Happy Friday! I hope everyone had a happy Passover and Happy Easter! I didn’t have a Friday post last week because we were on vacation! We flew to Barbados and went on a 7 night Caribbean island hopping cruise. The trip was in honor of my daughter’s 16th birthday. Instead of a big party, she asked for a tropical vacation. Seeing that we hadn’t taken any real vacations in over two years, we thought it was a great idea. It was a fantastic trip and although there were so many things that could have gone wrong, we had a seamless trip. It was definitely a bit stressful pre trip – packing, COVID tests, etc. However, the trip itself was amazing. It was so nice to unplug (we didn’t buy wifi) and spend some real quality time as a family. Here are five from this week:
1. The Cruise Ship – We sailed on Royal Caribbean’s Grandeur of the Seas. This is one of their smallest ships, which was fine with us for this trip. There wasn’t that much to do in terms of activities, but that was fine since we were off the ship every day exploring the different islands. The ship left from Barbados and then went to Grenada, St. Kitts, Antigua, St. Vincent, Dominica and St. Lucia. I’ll be posting more pictures of our travels on Instagram.
2. Eating – Overall, I was actually pretty disappointed with the food on the cruise this trip. Normally, I really like the food on Royal Caribbean. I did enjoy this lobster tail for dinner on one of the formal nights. Our head waiter told us a story of a previous cruise where a woman ended up eating 32 lobster tails! Pretty unbelievable.
3. Reading – I ended up bringing my kindle on the cruise since I didn’t want to lug bulky books around with me (and our suitcases were already stuffed!). I borrowed a bunch of digital books from the library…..and realized when I went to read one that I hadn’t downloaded them to the kindle! So, I was stuck reading what was already downloaded. Fortunately, I had a Netgalley ARC of Bet on It by Jodie Slaughter. This is a contemporary romance about, “a bingo-based sex pact” that is set to be published this summer.
4. Cooking – It was so nice having a week off from grocery shopping and cooking! Reality set in though and I’m back at it. One of our favorite dinners was Pinch of Yum’s Spicy Peanut Tofu Bowls.
5. Watching – On the plane headed to Barbados I slept, since we were up at 1:45 AM to head to the airport! On the way home I watched 22 Jump Street with Jonah Hill and Tatum Channing. I didn’t realize this movie was so old (2014), but it ended up being an entertaining, light watch.
I also found the show Old Enough on Netflix and have been binge watching it. The short episodes feature a Japanese toddler sent out to run errands. These kids are so adorable and are only 3 -4 years old (some are even younger!). They are walking busy streets, going into stores, etc. by themselves.
6. Driving Permit – Of course as soon as we got home, my daughter wanted to go take her permit test. She went Monday afternoon and passed. We now take her out every afternoon driving (in parking lots and empty streets). She’s not quite ready to hit busy roads yet!
7. COVID – I thought the cruise did a great job with their COVID precautions/testing requirements. We tested the day before we left for our trip, we also got tested before we could board the ship. Then we got tested Saturday before we could fly home on Sunday. Monday I had a cough that got worse later in the week. Wednesday I finally took an at-home test and tested positive! It’s crazy that I made it over two years without getting COVID and then got it now! I am so thankful I was not positive on the ship though, where I would have had to quarantine on the boat for 10 days! So, I’ve been home the past two days quarantined in my bedroom. I’m fine and just have a cough and runny nose. It feels like a cold, which is what I thought I had. Unfortunately, we had to postpone my daughter’s birthday brunch celebration with her friends. But thankfully, the rest of the family is negative!
Sharing with Friday Favorites! Have a great weekend!
It sounds like you had an amazing trip! I have only been on one cruise and it was Royal Caribbean and I just loved it. I can not believe one woman could eat that many lobster tails… I’d be sick! Hope you are feeling better soon and that no one else in the house gets sick.
Aww, sorry to hear you got covid, though thank goodness it happened after your trip! I know someone irl who recently went on an island vacay, and the covid-testing aspect of that sounded so stressful. I don’t know that I’m emotionally prepared to take that on yet, haha.