Lovin Life on a Cruise ~ A Belated Post (The final post!)

Back again I see. You really deserve a gold star. 🙂 This will be my last post on the topic, promise! I was gone for almost 2 weeks and have so many photos. I am just trying to show you a small glimpse. Shall we get started?

The next day was a Sea day and not many very interesting pictures. I gave my camera to my 12-year-old and she decided she would do a photo journal of all the sinks she saw. Don’t ask me why. I will spare you the photos, but there were a lot. We did the kitchen tour and they are full of sinks. 😀

Our arrival into Nassau was pretty impressive. Just look at all the blues in this photo!!

Entering Nassau

We were headed out to a little animal park today. First, a family photo.

Welcome to the Bahamas

At the animal park we were able to hand feed some parrots. It was the highlight I think.

Mom feeding a parrot

Cousins and parrots

There were also some flamingos.

Flamingos

A VERY large rodent.

capybara a very LARGE rodent

Some prehistoric looking iguanas.

Iguanas

Cool statues.

Stone Statue

A white peacock. I wonder if it is an albino one?

White Peacock

It was a small is animal park. Easily doable in few hours. A nice relaxed pace with some interesting animals to see. Others of our party went to Blackbeard’s castle and loved it too.

It was our final night on the ship. We would arrive back at Ft. Lauderdale when it was still dark. For the last night we had a fabulous dinner at a specialty restaurant. I think my Nanny will now be older than 90 due to how many birthday cakes she got on the cruise. We were so very blessed and grateful to be able to spend time will all the family and celebrate a wonderful lady. Here is a photo of 4 generations. My Grandma, my Mom, Me and my kids. How special is that? 😀

4 Generations

And finally the view as we arrived back to the USA.

Arriving back in the wee hours of the morning.

We were sad to leave the ship. Having meals made for us and dishes washed was a pretty special deal! Half of the family left for home the next day. Some of us were lucky enough to spend a few days in a mansion on the beach! There is another Hobbit Adventure to go with that story, but the story itself will have to wait until another day. However, I do have just a few photos to share.

Our house was just across the street from a beautiful beach. My mom and daughter took a nice walk looking for shells.

Mom and grandchild at the beach

There were patches along the beach where the shells collected. We had fun just plopping ourselves down and picking through them. My daughter found a sharks tooth!

Seashells

We found some interesting things that had washed up on the beach.

Bottle washed up on the beach

Blue Jellyfish

One of the things my Mom wanted to do was visit the Everglades. We booked a tour with EcoSafari . We did it all! Airboat ride, nature walk, boat ride, driving tour. It was amazing. And the knowledge of our tour guide was astonishing. We really felt like we got to visit the Everglades and REALLY learn about them. We even ate gator nuggets! (Yes, they taste like chicken.) If you get the chance I would highly recommend touring through them.

Here you can see us on the airboat. (That is one of those boats that skims the water and has a huge fan on the back to move it along.) We are in the row closest to the bottom of the photo. The lady standing up wasn’t with us. 🙂 It was VERY exciting.

On the airboat

We didn’t feed the alligators

We saw a lot of wildlife but the thing we wanted to see the most was alligators. And that we did. My daughter and I counted 37 alligators through the tour. I am sure there were hundreds more that were there but we didn’t see.

One big alligator!

Well, there you go. I finally got to the end of my vacation story. I hope you enjoyed it. I had a lovely vacation. I really got to spend quality time with my family and I loved every minute of it. Well, ok. Some minutes were not so enjoyable. (Like not having a hotel room or the police showing up at the beach house. :0) Looking back though, the minutes that I didn’t love while I was in them make very good stories when you are back home.  And I am glad that I can share a little bit of my vacation with you.

Thanks for coming along. I will keep the chairs reserved just for you.

Reserved Chairs