Vacation, January 2007

Vacation, January 2007 - Departing the snow for palm trees, sun, sand, and warm waters...

Following is a pictorial journal of our time at Universal Studios Orlando and our first cruise on Royal Caribbean's Mariner of the Seas for 7 days.

Also, while we were on vacation, our niece Alexandra was born to Matt and Ashley Chambless, Erin's brother and his wife. There is a photo of her at the bottom of this post.

Here we are at Universal Studios, Orlando. We arrived in Orlando a couple of days early and took advantage of the time by going to this fun amusement park. We really needed this time together, and this vacation was a real blessing from God. We were both needing that time to let our hair down and not worry about things of work and whatnot.

Erin watching as we depart Port Canaveral for a week in the eastern Caribbean Sea.

Erin and Nathan on the cruise ship.

NASA Vehicle Assembly Building. This was visible from the cruise ship as we departed Port Canaveral. This is an enormous building in which NASA constructs the spacecraft that have taken men to the moon and which put men and women into orbit on a regular basis. What an amazing sight!

Mariner of the Seas. This is the ship on which we spent a week relaxing, reconnecting, and decompressing.

Caribbean Sunset

CocoCay in the Bahamas. This is Royal Caribbean's private island.

B-b-b-b-barracuda!

This snail kept coming out of his shell and trying to get us to drop him.

Beach time in CocoCay, Bahamas

Tribute band to The Temptations. There were shows in the theater on the ship every night. This was a totally different experience from anything else we'd ever experienced before.

Waking up in Saint Thomas, US Virgin Islands.

Nathan in the water

Relaxing on the beach with a good book. This beach in Saint Thomas was our favorite beach of the entire cruise.

Reflections of a St. Thomas (U.S.V.I.) Sunset

St. Thomas Sunset

Erin on the dock in Sint Maarten (Dutch Virgin Island). Behind her are two Royal Caribbean ships. The one on the left is the one we were on, the Mariner of the Seas.

Nathan on the dock when we first arrived in Sint Maarten.

The world famous Orient Beach on the French side of Saint Martin Island. This beach reminded me of what a beach in southern Spain might look like.

Top Deck of the Mariner of the Seas . This ship has three regular pools, and six hot tubs (that we know of)

The Royal Promenade. This is like a mini-mall in the middle of the ship. Our room had a window overlooking this.

Map of the Ship. Our room was on the 7th deck.

This is a view of the main dining hall. The attention to detail on this ship absolutely blew us away.

Our dinner table mates, Chris and Karina. They are both chefs. Karina is the pastry chef at Arrows Restaurant in Ogunquit, Maine, and Chris is a kitchen chef at Arrows' more relaxed restaurant. Here's a link to Arrows: http://www.arrowsrestaurant.com/. We had a really good time getting to know them over the week. What interesting people!

Towel Monkey - Every night we had a new animal either on our bed or above it that was crafted from a clean towel. This was definitely something unexpected and fun!

Erin watching Pirates of the Caribbean

Just waiting to return to the frozen state of Colorado...

Our beautiful niece Alexandra, who was born while we were away.

Our beautiful...uh, I mean crazy dog Boomer.