I'm on a Boat! (Don't Call the Ship a Boat.)

Look! I am all bloggity caught up! And it is (yet another) emotional week here, so let's talk about our cruise! We went on a cruise!

The most important thing to know is that my spleen did not explode. (Someday I will stop talking about the frikking mono. Apparently that day isn't today.) The second most important thing to know is that this was a kid! free! cruise!

(Well, there were kids on the boat.* Just not my kids.) (*Apparently if you call it a boat, you get scolded. It is a ship. A boat is a thing you get on when the ship sinks. We have been on many cruises and had never heard it explained... quite like that.) (Somewhere, my maritime-oriented brother is reading this and hanging his head in shame. Don't call it a boat, Erin!)

So, pictures, for no other purpose than preserving my own memories and hoping that for once I don't have to be the one feeling jealous that someone else got to go somewhere tropical:

on the top decks of Enchantment

I love him. That is all.

Our ship, from Coco Cay

In light of Mark's promotion, Another Nathan made him take this pic
and I am *so glad* because nothing about it doesn't make me laugh.

Cruise ships are so tacky-fabulous they are hard to describe.
Just... whoa.

But some of the cheesiness is totally fun. I will never not love towel animals.

Make sure your travel group includes dapper friends in suits.
You will not hate it. #ProTip

We took a sunset sailing trip around Paradise Island (now home to Atlantis)

my bestest fraaand
(not even seasick this time)

Enchantment of the Seas, at twilight (docked in Nassau)

He's on a boat! (Actually a boat.)

Coco Cay with my very own Marky

On a cruise ship! With champagne!
(Even mono cannot get me down!)

We spent our days in the sun -- by the pool, and one day at the beach, and one day wandering through Nassau where it was hot as the blazes but we found respite at a random rum distillery. We shared bottles of wine every night at dinner and spent our evenings at cheesy shows and floating in the indoor pool and sitting in the breeze of the top deck in the dark. (And one night in a hot tub, drinking tropical bevvies and gawking at beautiful people dancing by the edge of the pool.) We went late to our muster drill (not late! everyone else was early!) and collected hate-stares from the hundreds of people we had to walk by on the way to our lifeboat. We had a sting-y encounter (minor, but still sting-y) with the remnants of a jellyfish. We bought Christmas ornaments shaped like the ship. We spent the second half of the week avoiding a super awkward family from our first night at dinner (we saw them everywhere). We got to snuggle late into the night and late into the morning and keep no kind of schedule at all. We played car games and we all read long books, and most of us got sunburned, but only in odd patches, because of course. We made the same dumb jokes all week, in terrible caribbean accents. It was everything I could have wanted in a week away from real life, is what I'm saying.