Winding Down with a Couple of Days at Sea (Southern Caribbean - July 19 & 20, 2014)

The last two days were "days at sea."  Days at sea are great days to take advantage of all the activities and enjoy the relaxation of being on a floating city.

Hitting the Shows. They were really good!

Alex and I took advantage of the evening outdoor movie.

We joined a team for Team Trivia the first day.  We needed to bring home a "Gold Ship On a Stick."  This was our team!  There were four different sessions.  We ended up bringing home the mother load.

There were many changes to the Carnival Freedom. One new place was the Red Frog Pub.

One of my favorite places and one of the best changes was Guy's Burger Joint.  I ate there more than I should have.

This new line was a fiesta bar.  It looked really good, but I couldn't get past the burger joint long enough to try it!

They added two dualing Lido Deck bars - the Red Frog Rum Bar...

...and the Blue Iguana Tequila Bar.


Another great cruise and family vacation!!!!

Aruba: A Day of Fun in the Sun (Southern Caribbean - July 18, 2014)

Our plan for Aruba was to head to Palm Beach for a "beach day." We grabbed a taxi and headed to the beach.  We were taken to Palm Beach, which was in the midst of some amazing resorts.   Of course the kids were interested in water sports more than laying around.  But, we had the day so there was plenty of time for both.  While the kids relaxed, Kristi and I took a nice walk down the beach and waded in the warm water.  It was a very beautiful and relaxing.  After settling in, we went to the water sport station and set up a jet ski rental for Alex and a para-sailing experience for Adri.  Of course, as minors, I had to accompany them! 

We had to take a short boat ride to the jet ski site.  This ride provided a great view of the shoreline and many of the resorts.  Alex and I got our briefing and headed out.  Alex is a good driver.  I didn't have any problems until he wanted to turn a little too sharply and at a little too fast of speed.  I went flying off and the jet ski tipped over.  All I could think about was not being able to get it upright and having to pay for the damaged jet ski.  It flipped back over quickly and we awkwardly climbed back on trying to keep the balance so it didn't flip again.  We were able to get righted and took back off for more fun.  In the midst of the all of the fun, we did another big turn and went flying off a second time.  This time the jet ski shot out from underneath us,  It went quit a long way away from us.  We were quite a ways out at this point.  The waves were pretty strong.  We tried to swim to the jet ski but it seemed the harder we swam the farther we were from the jet ski.  The waves made it very difficult to close the distance,  I knew if we took any break at all the jet ski would be farther away so I kicked it into gear and swam as hard as I could.  We eventually made it back after a workout that didn't hurt either of us but one that we were not ready for.  We settled back in and used up the rest of our time in a little more relaxed fashion.  We really didn't think the price was too bad compared to other places we have checked.

Adri had to wait;4 a little and hung out on a swing until she had the chance to do her adventure!

 Adri and I headed out when our time came up.  We were hanging out on the beach to the white resort pictured.  It was pretty amazing.  We went out and waited our turn.  We had to get on a life jacket and then were harnessed to the shoot.  The shoot was attached to a cable that once full of the wind was slowly released.  We started to slowly float out on our peaceful ride.  It was the first time that either of us had para-sailed.  It was a very enjoyable experience.  It was peaceful and the scenery was beautiful.


 The best of all of these adventures was doing them with my family.  Whether it was walking on the beach with Kristi, jet skiing with Alex, or para-sailing with Adri, the memories are more important than the adventures themselves.  It is meaningful to be able to say, "Do you remember when we saw that?  Or, do you remember when we did that?"  Our travel has provided us with so many great memories.

Welcome to Curacao: Another New Port (Southern Caribbean - July 17, 2014)

Our third port was Curacao (pronounced ku̇r-ə-ˈsau̇).  Curacao is an internally self governed Dutch island.  It is only about 15 miles from the Venezuelan coast.   It is a very pretty port due to all of the brightly colored buildings.  Apparently, there was a government leader who struggled with headaches who said the buildings when painted white hurt his head.  So, he declared that all of the buildings had to be painted these pastel colors.  



The dock is a very nice area.  There was a different feel to this island right away.  It was much more clean and affluent (comparatively speaking).  The buildings were all well kept as were all of the areas we walked.












We didn't have a set plan again at this island.  We wanted to get a sense of the island because we had not been there before, and we wanted to do a little shopping.  We found a taxi and hired the driver for a couple hours of touring the island.  
 
