Our Travel Blog: 17th May to 24th May - Fort Lauderdale & Cruise

Today we checked out of Disney and headed for our drive to Fort Lauderdale. Wade tells me it was a horrible drive - with lots of traffic. I wouldn't know - I was still pretty sick so I basically slept most of the trip. We didn't arrive until later in the afternoon and checked straight into our hotel, which was right along the beach. Lucky we got to drive along here, because that was literally all I saw of Fort Lauderdale (the rest I spent in bed)!! Wade got out and explored a bit more, went for a walk along the beach and also found a mall!

We checked out of our hotel at lunchtime, and returned our hire car, before heading over to the cruise ship terminal to board our ship. It was such a smooth process getting on the ship - I would say it took less than 10 minutes to drop our bags off, go through security, check in and get on the ship. Our ship was the Royal Caribbean - Oasis of the Seas, which is the largest cruise ship in the world and it was amazing. We had an internal room, which felt a little bit like a cave at times but because we couldn't see the outside world, it was a great help in getting me to sleep in (there were multiple mornings that we slept until 10am)! Our cabin attendant was amazing and new us well by the time we left the ship. The dining staff were also amazing, and made every meal a personal experience. The food was good, but having a 3 course meal every night nearly killed us!! We also got really lucky with the weather. Between Nassau and St Thomas it was a bit windy on board, and it rained a little bit on the last day, but otherwise it was pretty much 30 degrees most of the time!

Had I not been sick for most of it I think I would have been able to enjoy alot more of the nightlife, but we still had fun and did alot both on board the ship and in port. On board, Wade participated in basketball, volleyball, soccer and rock climbing competitions, and ended up with a Gold, Silver and Bronze medal from these!!! I also did the on board zip line and played some basketball and did some rock climbing and we both played putt putt and ice skated. Not to mention the swimming and lazing around (I managed to finish 3 books while we were on there). Wade also took full advantage of the fact that it was a cash less system on board, racking up both his and my share of alcohol consumption - it seems like it's free when you don't have to fork out any cash (until you get the bill at the end)!!! :-) We also made friends with the bar staff at the Rising Tide bar (this bar was really cool and went up and down between 3 levels of the ship while you drank)! We saw a few shows on board including and ice skating show, a diving show, a comedy show and a singing/dancing show.

Our first port stop was in Nassau, Bahamas and it was the morning after we boarded the ship. It wasn't at all what we expected, parts of it felt a bit dodgy and you were harassed a fair bit by the locals trying to sell you anything and everything. Because I wasn't well, we didn't venture too far, but maybe if we had gone to Atlantis it might have been a bit better.

Our second port stop was St Thomas. We caught a "communal taxi" into town in the morning (I feared for my life a few times, as there were no doors on this and I was on the outside edge, plus the floor was rusting out so if you pressed down on it too hard it moved!!). We wandered around town for a bit, but there wasn't much there, unless you wanted diamonds (apparently I have all that I need)!! Literally every second shop was a diamond shop, I'm not sure what could possibly be different between each shop either. We found some markets and walked around these for a while, before heading back to the ship for some lunch. After lunch we had booked an excursion which took us on the Sea Blaster boat to do some snorkeling with the sea turtles. On the way out to Turtle Cove they make the boat go really fast and as you go over the waves the water comes in and you get completely saturated. We got to see lots of sea turtles while snorkeling and there was also a reef in the area, so we also saw quite a few fish, sea urchins and one sting ray. On the way back to the cruise ship, they provided us with a really nice rum punch as well!!

Our final port stop was St Maarten. This was by far our favourite port and was a place we could actually go back and visit. St Maarten is basically split in two with one half Dutch and the other half French. We took an excursion which took us across to the French side, where we also got to go on a glass bottom boat trip and see divers feeding the reef fish. We got dropped back on the Dutch side (which was where our cruise ship was), and we wandered through the shops and markets here, before having lunch at Hard Rock Cafe while checking out the beach. We didn't go swimming here but we did walk along the beach and at least put our feet in the water!!

The last two days of the cruise were spent at sea, so we got to explore the ship during this time. These were the only two days that we really noticed how many people were on board (mainly because we struggled to find a deck chair around the pool on one of the days because we got up too late)!!

Here are a whole heap of photos from the cruise:

Fort Lauderdale