Cruisin'

As promised I am writing a post about the vacation that S and I went on back in January. We went on a Southern Caribbean cruise on the brand new Carnival Horizon. We went on a Carnival cruise last year and had a blast, but we were a little disappointed with this trip. The ship itself was beautiful and brand new. We got a really good deal when we booked so we stayed in a spa balcony suite. The room was fantastic as far as cruise cabins and I definitely enjoyed having a balcony. I did take advantage of the thermal suites in the spa that were included with the spa room. There were saunas and steam rooms and heated loungers. We also had multiple massages since we were able to get good discounts on them! The hot stone massage was my fav! #CarnivalHorizon #Cruising #CaribbeanVacay

One of the downsides of this ship was the food was mediocre at best in the complimentary food options. The lobster rolls and Hibachi grill were both worth spending the money on though! The other thing is that they added a bunch of things to the ship at the cost of the deck areas and relaxing areas. They had an Imax theater and a 'thrill' ride, the sky bike and a sports court. There wasn't a lot of relaxing on a deck space though especially for the shear number of people that these new ships hold. We did enjoy the comedy club though!

The weather on our trip was not the best. High winds and rainy days. Our first stop at Grand Turk was so windy all the water related excursion were cancelled :( We were supposed to go power snorkeling and the island is tiny so there just wasn't enough beach space for 5,000 people! We ended up getting a massage instead!

The next stop was La Romana in the Dominican Republic and there was not much going on for shore excursions so we just walked around port for a bit and then got another massage. This one was planned since there weren't many shore excursion options. On a lot of lists of cruise ports La Romana was repeated listed as one of the worst.

Then we stopped in Curacao. This island we enjoyed. We explored a cave, got a tour of the island and did some snorkeling. I saw an eel! But S missed it and he had the Go Pro. We also got to see a wild flock of flamingos!

The final Port was Aruba. We did a Discover Scuba excursion. I had a problem with my mask so I chilled on the boat but S had a great time exploring a ship wreck. We are definitely putting Aruba back on the vacation destination list to go and spend some time, not just a cruise stop.

We spent a couple of days on the ship before we were back in Miami.

In Miami we had a great time. We went to the everglades and did an air boat tour at Gator Park. We spent a bit of extra money on got a private boat. Totally worth it. Cushioned seats and we were able to go faster and it was just us. The baby gator's name is Larry!

The coolest thing we did on the entire trip was Jungle Island! It is a zoo in Miami that is amazing! We did the VIP tour. It was expensive but completely worth it! S had wanted to do something with animals while we were in Florida and I had found Jungle Island and figured we would just be doing the regular visit but when S saw they had the VIP tours he was sold.

We got a private tour of the park and got to play with lemurs, feed young flamingos, bottle feed Mighty Mouse the baby kangaroo, feed and pet an Alhambra tortoise and bottle feed a baby monkey! We had so much fun. Then we got lunch in the park had had the best park food I have ever had. #JungleIsland #lemursareawesome

We spent a couple of days just relaxing and mostly chilling at the hotel because it was cold and rainy. There were watch for Iguanas falling out of the trees warnings because it was so cold!!! We did go to the movie theater and see 1917 which was a fantastic movie. S even teared up at the end! S tried to fly his drone at the beach but the winds were too high to fly it.

The last awesome thing we did was go to the Mai-Kai Polynesian restaurant for a dinner and show.

Overall we had a great time and it was nice to not be in Minnesota for a couple of weeks in January!!!!

Until next time

-XO Dani