 I am always amazed at the size of the ship, especially when compared to the buildings at the ports.  The picture of the town in the foreground and the ship in the background shows just how big the ship is.  These are multilevel buildings that are dwarfed by the ship. 

The itinerary was a little different for this stop.  We were not able to get off the ship until 1:00 pm, but we didn't have to be on board until 11:00 pm.  We are pretty, shall we say, frugal.  So, we hate to miss a cruise dinner.  In order to take advantage of the dinner, we had to get back on board and clean up for dinner.  It is a little blurry, but my selfie is being photo-bombed by one of our waiters.   

 After dinner, we had more time before we had to be back on the ship.  We really have never been in a port at night.  There was a baseball game going on right next to the ship.  The kids and I decided to get off the ship and see if we could get into the game.  Getting off the ship in the dark was a new experience.  We tried to get into the baseball game but it would have cost a little more than we wanted to pay.  In hind sight, we probably should have done it just for the experience, but we knew we couldn't stay very long.

 Once back on board that night, we did our normal games and snack.  This time that included putt-putt and cards.

The Evening Routine (Southern Caribbean - July 16, 2014)

We were always back on board to get ready for our dinner.  Some don't like the formal dinner, but we really enjoy it.  We like to get to know our wait staff and choose from the great options.  I always take the camera just in case, but I think Adri was getting tired of my attempts at capturing the moment.  I think the dinner was Alex's favorite part of the cruise.  He would often try a couple of appetizers, a few times he ordered two entrees, and he most definitely ordered multiple desserts.  It is hard to choose sometimes, so protocol is to order multiples.

While at dinner, we often look over the activities from the evening.  Alex and I did a lot of the shows, but we also just played games.  Adri and I played shuffle board a couple of times.  Alex wanted to get a picture that showed the perspective of how big the ship was by showing how small we are compared to the fins.


It was pretty common to play some cards and have a late night snack.  Alex preferred the Caesar salad, but we also liked the sandwich station and the pizza.

Dominican Republic: A New and Interesting Port (Southern Caribbean - July 16, 2014)

The La Romana port in the Dominican Republic is not a very picturesque port.  This first picture shows the dock where we unloaded.  The amazing thing here was that the captain backed this huge ship up to this dock!  Just left of the dock was a very nice and large house.  This house had a green, sand traps an;d short fairway in the back yard.  The Dominican Republic has a large sugar cane refinery.  This house belonged to one of the higher ups with that company.  You can see the refinery in the background. 

We did not have a set excursion, but we thought we would try and get a taxi to Cueva De La Maravillas, which is a beautiful cave labyrinth.   This site is privately owned so there are no excursions that include this site.  There is a $10 charge per person.  We found a taxi that would take us out there and give us a little tour after that.  Visitors are not permitted to take pictures in the caves,  but there are some good shots at this link:  Cave Pictures. This was a place where an ancient native tribe lived.  There were drawings on the walls in the caves. The natives represented in the painting behind us were completely wiped out by disease after the Europeans arrived. 

The little cutie was one of many iguanas on the site.  From Cueva De Las Maravillas, we relied on our taxi driver, Tony King, to show us more of the area since we had not been to the Dominican Republic before.

There were two things that we noticed right away.  One was baseball!  Baseball is the national sport.  There were fields all over the place.  We arrived early and on our way to Cueva De Las Maravillas, we saw probably six baseball fields all full of kids.  Their fields were not like the nicely groomed fields in our area.  They were dirt with rocks all over, but it didn't seem to bother the kids.  The other thing we noticed was all of the motorcycles and mopeds.  One guy was carrying an eight foot ladder on his moped as he traveled down the road!  We stopped at a local shop for some souvenirs.  They were very pushy and we didn't end up getting anything there. 






One place that our driver really wanted to show us was Casa De Campo.  This is a really, really ritzy development.  People from around the word have places here.  It is a separate community that is nothing like the "locals" living conditions.  The places in this community were multi-million dollar places. They were truly amazing.  Some of them stretched for what looked like blocks.  There was every design you could imagine.  There were ones that had the distinct look of a Prince from India.  Others looked like a castle from Italy.

The large house on the cliff is a rich Russian's, and yes, that is just a single family dwelling.  It is not an apartment complex or condos.  There are world famous golf courses in this community.  It is truly a dichotomy.  The locals struggle to make ends meet and there is some wealth right there beside them.  We were told that the average house in this community employed twelve people to maintain the property.  So, the locals do benefit from these places.

One of our stops was a local favorite beach.  We hung out there just a short time before heading back to the ship.