49!

 It's here. The final year of this fourth decade of my life. How did I celebrate my birthday this year?

On a cruise!

Holy cow were there lots of protocols to just get on this cruise.

First, everyone over 16 years old needed to be vaccinated.

Second, the Bahamas required each person to purchase a Bahamas Health Visa. Which just shows you've been vaccinated or have tested Covid negative.

Third, the cruise required vaccinated passengers to have a negative PCR Covid test result within 5 days of boarding.

With all the requirements completed we headed to O'Hare.

Husband grabbed a box of popcorn in the airport while we waited for our flight. And I cast on a hat to knit on for the week.

About five hours later we boarded our first Royal Caribbean cruise in Nassau Bahamas.

Our room was beautiful and such a nice quiet balcony space.

Perfect for viewing sun rises.

And for morning coffee.

And for hanging out watching storms move past.

The next day our stop was Freeport.

Not up for an expensive excursion we stayed right at this sleepy port and ordered up some Kalik beers for me and Bahama Mama drinks for husband.

The next two days we were docked at Royal's private island, Little Stirrup Cay. They reminded us a billion times "It's a perfect day at Coco Cay".

The first day at Coco Cay stop was my birthday day.

 I booked us tickets to the waterpark. They claim one of the slides is the tallest in North America. I climbed all those steps four times that day to go down that particular slide.

It's pretty high up but husband went with me a few times up all those stairs! Good times.

 At lunch they had a taco bar section with beans, rice, and guacamole. Best meal of the entire week!

After more waterpark fun we headed over to the floating bar.

Ordered us a couple of drinks and enjoyed the view of the ocean.

The next day the weather was terrible with thunderstorms and heavy rains. We had pre-booked a one tank scba so we headed over to the dive shop first thing.

They towed us out to the dive site on the back of these jet skis. 

This was as far as I got into this excursion as I was too nauseous to do a dive. I sat on the beach and waited for husband to return after his dive was complete.

After his dive we headed over to the beach that seemed to be more protected from the wind, by the floating bar. I spent some time just floating in the water. But the weather didn't cooperate this day and we had to head back to the ship to escape the storms.

The next day on board was a sea day. We enjoyed just hanging out reading for most of the day. Later we had a formal dinner in the main dining room.

We woke up the next morning for our stop in Mexico!

We got in the water for a three reef snorkel on this day.

And I had a few Corona beers before heading back onboard.

The next day we had to get Covid tests so we could fly back to the USA a couple of days later. It was really nice the ship offered free tests so we didn't have to scramble to find a testing site before our flight home.

Our ship was at 30% passenger capacity. I don't think we've ever had a cruise so empty of passengers.

Most times I felt like I had the entire inside promenade to myself.

We never had a problem finding a seat on the outside promenade deck.

Or finding a lounge chair on the pool decks.

Finding an available table to sit at was easy too.

Every other row was block off in the theaters. Reservations were required and there was never more than 200 people in any theater show I attended.

But it also meant they were operating with 30% of staff. So times for food was greatly cut down from what we were used to in pre-Covid sailings. Half of the food venues just didn't operate the entire week we were there.

The week went by fast. We grabbed a couple of drinks in the airport before boarding our flight.

Bye Bahamas, thanks for the memories.