We had a mind blowing pre-holiday meal at Cesarina. If you haven’t been there, put it on your to-do list. They greeted up with bubbly and warm bread. We dove into that while we waited for our crispy octopus with romesco, capers, red onions and almonds. For the main course, Pappardelle with marscapone and truffle sauce topped with guanciale. parm and cracked black pepper. You guys, it’s the best pasta dish in the universe.
The night before Easter Shawna and I stayed up making a scavenger hunt for the girls’ Easter baskets. How did it turn out? Let’s just say that they would most likely not make it out of an escape room on their own.
We also hid eggs for them to find. We hid them so well that we didn’t find two of them for weeks.
Our last two days…sigh. I swear the first few days go by slowly and then BAM! It’s the end. We were at sea on Thursday and then at Great Stirrup Cay (NCL’s private Island) on Friday morning.
Our day at sea we actually found ourselves some lounge chairs. Were they by the pool, no. Were they three levels up in the middle of fifty chairs? Yes….But we had a place to call home base. We made nice with our neighbors and then decided we were going to go to a wine tasting.
Wine tasting
We had the best time. Turns out we know a little about oenology. Some called us “teachers pets” which just made the experience that more fun.
So, we didn’t leave after that, we stayed for another wine tasting.
Blind tasting along with some macaron’s. We were swapping wines and cookies with are table mates, taking the ones they didn’t love and vice versa.
The next morning we were in the Bahamas. A little island that a big company owns. Great Stirrup Cay.
This was the only stop that we tendered into. With that, it’s one beach and first come first serve.
You can’t just get onto the Tender because you are first in line. You have to have an excursion or a ticket…something.
I read about this before our trip and was prepared. On our first sea day, I went to the excursion desk. I rented us an umbrella and two chairs on Great Stirrup Cay. That got us a first class ticket off the ship and on the first tender/ biggest tender ever.
You guys, I am not kidding when I say that the island was empty when we arrived. The beaches were newly combed, not a footprint in sight and two hours later, the place was packed. If you take any advice from our trip, let it be that. Especially if you want a chair by the water.
We got some nice chairs by the blue water. We drank some drinks, duh. Then we went and played some corn hole. We meandered around the small island and some shops. We shortly contemplated walking to the other side of the island. However, we weren’t sure how far the other side was (the view was sand and trees). We decided against it, we didn’t want to waste our day lost on a hot island.
We spent the afternoon in the water. I took out a paddle board for awhile, we swam, we ate and we just soaked it all up. This was our last stop and we weren’t ready to go home.
But sadly, that was it. That’s the end. It was a great trip, a little too crowded. A little to0 long of lines for dinner and drinks, BUT at least it wasn’t full of college students . That was bad.
Cruises are still our favorite way to travel. And I most definitely want to go stay on St. Thomas or Tortola or both in the future.
One day, you will find me on one of these beaches. I will be the one with the beach bar renting out water toys. Follow the music.
Not unlike St. Thomas, the Tortola port was also semi closed off and vans were the only taxi options. But, we didn’t venture out so please don’t take my word for it.
We went to Cane Garden Beach on the north side of Tortola.
It was everything I wanted it to be.
We found some chairs to keep, we pulled them into the lapping waves and just soaked up the sun.
There isn’t an exciting story about people we met or the amazing sea life we saw. It was just the best day on an amazing beach.
That is all we did. When the time came to leave I was heartbroken.
I vow to return to that beach.
This time our cruise entertainment wasn’t as exciting as the last one. Maybe because this cruise was packed. Either way, we stuck to drinks in the lounge and karaoke for our nightly entertainment.
Our plan for the day was to take a taxi to Magen’s Bay. Getting around from the port was super easy and reliable. The only downside was the taxis were vans and they waited until they had a car full of people before we left. Once we hit the roads, it made sense. It was a long winding drive but so beautiful.
Once we reached the beach we all piled out of the taxi and found someone to rent beach chairs from.
We had to pay for two lounge chairs, I think it was only 25 dollars. Once we settled in we made our way up to Fairchild’s Bar and Grill. It was crowded and lines were long. I guess that’s what we get for going to a popular place.
We don’t have many pictures of our time here and let me tell you why.
We were sitting next to a couple who was on another NCL cruise, the Outlaw Country cruise. {we will call them Carol and Bud.} I asked about their cruise and who was playing on board. I am a country music fan. I didn’t know anyone they mentioned. I guess “outlaw” means someting else. But now we were talking to them for our entire stay at the beach.
