Bahamas Cruise

G'day All, we hope things are well back home. It's been a long while since our last entry, but we will have quite a few in the not too distant future as we have a fair bit of travel planned in the next six weeks, but I'll get to that a little later on. Our latest adventure was a pretty awesome one actually. As some of you know there are a number of guys that Fiona and I did our military training with posted to various locations around the US, and we decided it was time to have a get together as some of them are heading home at the end of the year.

There was much to organise for this trip, but most importantly was the name we were going to give it. After weeks of back and forth arguments we finally settled on the 'Fair Dinkum, Bonza, Aussie extravaganza Bonanza'. Once this had been decided we then had to work out where we were going to meet. After some discussion of Vegas, New Orleans or New York we finally decided on taking a 5 day cruise out of Jacksonville to the Bahamas. No one date suited all people, but we eventually settled on the 11th - 15th of October and there would be Fi and I, Jacko and Jenn (who recently married), Simon and Les Everett and Ben and Mel Mailler.

Simon and Les arrived for a relaxing day enjoying the best Jacksonville has to offer - the company of Fiona and I. We went to the beach for a surf (where Simon did his best nose planting impressions), and then out for Mexican for dinner. The next day the rest of the crowd arrived and we met them at the airport and took them to the Cruise Terminal. We were a bit concerned with the price of alcohol onboard, because obviously we were going to have one or two drinks during the Fair Dinkum, Bonza, Aussie extravaganza Bonanza, and the cruise line had a couple of rules regarding the taking of alcohol on board - basically you could take one bottle of wine per person, but it didn't stipulate the size. This led to Fi and I taking 1.5L Magnum bottles only to be topped by Jacko who purchased a 4L Flagon of Merlot (obviously a delightful wine.....surprisingly it didn't turn out too bad!). So, with a couple of very inventive means of smuggling drinks on board, and no; we didn't resort to hiding it in any body cavities, we ended up with 15L of wine and 4L of spirits.

We boarded the ship to find the cabins were quite spacious and we had ocean view rooms which were very flash. The ship itself was one of the older ones but had been renovated recently. It had 13 bars, a nightclub, a casino, a theatre and a couple of pools, one of which had a water slide! Needless to say we were told off a couple of times for 'incorrect use' of the waterslide. There was food everywhere too - soft serve ice cream machines, sushi bars, pizzerias, it was just out of control. The formal dining room was excellent too, we had Lobster one night, sirloin steaks, Baby Back Ribs, Duck, even escargot - you name it.

Needless to say we enjoyed a couple of cold ones as the ship made its way to our first stop - Freeport, Grand Bahama Island. We got off the boat and found our way to a taxi and headed straight to the beach. Apparently everyone on the ship had the same idea so we strolled up the beach for about 15 mins and found a vacant stretch to play a bit of Frisbee and have a swim. The water was a beautiful turqoise colour and so clean - it was beautiful. We saw a huge ray swim past in the shallows as we arrived which made everyone a bit tentative when swimming, but you couldn't keep us out of water that nice. Unfortunately the weather wasn't the kindest and it started to rain, so we had to take shelter in the Sheraton Hotel, which had such a nice looking swimming pool that we had to try it out too!!

The boat had a number of Vegas style musical acts and comedians every night in the theatre that provided excellent entertainment. The shows were really of a much higher calibre than we were expecting which was a real pleasant surprise. We enjoyed a few cocktails (The Miami Vice was a favorite - half Strawberry Daquari and half Pina-Colada) while watching the shows and would then progress to one of the bars in the ship for the remainder of the evening. Seminole (as Simon and Les will now be known as) also provided some pretty fierce competition cards into the wee hours of the morning.

The second and final stop on the cruise was Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas. Jenn had worked in Nassau for a couple of weeks so we had our own personnel tourist guide. We had a quick look around the shops before heading out to the famous Atlantis hotel which had a massive aquarium in the lobby which extended into the grounds of the hotel. This thing was absolutely massive - it had all sorts of huge fish, rays and crazy looking sharky things swimming around, we could've watched them all day. Jenn then took us to Cable Beach where she had stayed and the boys took the opportunity to play a bit of beach cricket. Jacko pulled out his mystery ball which had all of us (including him) baffled, he did manage to take two wickets and a dot ball having bowled it only three times. His bowling was definitely better than his batting......

At this point of the cruise, we'd been living on about 4 hours sleep a night and battling mild hangovers each morning so we decided to return to the ship and play some cards and relax. Well of course relaxing includes have a beer/wine and soon enough we were having Miami Vices and a it was game on again.....So we arose for our last day of the cruise which was completely at sea on the journey home. This was a relaxing day laying by the pool and taking it easy. Fi and Les attended an art auction on board and I narrowly avoided Fiona 'investing' in some art for us......

The highlight of the trip was yet to come though.....that night we ended up in the Karaoke Bar and Simon decided it was time to have some fun. He elected to sing the B-52's 'Love Shack', and Les mysteriously disappeared. With the remaining girls as his back up dances and singers Simon cut loose on stage. This included heaps of hip thrusting, grunting, swinging the microphone around by the cable sending it flying into the air, dropping the 'F-Bomb' with a lot of kids present, and knee sliding into the classic 'You're What???!!!' line about 4 bars too early......classic Simon. The entire place was in fits of laughter - it was an amazing performance......after it was all over Les suddenly reappeared.....I think she knows Simon all too well. I've put the video on You Tube, so check it out at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjSqukeYOhQ

It was a bit sad when we said goodbye to the cruise and then everyone the next day. We had a great time and I would certainly do one again.....maybe to Mexico....We have heaps of travel coming up over the next few weeks. We are off to Washington DC for a week and hope to visit an Amish settlement nearby. We're off to San Diego and LA for Fi's work, and then
Ian and Sandra arrive shortly after and we are going to Memphis to see 'Graceland' with them, so expect a few posts in the coming weeks!!

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Videos from "Bahamas Cruise":

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