Back to that whole Vacation thing

I left off after our day in Freeport.  I know this is very spread out and disjointed.  Stay with me though, we really had a wonderful time on our trip.

The day after Freeport was Nassau.  I had talked to people who had been there and we had our friend Richard there too, so the three of us decided to hit up the Atlantis Resort.  Its huge and really pretty.  We mostly did the aquarium tour there, since none of us were interested in any gambling.

 Jelly fish are always beautiful and make for fun pictures, don't they.  We took a ton hoping to get some nice ones.

There were tanks of tiny fish everywhere.  The aquarium is built to look mostly like you are in caves but then outside they have these really large lagoons.  You have to have a map to find your way around the aquarium, its kind of nuts.  We were glad that we spent the morning at the aquarium because it rained off and on all morning.

This guy was a bit creepy.  After seeing him and a few others like him I did not want to have fish for dinner.

 One of my favorite outdoor lagoons was the sea turtle lagoon.  It had tons and tons of huge sea turtles and you could get really, really close to them. They were fun to watch swimming around.  Most places you go have one or maybe two turtles of this size, but there had to be more than a dozen here, maybe 20 or so.

Another outdoor lagoon housed a couple hammer head sharks.  You couldn't get as close to that lagoon as the turtles, but they were cool to watch swimming around their huge pool.  The lagoon with the nurse sharks in it you could have walked right in to though.

After some lunch at Atlantis and the sun finally being out to stay, we went back to the other side of the island and hit up the beach.  The water was beautifully clear and really warm and the three of use bobbed around in it for quite a while.  It was nice that the beach wasn't crowded and we could find our own fairly quiet little spot.  You can see the cruise ships behind us in the distance.

 After a little while at a local internet cafe where the guys could get a beer and we could all indulge our desire to "connect" we headed back towards the boats, bought a few silly things for family and took a couple pictures of the giant ships.

 And Ben was taking silly pictures up my nose.

 Leaving Nassau!  Atlantis is waaay in the background there to the left.

And lastly, our towel animal from that night.  The next day was just a day at sea so we don't have many pictures, but we did some swimming some eating, some packing, some lounging, etc.  Oh and at dinner we had the most incredible chilled bing cherry soup.  Mmmm.  We had been told about it and had been waiting all week for it to appear on the menu.  Dinner every night was good and the lobster was great, but that soup was the best.

So my very first cruise was awesome and I think its something I would probably do again.  :-)  I can't recall if I mentioned my visit to the spa during the first day at sea but I had a massage and facial and it was the most wonderful relaxing thing ever.  I wish I could have brought the masseuse home with me, she was awesome.  But then I always love trips to the spa.  Massage?  Yes, please.

Our vacation didn't end after the cruise.  We had a whole week left of vacationing to do.  More about that later.