Vacation!!!

In the midst of all of the craziness that this time of year is (quilting show and Christmas quilts, Christmas in general, snow, Quilt Market, etc.), Ben and I decided to run away and go on a cruise. It was a much needed week of relaxation.

 We started our trip at Atlantis in Nassau, Bahamas. It's wonderful and I highly recommend it.

 You just may not want to take along a travel companion that's such a dork as my husband. Love you, Ben! (He is quite entertaining however!)

 We saw sharks and fish...

 And finally saw the area you "lazy river" through the shark tank. It was awesome! I would consider doing this in the future!

 The sunsets were wonderful...

 In St. Thomas this was my view for the day!

 Our boat!

 St. Maarten and Maho Beach welcomed us back (along with 5 other ships of people, I've never seen so many people in one port before!)

 The interesting thing about Maho is it's literally beach, this road, fence, International Airport Runway...

 This plane was actually much further away from the end of the runway than many of the larger jets that take off.

 At the Sunset Bar & Grill you can get this amazing pizza that'll CHANGE YOUR LIFE!!! It's shrimp and garlic with a pomodoro sauce on this amazingly thin coal fired crust. I have yet to find it anywhere else. All of the seafood pizzas around here either come with white sauce or no sauce... They need to make one of these around here!

And I still cannot get over how blue the water truly is in this region. This was the view from our room and I spent many hours on this balcony watching the flying fish and just relaxing.

And I'm proud to announce this is the first vacation in years I didn't work one single second of my trip. I took stuff with me (figuring out patterns, doing math, etc.) but I didn't touch it once. It. Was. Wonderful.

Now today it's snowing and cold and I'm wanting to hibernate, but the cupboards won't fill themselves if we don't go shopping, so I better get going. I'll be back with more posts soon! (I'm going to try to play catch-up with all of the things I've been wanting to share!)

Cruise Port #3 St. Maarten!!!

Just saying, if you didn't notice by my ancy demeanor in putting up the video from Maho Beach shortly after we got home, this was my favorite port for this cruise. Ben and I had heard of Maho Beach before since it's been featured on the Travel Channel in a few of their countdown specials. Even seeing it on TV did not prepare me for the day we would have.

 We left the port to head over to Maho Beach. Mystical wonderful Maho Beach.

 We got there just in time to see the updates for the flight schedule for the day.

 It's right above this beautiful stretch of the beach...

 And just happens to be across from this sign (there are several of these signs, FYI)

 I found some shells on the beach along with the other girls we were traveling with. No matter what type of shell, they are almost all white. The water is so clear that the sun is able to bleach the color out of them all.

 But the sun was hot and food sounded good so Ben and I headed to Sunset Bar & Grill.

 Where this was our view for the afternoon.

 The drinks were cold, the food was good. Oh, the food! We had the most amazing wood fired pizza. It was all hot and bubbly but it was sooooooo good that even though my mouth was being scorched, I couldn't stop eating. It was a shrimp and garlic pizza on a pomodoro sauce with lots of cheese - Yummy!

 The views were great and I have NEVER EVER seen water this color before. Granted the color of the water in the Caribbean is gorgeous no matter where you go, but this was incredible.

 It looked like it was glowing. I couldn't stop staring! So I'll let you do the same over these next pictures.

Did we "see all the sights"? Nope. Did we go on an adventure? If you consider taking a cab to a beach near an airport an adventure, then no. Was this my favorite day of the whole trip? Yes Yes and Yes. I want to go back already... I probably would be a beach bum hanging out at the local bar from dawn til dusk, but it's paradise... One last port!

Back to Reality!

Ben and I escaped last week and went on a cruise with some of our friends to the Eastern Caribbean. I'll post tons of pictures while I'm getting back into the groove of things here, but I couldn't wait to share this.

This is a video I took in St. Maarten at Maho Beach. It's an absolutely wonderful beach that just happens to have the runway for the International Airport literally on the other side of the road from the beach. So, if you're on the beach, a plane could take off about 30 feet from where you're standing...

This was my favorite place of all the spots we toured, and this pilot had a sense of humor. There's danger signs everywhere for flying debris and such... Most pilots rev the engine of the plane for a few seconds at the end of the runway and then you are airborne, right? Not this one. He warned the people standing on the beach, and then had his own fun at their expense. Watch all of the people on the far end of the beach: