Cruisin' Caribbean Style (Part One)

When we went on our European cruise in October 2010, my mom was the lucky winner of the win a cruise bingo game. They chose to take a Caribbean cruise, upgrade to a Verandah room, and invited me along for the third person reduced rate. Not going to turn that down. We ended up changing our original plan because a similar itinerary was available on the Nieuw Amsterdam, which was the same ship we sailed on in the Mediterranean. Not that I don't think the other ships in the Holland America fleet would not be as great, we knew what we were getting on the Nieuw Amsterdam.

We boarded in Fort Lauderdale Florida, and sailed to Holland America's private island in the Bahamas, called Half Moon Cay. I took a shore excursion that let me ride a jet ski for about an hour throughout the Cay and into the Caribbean for a brief moment, although it was hard to drive and try to take pictures, so there were not many. The island also had a nice beach to relax on, and lunch was a complimentary island buffet. From Half Moon Cay, we set sail for Grand Cayman after a day at sea. More on the other ports of call in the next blog. One thing I noticed that was different on this trip was that we spent much more time on the boat. On the European cruise we often had 10-12 hours in port, whereas we only had about 6 on this trip. Likely contributed to the longer distances we had to travel between ports, and the ship maxed out at about 25 mph. Enjoy the first set of photos and check back soon for part two.

The Allure of the Seas, world's largest cruise ship, 6000 passengers

Apartments right on the waterway out of the cruise port, this one was waving the Holland America flag

End of the beach in Fort Lauderdale

Beach from Fort Lauderdale to Miami way in the background

The show on the first night introduced all the shipboard musical entertainment,

dancers

All the Holland America entertainers

The first night we ate at the specialty Asian restaurant called Tamarind, these are my dumplings

My duck entree

Sauteed Asian vegetables in oyster sauce

Mushrooms

Carmelized banana dessert. YUM!!

Dessert Extravaganza

The beach on Half Moon Cay

M.A.S.H. like sign telling us how far away certain places are

Our ship chillin'

View from the beach

This bird landed on the tray right by our table and started eating the leftovers

Venturing into the water, it was pretty cold