The time came for a drink refill so Carol and I went and stood in the long line for rum drinks. While we were waiting she told me that she had been in prison. “Oh, really? I asked. Then she said she’s been out for a few years. She is a whole new person. I mean obviously she is. So, I asked her what she was in for. You guys… She tells me this story. She was arrested in an Oklahoma casino. At the time, she had 40 packs of Sudafed stuffed inside her boots. She told the cops that she “had a cold”…Somehow she ran from them and was on the run for months. I am not kidding you. She told me how she would go to estate sales while evading law enforcement. She’d buy furniture without having a place to put it. Eventually she was caught after a shoot out and a car crash, I mean, of course. HAhahaaa…
She talked about how amazing prison was for her..blah blah blah. She said that she met the man she was now with (Bud ) while incarcerated, (that is another story) That makes sense right? Long story shorter, she got out early for good behavior and made her way to him. Now here they were.
We spent the afternoon drinking, swimming and chatting. They were fun, it was like watching a train wreck happen in real time. But as the day went on, their story changed. They spoke about being clean after their prison stints. They mentioned that they never wanted to end up in prison again. Her loose lips admitted that she keistered some Molley onto their cruise. She didn’t tell him because he has a guilty face.
Good times you guys, good times.
Before we new it, our alarm went off and it was time to head back to our ship.
We shared the taxi with them. These pictures should show you how we were SO glad that they weren’t on our cruise!
Once we poured out of the taxi , we said “Ok Bye” to our friends.
Then we had one more rum drink before getting on our ship.
After dinner we went to the lounge to watch Karaoke.
I took videos but I’ll spare you. It was basically the same people each night. We all sound good on vacation, right?
Back in January the best dad, my dad turned 80. He is a brilliant man. He is the rock of our family. He is the perfect example of what it means to be a husband and father.
We had a little surprise party for him with a few close friends and family.
What a life he’s had and continues to live. From a savage soccer player and coach to flying jet airliners. Having a cartoon strip in the newspaper and magazines. Traveling the world all while having art hanging in galleries. He’s checked off a lot of boxes in this thing called life. He is truly living his best.
My brother and sister in-law planned the entire thing and it was such a hit. Good food, good wine and great company.
We spent the morning dreaming about running down to Cabo for a couple of nights, spending the days on Medano beach eating fresh fish and sipping margaritas. Real life has us doing laundry, cleaning fish tanks and getting groceries, good times.
It’s been a busy summer so far. My classroom had an art show focusing on Henri Matisse’s Scissor art.
We went to the fair and luckily didn’t leave with fish this time. The two goldfish from last years fair are still living their best life, sigh.
The girls dragged us on the Zipper which I had horrible memories from childhood (thanks Jess) and I am happy to report that it’s not scary anymore. That evening Old Dominion was playing and we were lucky enough to sneak up on their rehearsal.
While the girls were riding rides, we took advantage of some wine tasting and a funnel cake hot dog.
The only thing that would’ve made it better was if it were beef and not chicken.
We did one last ride before calling it, it was a school night.
She wanted a Taylor Swift birthday including the cake from her Blank Space video. I almost pulled it off, almost.
The cake.
In the video T Swift stabs her white heart cake and blood spatters out of it. I watched the video countless times and scoured the internet for an actual recipe that I thought would mimic the video. A lot of recipes called for a raspberry jam filling, some just suggested decorating the cake with the knife stabbed in it and blood pooling around. But the birthday girl wanted to actually stab the cake for the bloody result, so I set work.
I made a white cake from the box and layered it and crumb coated with cream cheese frosting.
Next I made some fake blood with corn syrup and red and a dash of blue food coloring. Then I poured it into a water balloon. Sounds easy, it wasn’t.
I cut a hole into the cake, big enough to fit the water balloon. This took trial and error and a little panic.
I pushed it down and covered the hole with some of the cake that I cut out and then covered it with frosting.
I breathed a sigh of relief, I had done the hard part and it didn’t look terrible.
I threw on another coatlayer coat of frosting, I don’t know what the proper term is but I added more frosting and then got to piping.
I decided to add some friendship bracelet decor.
What I did next was my big mistake. I put it in the fridge and moved on with my life not thinking of the corn syrup that would thicken.
The build up was too much to handle.
You can see in the video how the corn sryup was too thick to splatter out like we were hoping.
Ugh, so close.
Such a let down. So, if you make this cake I suggest not using a frosting that needs to be kept cold or make it and serve it right away. Happy 13th birthday Kbear. I love you to the moon and back and around the entire universe.
A day of non stop country music with a backdrop of palm trees swaying in harmony. That is a glimpse of what Boots in the Park at waterfront looks like. As soon as we heard Thomas Rhett was going to headline Boots in the Park this Spring we had tickets that afternoon. The festival lineup also featured his daddy, Rhett Atkins, Scotty McCreery, LOCASH and Lee Brice. VIP tickets are the only way to go for this festival because it’s a separate area with it’s own amenities, bathrooms and most importantly benches to sit on because age.
We arrived early planning out where we wanted to park ourselves for the day while we were in line.
We were one of the firsts in the VIP section.
