SURPRISE! It's a ...HONEYMOON!!

I love good surprises! Jed was in charge of the honeymoon and I wanted it to be a surprise, so my loving husband took care of everything and once the deal was sealed, so were his lips. He did not tell another soul (except his dad because he helped Jed book it) where we were going. He was a vault. There aren't very many people who know, so here it is: We went on a 4-night Carnival cruise out of Miami and we stopped at Key West and Cozumel!! It was fantastic! Jed did a great job.

The longest and hardest part of the trip was flying to and from Florida. Seriously we were travelling for about 10 hours. Nightmare. But once we got to Fort Lauderdale, everything was great. We stayed at the Hyatt right by the airport, which was really nice, and we didn't set sail until the following afternoon, so we went out to dinner at this really nice restaurant and then lounged around the hotel. We had to take the Carnival shuttle from Fort Lauderdale to Miami, where the ship was, and then when we got there, the Carnival guy who took our bags for us when we signed in tried to take a $10 tip from me (we only had a $20 and he gave me $10 back at first until I called him out on it) just for walking our bags to the back and putting them on the conveyor belt.

SHIP: Once on the ship, we had a great time! Carnival is geared more towards families, not honeymooners, so Jed and I spent a lot of our time in our room, just enjoying each others' company and soaking up as much one-on-one time as we could. We did a lot of talking and played games and watched movies. I'm so grateful that we got the chance to do that, because heaven knows that it's pretty much impossible to get very much continuous alone time without anything else distracting you in the "real world".

Some other tidbits about the ship:

-There are two types of plugs on the ship, Americans and Asians.

-We sat with some *interesting* people at dinner. For example, they got married, by themselves, the second day of the cruise, 8-8-08, at the courthouse in Key West. They had been together for 10 years and "engaged" for two. She would say something tasted really good and then if she asked her husband and he said it wasn't good, she'd be like "Oh yeah, it was kind of dry. It was alright, I guess." I wish we had gotten a private table...

-There was a big water slide on the boat. Like one you'd see at a water park. It was great. I only went down once, but Jed did it a few times and loved it.

-I love the towel animals they put in your room.

-If you run down the hallway imitating the little boy you saw while swimming at the pool who thought he was a flying ninja, you look like an awkward creeper who can't control their bowel movements.

KEY WEST: was just a tourist spot with a bunch of shops up and down this one road. Nothing really exciting since we didn't opt for an onshore excursion or anything special besides shopping, but we still had a good time. There was a 'Key West museum' with this enormous statue in front of it

And this crazy flute-playing couple

We thought this church was cool-looking so Jed wanted to get a picture of it

And I turned in to a pig...

COZUMEL: Jed had signed us up for private snorkeling on the reef and that's what we did first. It was an amazing experience! We saw some gorgeous, vibrant fish and we saw stingrays (black ones and yellow ones) and a lion fish (my favorite). Our guide was really cool and very knowledgeable. Jed was in heaven-he loves fish, and these guys were incredibly beautiful.

After our snorkeling adventure, we went SHOPPING!! I had been to Cozumel before on a cruise with my family, so I knew where some good places (and some not-so-good places) were. I got charm number two (I collect charms for my bracelet whenever I go on vacation and I had already gotten one in Key West) and Mexican vanilla and a thumb ring. We both got t-shirts at Ron Jon and Jed got a turtle carved out of stone. We wanted to get something sentimental for both of us, so we got one of those painted tiles where they paint whatever you want right in front of you. It's a Carnival ship sitting on the water and then the scene below the water, with two big tropical fish and some smaller ones and some coral. I love it! ...and then I got eaten by a shark. And all Jed did was pull out the camera... ;)

VIVA MEXICO!

This is my interpretation of Mexican Pipi Longstocking gone bad. Yikes!

I got sick with what I think was a cold on the cruise. I was down for the count on the day after Cozumel. Luckily we were just at sea and didn't stop at a port that day because I slept almost the whole day. After buying me a $13 bottle of medicine (which by the way didn't work and they wouldn't take it back because it was open... Yeah, I have some not-kind thoughts about that), my dear sweet husband just sat on the bed next to me and watched back-to-back movies and TV while I was passed out. He's so sweet and patient. I am blessed and loved.

We docked at 8:00 the next morning and headed back to Fort Lauderdale because that's where our hotel was, and where we'd be flying out of the next day. We rode the train back from Miami. That was fun. We took five different types of transportation on our honeymoon: car, airplane, ship, train, and fins. Fins count, right? :) We pretty much all day to lounge around in the hotel, so we did, and it was great. We left to try and find some grub for lunch (on foot, of course) and it started *pouring* down on us! We ran to this small walk-up-to-the-window, outdoor-seating place and luckily they had covered seating because we had nowhere to go until the rain let up. The food was delicious! We really lucked out on that one. These are pictures of us at the place, after the rain stopped (yes, I was wearing a white shirt...):

We flew out the next day, but not until we taxied for an hour and a half because of a storm. It's good to be home. :D