Still Norovirus Free!!

Our jeans don’t fit.

We decided to take advantage of our Freestyle Offers today and eat in the restaurant in jeans.Turns out, that in five short days, we are already unable to comfortably wear our jeans. Looks like we will be eating lettuce only salads and triscuits as a meal for awhile after we get back. I actually took video with a very compelling explanation of why we have to drink many fruity cocktails, but it won't upload from the ship so that will have to be a part of the highlights from the trip when we get home. But I heard our photos from the last post didn’t load, so I will attempt to correct that problem.

We were in Saint Thomas today which was lovely. I’m endlessly amused by the fact that we went directly from Louis Vuitton to Kmart. As you can see – Aaron has his priorities and I have mine…ah wedded bliss.

But for the ladies – here is my new dream purse. It’s not a black epi leather as I originally planned, but apparently this just hit the shelves yesterday and it called me and I had no choice but to deviate from my original plan. Then we went to Kmart for bleach wipes and books. The pickings were slim. I will be reading actual romance novels for the next few days…I miss my Kindle.

I think I’m funny. For everyone except Jobin – this is actually Jobin’s purse that I am using on this trip since it’s good for travel. I can’t post a picture of the actual purse because I have to wait and show Jobin in person so I can see her face as she faces the fact that I have out-pursed her.

We are still having a great time. After the shopping we went to Megan’s beach where we lounged. We also saw a prehistoric fish, which was pretty cool, but failed to get pictures of it because we suck.

We are going to bed very early because tomorrow is when we go deep sea fishing. We have started taking the Bonine and plan to bring Dramamine, so wish us luck that we are not violently ill. I do plan to catch an actual shark.

Shark! Or a wahoo. Or however you spell it.

We made it through our deep sea fishing adventure without falling overboard! We had a great time. I reeled in the first fish which was small – 2 pound tuna. Then somehow – for some reason I was absolutely unable to stay awake for even one more minute and I fell asleep. Which is odd – for those of you that have been deep sea fishing – you know you are being tossed about like a pinball and it is not serene. But it made me incredibly tired regardless. So I slept until I heard a ruckus on the deck – Aaron was reeling and there was a second fish on so I went out there and reeled and reeled and reeled. Aaron lost his fish, and the guide said mine was ‘small’ so I could do it, but I reeled and reeled and I thought my arm was going to fall off. I actually have a disgusting blister on my hand like you would get on your foot. Gross. So anyway, I figured I was even more of a wuss than I had originally thought because I was ready to throw in the towel, but eventually I got the fish out. It was a giant shark! (Actually a wahoo but I’m calling it a shark.) The guide said it weighed 30 pounds. It was 4 ½ feet. It wasn’t as gory as the video of Kelly catching his shark, but it did get clubbed over the head several times then speared/gaffed by the guides. I ran before the carnage happened. But it was really bloody and not quite dead in the cooler. It flopped around in there for a while before it finally kicked it. Then Aaron caught another tuna and we headed back in.

Our giant fish!!

Then we went and ate in the tapanykki place. I don’t know how to spell that either. But it was really good and very entertaining.

If you are going to lose your sunglasses, at least let it happen in the Caribbean sea…

Today we were in Barbados – it is lovely. I would 100% go there on a non-cruise vacation. We were pretty tuckered out by our fishing extravaganza so we just went to the beach. We went to the Hilton resort and bought day passes which included food and drinks which was awesome. And there were fantastic waves and beautiful white sand and the weather was perfect (sigh….it’s ok to hate us.) So we were playing in the water when Aaron promptly got hit by a 6-foot wave and lost his sunglasses. Which sucks since they are prescription. So then we spent the next hour walking around in the water trying to find them – which was useless. We knew we wouldn’t find them but thought we would try anyway…. So Aaron was pretty bummed and my peace offering was that I wouldn’t complain for the rest of the trip and that he could be in charge for the rest of the day. (I feel bad being a liar this early in our marriage…we have nine days left. All of the employees on this ship should be planked. I’m just going to learn to complain in code.)

(Brief tirade - it’s hard not to complain. I have been accosted by more cruise employees and their bottles of God-knows-what than I have hairs in my head. You can’t get someone to wait on you or smile at you for that matter, but they are there to douse you with their sanitation fluid. I get it – it’s the Norwalk virus or whatever it is. And I don’t want it, and they are trying to keep it under control, but for crying out loud – when you pass the other ships in port, they are handing out iced towels and frosty beverages, when you get back to the NCL spirit, they are spritzing you with rubbing alcohol. You have no choice. They won’t let you on the ship or in the restaurant unless they have spritzed you. It’s so gross. I have actually started to just show them my purell and my purse sized bleach wipes when we walk by. I’ve taken to personally sanitizing our eating areas before we eat. For those of you that have cruised – it’s so bad they won’t even let you get your own coffee from the self-service coffee pot. Any hall you walk down they are washing the walls with bleach. I don’t know what the Norwalk/Norovirus does beyond ‘gastrointestinal distress’ but it must be something awful…)

Anyway - we had a great day in Barbados and we are both sporting quite impressive sunburns so I think we are going to go to bed early. We have a sea day tomorrow, so we will be embracing the nothing…

Regarding our sunburns – it’s like sunburn art – except the really ugly kind. I have an actual line across my forehead from where my hat was hitting and an unfortunate array of swimsuit straps. Aaron has his standard sitting-in-Canada-wasted-burn which means for those of you that may not know that the top of his head is bright white as it usually is, but his face is beet red. And then one side of his body is burned. We are a smokin’ hot couple, that’s for sure. You note I am passing on posting photos of this action.