Bermuda or bust

After a rocky day at sea, we arrived in Bermuda! Thank goodness for the ear patch. It kept me from getting too sick. The weather was cold so we didn't do the typical cruise activity and spend time on the deck at the pool. There was plenty of other things to do, however. Here is a nice photo of our ship. Yes, it's HUGE! Our cabin was somewhere near the back on the other side of the boat. It was a very nice cabin with a verandah.

For those of you who don't know, we went on this cruise courtesy of Stampin' Up! Well, we did have to pay for it, but we got a killer deal. Can't beat that!

Here is Tom standing in front of the ship, to give you a sense of scale. It is like a city on water, and there were more people on this ship than in the town I grew up in!
Just to prove people in Bermuda really do where Bermuda shorts! This is the authentic look.
Tom was determined to take me golfing while we were there. We lost a lot of balls. The course was beautiful though!
And, of course, there were little towel animals waiting to great us every night when we returned to our stateroom.
As advertised, the water is very turquoise and beautiful! This is me at Horseshoe Bay.
And the sand really is pink! That is because of little red microorganisms that die and wash up on the beach. Nice thought, eh? This is my feet at Horseshoe bay.
We didn't spend time in the water for one big reason (shown below). Oh yeah, and the water was plenty cold. Turns out Bermuda is pretty far north and isn't really warm in April. These are Man of Wars (like Jellyfish but worse) and they were washed up on shore all over. You don't want to get bitten by one.
All in all, it was a great trip. Although it was beautiful, I wouldn't go out of my way to go to Bermuda again. I'm sure it actually gets warm there for some people, but it is crowded and expensive. I'd like to see other places in the world!

I LOVE NY!!!

Tom and I launched our vacation in New York City!!! A first time for both of us. We stayed at the Sheridan Hotel and Towers right near Time's Square. (Here's a photo of Time's Square.) Yup, it looks just like you'd expect it to. (Only it isn't a square. Weird.) We went to a play right near here—Spamalot—which is a spoof on Monty Python stuff. It even had Clay Aiken in it. Pretty funny stuff, but I was so tired from taking the Red Eye the night before that I had a hard time staying awake. For dinner we ate at Connelly's, an Irish Pub (Tom's choice) and it was very good.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the girls are at home with Grandpa Rog and Amma (Benjamin). They were so good to come stay with them while we are gone. Nanna is going to take over after the first week.

More NY

You really can't do New York without going to the top of the Empire State building. It was pretty gray when we were up there (and wow is it pricey!) but it was fun once. We navigated around NY like nobody's business and had a lot of fun riding the subway. My iphone was the best thing for navigation (Google maps!)
We rode the Staten Island Ferry to (duh!) Staten Island—a free ride! It sails by the Statue of Liberty. These are our friends Dave and Koreen (they use to be our neighbors) and they met us in NY to be our fabulous tour guides. We had a great time with them.
Dave tried to take our picture in front of the Liberty when we sailed by, but it was VERY windy, as you can see. Actually, it was quite cold the whole time we were there, but I didn't care. I LOVED every minute of it!
This is Dave standing in front of a building getting it's windows washed. (Dave is a window washer himself.)
We stopped by the Ground Zero site. There was construction fencing around the whole thing since they are rebuilding now, but they have this little memorial set up by a new subway station they put in there. Even though quite a bit of time has past, the mood still seems really somber there. It seems like there is a big hole in the skyline when you are standing there.

We went from there to hunt down a Thai restaurant called "Lemongrass Grill". It was worth the search.

This is a picture of the New York Stock Exchange. The security around there is amazing (there was actually 2 guys with machine guns standing right behind me when I took this picture!
Tom is looking off the edge of our balcony as we disembark. As we sailed off we got an even better view of the Lady Liberty!