If we had to complain about VIP it would be the lack of food and drink options, but we survived.
While we were sitting and chatting a lady came up to us and asked us if we wanted to meet Rhett Atkins.
We replied with an obvious “yes”.
Our phones weren’t allowed backstage… He seemed like a nice guy and we shared a few laughs.
Rhett was a good story teller and shared personal anecdotes between songs. He told us about the time Luke Bryan went to his hotel room in nothing but his boxers to tell him that he came up with sure fire hit song.
This is that song….
He’s written a lot of songs for other artists such as Blake Shelton and Jon Pardi. He told us backstage that his four year old son might join him on stage for a song. Sure enough at the end of his set, his son came out and sang the old classic “the Itsy Bitsy Spider” and the crowd went wild.
On our way to get a refill we ran into our radio morning show hosts. I listen to Jon and Tammy every morning so we had to get a picture.
As the sun started to go down, Lee Brice took the stage.
And he sang all of our favorites including Rumor.
Next up was not so little Scotty McCreery whom we saw at Boots in the Park in 2019 with Old Dominion. I was eager to hear his latest song, Cab in a Solo.
A drone show lit up the sky.
Finally, the man of the match. Thomas Rhett came out and started the show with one of my personal favorites, Vacation.
His entire performance was stellar. He played all of his hits and talked about how he re-did “Heads Carolina” with Cole Swindel, which I did not know.
It was such a good day with my love and we can’t wait to see Thomas Rhett again.
He did it, the captain managed to dock in Costa Maya! And so did the captain of another large vessel that was there with us.
The ocean was super choppy the wind was busy but we hit the ground running, okay walking.
The port was riddled with sale sharks and I had to literally drag Shawna out of the mouths of two of them. The port has a lot to see and do, you don’t actually have to leave the port at all but please don’t actually just stay at the port. They had a pool with lounge chairs, a full service restaurant, bar and all sorts of shops. We finally made it out to where the taxi’s were and hopped into one with another couple luckily heading to the same beach.
We landed at playa Mahahual, where we popped a squat in chairs that had the warm waves lapping at our feet.
The water was warm and so clear.
We walked the Malecon for a ways toward the ships general direction popping into stores now and again. Once we had all that we wanted we were back at the port.
One last passion fruit margarita before we embark.
We enjoyed a nice dinner in the main dining room that evening. This was our view.
After dessert we got ready for prom night!
We danced the night away sipping our own spiked drinks.
Meeting the crew was a great way to end the trip.
And just like that… we were at the airport waiting for our flight home. But not before crushing some catfish and beignets.
And that’s it. Our flight was nonstop, had zero hiccups and we were back at home and gasp, unpacking by 5:00 that same day. Norwegian Breakaway was a great ship, a billion times better than the Jewel. The entertainment we loved and obvi favored the four singers and their band at Syd’s Pour House. Food was fine, drinks were pretty good. Ports, we would rate a 4 out of 5 because I’ll always be bitter about Belize.
The alarm went off at 7:00 and we were excited to get on with our day in Belize. We had ferry tickets to take us from Harvest Caye to Placencia so we could wander the narrow streets of the village, nibble our way through chocolate shops, eat fresh fish and sip rum punch while we sunbathed. Buuuut none of that happened because as we were getting ready the captain announced that the weather was too windy to dock and although he made several attempts he was unsuccessful. Day ruined, we were so disappointed. Instead we got a day at sea and since we now had a full 24 hours to reach our next port the captain took it really slow so we weren’t blown off the pool deck.
We saved a couple of pool chairs, had breakfast, made reservations for the Ice Bar and spent the day poolside.
We ran into a lady we met the first day at sea and she told us that the last time she took this cruise they didn’t stop in Belize due to weather. So if anyone has actually gotten off a Norwegian ship in Belize please tell me about it, I have questions.
Once we washed all of the sun cream and remnants of a day at sea off of us we made our way to the Martini bar where we could order a real espresso martini, not that fake shit. The martini bar is a nice place, they have a bar inside and outside with lounge seating in both areas. It would be a nice place to sit and watch the sun set, probably. This is wear we waited for our Ice Bar reservations. Oh the overated Ice Bar, exactly as it sounds is a small bar made of ice. The staff rolled out a cart of hanging ponchos which they gave us complimentary along with some gloves. These two things did nothing, the ice bar was well, fucking freezing.
The bartender was offering couple of different cocktails, we all got one free drink which was basically 2 oz. of said cocktail in an ice glass. I couldn’t handle it, we drank it and split. No thank you, the Ice Bar is not for me, not enjoyable what so ever.
Once we had feeling back in our limbs we went to the sushi restaurant for dinner and it was absolutely delish, one of the best meals on the ship.
And then, “no and then” it was music time.
Followed by some french fries and bedtime. Tomorrow we were hopefully going to be in Costa Maya.
The Art of Thyming 