Western Caribbean Cruise/7 year FBC Anniversary Gift

From September 25th to October 2, 2016, we were so blessed to enjoy a 7 day Western Caribbean cruise on the Norwegian Cruise Ship, Getaway.  This was the largest ship we have sailed on.  Over 4,000 passengers and 1600 crew.

We had a balcony room on the 8th floor 

Our room was very nice

And I once again loved the balcony!

Nice large bathroom and shower

We boarded in Miami, Florida

Some pictures on the ship.  We ate breakfast and lunch in the Grand Cafe which was a large buffet

For our evening meal, we ate at one of the 3 main dining rooms that offered the 3 course meals.  We really like the freestyle dining on Norwegian because it allows you to eat at whatever time you want to and a table by yourself.  The other cruise lines have set times and a table with 6 to 8 others.  So often, we are setting with people who don't speak English and/or we have nothing in common with.

I know this is really dark, but I'm posting it to show our table and the fact we had a window to watch the ocean as we were always cruising at dinner time.  Loved the setting :-).

 Pretty chandelier

They had numerous pools and slides.  This was a kid pool area.

They also had a miniature golf area and Jeff and I enjoyed a game one night after dinner:

 

We also enjoyed an outdoor movie one night (Back to the Future 2):

We sailed a full day and two nights and our first stop was in Roatan, Honduras 

We did a ship excursion this day to Tabyana beach

Jeff snorkled and I just enjoyed the beautiful water and white sand

We again sailed all night and then arrived the next morning in Belize City, Belize

We did get off the ship via a boat to carry us to the dock as our ship was too big to dock close to land.  We didn't do anything special that day - just walked around.

Sailed overnight again and next day docked at Costa Maya, Mexico.  We once again got off the ship and walked around the town.

The Caribbean Sea is so pretty!

Again we sailed overnight and our last stop was at Cozumel, Mexico.  A friend had suggested Paradise Beach, so we took a taxi and spent a wonderful day there.  My favorite day of all!

Lots of fun inflatable toys for the younger generation

Even had a pretty pool area

Tacos in Paradise from the Taco Truck (delicious food!)

Of course, we took a lot of other pictures and several individual pictures of each other but very few of us together.  The last night, I did ask a stranger to take our picture on the deck.

The last two pictures are scans of professional pictures taken on the ship.  At $24.95 each (ouch), I couldn't afford to get but two!

At the beginning of this year, we never dreamed we would ever sail again due to Jeff's Meniere's disease. Having done 3 in the past 20 years and loving them, we were sure sad to think we couldn't do another one.  But at my insistence, we did the 5 day "test" cruise in March and had a great time with no vertigo for Jeff and so when the church so graciously gave us an additional two weeks vacation and money to pay for it, we decided to do another cruise as Jeff finds it very relaxing and refreshing (and I do too!).  And this one proved to be just that.  A wonderful, wonderful seven days!  Hopefully, there will be more cruising in our future (Alaska is on our bucket list) :-)!

Thank you, thank you, First Baptist, for this wonderful gift!