Love is picture perfect: Cruise

We are back on land after a week of cruising! We had a great time aboard the Carnival Splendor! The weather was a bit cooler than sailing in the gulf, but we managed to have a great time anyway. Darryl and I were also able to go to Disneyland last Saturday as we took an earlier flight and took a shuttle from the airport to Disneyland.

Unfortunately, we were only able to stop at Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlan, as the day that we were scheduled to visit Cabo San Lucas the waves were too high. At Cabo you have to use tender boats to get from our boat to land (instead of just dock like the other two cities). We were all very, very bummed out as Colin, Colby, Darryl, and I woke up at 5:50 to get ready, eat breakfast, in order to make it for our 7:30 am zip line tour for the day. We saw Cabo from our boat, and it looked beautiful. We were told that it is a beautiful port and that us not being able to tender into Cabo hadn't happened in over 6 months! So, on that day we had another day at sea.

In our first port, Puerto Vallarta- we split up for our excursions. Dad, Darryl, and I headed to a beach resort for the day...which included free drinks and food! The weather was amazing and the hotel was great! Colin, Colby, and mom headed to the sea lion encounter and got to smooch with the sea lions!

Our second port was Mazatlan...and let me tell you it was HOT! I felt like I was melting! We all took a bus tour of the sierra Madre mountains. The bus thankfully was air conditioned! We stopped to see a brick factory (what the brochure said), which was merely a poor woman and her 6 kids making bricks in the baking sun! We stopped in several towns along the way. Very poor cities. We had bread at a bakery, which was amazing and had lunch in this little tiny town of Copula, where there is 1 phone for the whole town! It was quite interesting, but most of all I will remember how freakin' hot it was!

The other days were spent at sea. Most days consisted of getting up and eating at the buffet for breakfast, reserving our chairs by the pool, baking in the sun till we just couldn't take it anymore, showering up in the afternoon, dinner at 6, and going to the shows at night. I should add that we all got burnt (well besides dad). Colin was the most unfortunate as the first day at sea it was relatively cloudy, which fools you into believing that you can't get burnt. Well, Colin proved that wrong and burnt his legs, ankles, stomach, chest, shoulders and couldn't move till about Wednesday. Finally, on the last day he was peeling and was able to move without pain!
At night we got to see comedians, a hypnotist, and Vegas style shows performed by the Carnival dancers.

Last night Eric (Darryl's brother) was kind enough to pick us up at the airport and drive us home. We were so excited to see Brylee. Eric said she had a great week playing with her 3 cousins. We were so glad to see our baby again! Thanks to Eric and Leah for watching her, as it would have been too hard to bring her on the cruise at this age!

Here are lots of pics from our vacation and check out the rest on Picasa!