurants on board and lunch once at Johnny Rockets.

We went to the Japanese/Sushi restaurant but since we don't like sushi we did this thing where you cook the meat on super hot rocks at your table. We thought we ordered a meal for each of us and were a little surprised when our food came and there wasn't much for 2 (but it would have been way plenty for 1). But when the check came we realized that they misunderstood and brought us one meal to split, which was fine and filling enough.

Another night we went to the steakhouse on board and it was REALLY good. Almost as good as Ruth's Chris steakhouse. However, in the future I don't think we would do specialty dining - it added to our tab and the food in the main dining room was usually really good without costing extra. Neither of us were very impressed with the buffet/casual dining area's food.

The others assigned to our dinner table were all varied - an older couple who were only there 1 or 2 nights we were there and didn't talk to us much, another older couple who were really nice and we got to know them pretty well and then 2 other younger couples - 1 who were living together and trying to have a baby, the other who had only been dating for a few months or so.

It was weird to us that we were the only ones at our table who had kids at home. Our last night on board the two older couples didn't come to dinner so it was just the 6 of us. That night it was a little strange for Justin and I to be the "older" couple.

Last night on the cruise

I'll post about our excursions later.