Bahamas Cruise (part 3) …food=) and wildlife

FOOD!!!

It was everywhere! And it was sooo good… There were specialty restaurants on board, some were included and others had a small additional fee. They were so much fun to eat at! These were only open at certain times. A buffet was open all day and a snack bar opened at 11:00 pm with even better looking treats.  Okay I don’t think your really getting the picture=) There was ice cream all day whenever you wanted it…all kinds of fruit, you could order pizza (even to your room) 24 hours a day. Dessert and regular food everywhere. Insane! Yeah we gained a little some weight…=) and we were smiling until we came home and looked in the mirror and we instantly quit smiling. Thankfully it’s winter here and we could just put our sweater on until we became our normal selves again=)

So moral of the story is if you don’t like food don’t go on a cruise=) Seriously! All the waiters were like “forget your diet for a few days, and enjoy ALL this food” really?!?!?! But it was so much fun…...we tried all different kinds of food, that we had never ate before. I even tried things I didn’t know how to eat! I’m just a poor country girl=)

My first taste of shrimp. I was raised vegetarian and still hold to most of my up bring when it comes time to what meats I will eat, so this was a one time deal. Something I won’t be able to eat very much, it was SO good! We ate this at the most adorable Chinese restaurant in Miami Sunday night.

True to our country roots we snack on Beef Jerky while waiting for a taxi to take us to port

See what I said! This was my first meal on the ship…I broke several brackets of my braces off on an apricot pit the second morning on board. So I struggled the rest of the time with chewing, if I wasn’t careful I would bite down on metal. Not fun!

Christina’s plate. our personality differences show even in our food preferences=)

Here’s a look at the buffet=) Desserts

Main dishes…mash potatoes, chicken, gravy, pork and beans etc.

Cheese (any kind you liked)

Mediterranean salad station

Even hot soup…anything you wanted just look and they’d have it…crazy!

Me in the buffet line…

A perfect piece of cheese cake, you can almost taste it=)

Breakfast!

I had just finished running this morning and Christina joined me for breakfast. (she still looks a bit asleep)

On the first Island (Great Sirrup Cay) we had a complementary barbecue on shore for lunch. Here they were loading this boat early that morning with food to take ashore and prepare for the cruisers. It was the best meal of the entire trip, I thought. A lot of familiar foods.

On shore, this was in between the dessert and main food tables. Isn’t that watermelon just lovely. And just to think to someone in this world this is easy and they do it all the time.

Silverware was on every table. You just filled your plate and went and sat down. Also there was no place to take your empty plate. You would just leave it on the table and walk off. The servers cleared the tables all day long.

We drank tea together every night. This night we were outside. Listening to the waves and looking at the star soaked sky above. couldn’t have been more perfect!

Christina’s breakfast out on our balcony one morning (I had gotten up early to work out) You could order breakfast to your room…I know we were spoiled.

A juice stand on shore..we almost got coconut water once, but it didn’t go through with it.

Waiting on our food, in the only local restaurant suggested by the cruise line to go to on shore. It was strongly recommended that you didn’t eat the local food.

Jerky again. (airport snack) we bought this for when we were on the three hour flight from Miami to Cleveland Ohio. As you can see it made it to the hotel room.

The pictures below are of some of the wildlife I saw! I couldn’t get over the green vegetation. A nature photographer’s haven. I loved the differences from home in the terrain and animals.

Christina and I headed out to find the light house on the Great Stirrup Cay island.  We walked for a good 45 minutes on a dirt road/trail Just the two of us and all this new untamed world around us. Weird looking plants growing along the path. Bird singing that I had never heard before. We didn’t make it to the lighthouse, stopping before leaving the Norwegian Cruise property line marker…being by ourselves we thought it best not to continue.

an iguana!

Here’s another one, kidda far away but I just loved this one against the blue sky.

Flowers around town in downtown Nassau

Seagulls were every where. On the boat if you left your plates unattended, on the deck, they were try and steal your food. I couldn’t help but think of a book that my mom read me as a child, Thy Friend Obadiah. I loved this book and with it came a life long love for seagulls.

Some beautiful shells some of the local fishermen were trying to sell us.

I hope you enjoyed seeing some of the food I ate and wildlife I saw on my vacation.

Happy Tuesday!