Cruising with the Gals!
There's no relationship in the world like those you nurture with your girlfriends. They share your laughter, tears, fears, and triumphs. And with my set of friends, there's NEVER been a shortage in the laughter department! Life has a way of making it more difficult to get together as the years pass, but we always make an effort to gather together as much as possible.
This past September, we decided to reconnect on a cruise ship! We embarked on a three night cruise on Royal Caribbean's Majesty of the Sea with stops in Nassau and CocoCay and did we have a great time!! And because three days just wasn't long enough, we spent two evenings in Miami prior to boarding the boat!!
I pride myself in keeping up with friends from different eras in my life. God has richly blessed me with many amazing opportunities throughout my youth and as an adult. So on this particular trip were three friends from my childhood, a sorority sister from college, and another friend from my adult years. The best thing about getting friends together who have never met is I KNOW ahead of time they will all get along because they all share many commonalities. And this trip, was no different!
Our first evening in Miami we ate at Mango's, a South Beach tourist spot and enjoyed the great food, drinks, and dancers. And could those dancers move! I have to confess, you would have thought we were 5 year old girls the next morning trying to shake our tail feathers, without much success, like the Latin dancers! I'm glad we didn't try those moves while we were out and about that evening! The next day was spent lounging by the pool, enjoying the beautiful Miami weather and letting all our cares drift away.
The second night, we ate at my favorite restaurant in THE ENTIRE WORLD!! Prime 112. Ah, just thinking of that place makes my mouth water and makes me wish I was in South Beach! We had drinks at the Delano in the Rose Bar and headed to Mansion to finish the evening.
The next morning we left the Port of Miami and were headed to the Bahamas! After three days of sunning, swimming, adventures, eating, laughing, and more eating, we had all finished our first cruise. There were a few things I learned on this trip and will share in case you ever go on a cruise:
1. Try to stick with your group! As cell phones don't work at sea, if you have a large group (there were 6 of us) and everyone gets split up during the day, it may be evening at your set dinner time before you locate each other! Fortunately, we all kept close, but that did happen to our dining buddies!
2. The drinks are really inexpensive! We had expected to pay quite a bit more for a cocktail and were pleasantly surprised with how everything was reasonably priced.
3. They will try and accomodate ANY request you have in the dining hall. One of my friends is behond a picky eater and after the first night and she didn't want anything on the chef's menu, she found out she could order chicken fingers and french fries and finish with a chocolate milkshake every night if she wished. She was in heaven! I do feel the need to say the food was wonderful on this particular ship, my friend is just picky!
4. Take in the various shows. One was beyond excrutiatingly painful to endure and if we hadn't been on the front row, we would have left, but others were great. Give them a shot!
5. Get to the boat early! When I made our reservations I joked with the agent on the phone and even though all our documents said to arrive at the port at 2pm to board, he said to be there at 12:30pm. We did and were on the boat within 30 minutes. People that did show up at 2pm stood in line for 2.5-3 hours boarding. So get there early and happy cruising!!
We're already making plans for our next girls' getaway with everyone throwing out options. We've discussed skiing (which would be laughable), NYC (which would be fashionable), or a beach anywhere (my idea of a great getaway!). I will be pushing for the third option, but look forward to wherever our adventure takes us next! Because where there's great friends, the location just doesn't seem to matter!!