Five days in Florida

After our western Caribbean cruise, we had another 5 days in Florida before flying home. We spent most of this time on the west coast of Florida, staying with Nathan's grandparents - Levi and Ruth - in a town called Venice (3 hours north-west of Miami). Venice's claim to fame is that it is the shark tooth capital of the world!

Ruth and Levi (many thanks!)

One day we drove half an hour north to the town of Sarasota, FL. We went shopping, ate cupcakes, admired the scenic beaches, and hunted down a Costco to buy some mangoes that we thought might be nearly as good as Australia's Bowen mangoes (they weren't though). Sarasota looked like a great town for a family vacation... lots of kid-friendly attractions and a laid-back beach vibe. We'll have to return someday!

The only photo we took in Sarasota was of this fantastic piece of work...

Another day, Finley and I went to the beach in Venice while Ben had his first experience with the American health system (don't worry, he's fine)...

The most interesting thing we did during our stay in Venice was go to the Myakka River State Park and take a narrated tour on the world's largest airboat to see some alligators. We saw lots! Did you know that you can tell how many feet long an alligator is by judging how many inches from its snout to its eyes?

Myakka River State Park

The airboat

Our tour guide and airboat captain

Gators!

Yikes

Keeping an eye on the tourists

The day before our flight back to Seattle, we drove back to Miami in our rental car and stayed overnight at the same motel we'd used before our cruise.

The next day, we passed the time before our flight by relaxing in a quiet park near the airport.

Then, it was two flights back to Seattle (again via Charlotte, NC), and a 3 hour drive back to Canada (via Trader Joe's and Wee Ones Reruns in Bellingham, of course).

In his own seat for the first time as the plane wasn't full

From my window seat, I saw another plane overtake us in the distance!

It was a fun and relaxing holiday!

Caribbean cruise, Post 1: Carnival Conquest

January and February were very busy months for us. Not only was Ben working about 60 hours per week as a big deadline approached at work... but we also moved house in early February! (We're still in the same city and really enjoying our new place.)

Thus, by the time March rolled around, we decided we needed another holiday. :D Two weeks in advance, we booked a last minute Caribbean cruise deal for March 9th to 16th, sailing from Miami, Florida.

We flew out of Seattle, so the evening before our flight we crossed the border and drove the 3 hours to Seattle, stopping in Bellingham for dinner at our fave place: La Fiamma Wood Fire Pizza. This was Finley's first time there. We already knew we loved this restaurant, but it turned out to be great for kids too. In addition to being able to watch the cooks making the pizzas (including tossing the bases into the air), kids are given a lump of uncooked pizza dough to play with (and/or eat). Play-dough, literally!

That night we stayed at a motel we had used on a previous trip. It's far from fancy, but it's near Seattle Airport and they offer a good value accommodation plus week-long car parking deal. On Saturday, we took the motel shuttle bus to the airport, spent the day flying to Miami (Florida) via Charlotte (North Carolina), and arrived late that night at our motel in Miami.

The next day, May 9th, we took the motel's shuttle bus to the Port of Miami and boarded our ship: the Carnival Conquest. It was our first cruise with Carnival (although our third cruise overall), and we did their 7 Day Western Caribbean itinerary. Our four ports of call were: Grand Cayman (Cayman Islands), Cozumel (Mexico), Belize (Belize), and Mahogany Bay (Isla Roatan, Honduras).

Here's our stateroom, buried deep in the belly of the ship (as most bargain price last minute staterooms tend to be!)...

The view of Miami from the ship before we set sail...

I'll do a separate post for each of the four ports of call, so the rest of this post will just be about life on board the Conquest. There aren't too many photos as there were only two sea days, and having a toddler with us meant that we took it pretty easy rather than throwing ourselves into all the activities and entertainment. We watched two or three of the family-friendly stand-up comedians, but that was it. It wasn't until the last night that I was even out of our room after 8pm, and that was only because I couldn't let the cruise end without doing a midnight dash to the 24-hour pizza parlour on the pool deck!

Dinner time was the highlight of each day for all of us. The food was fantastic! One thing we really enjoyed was their "didja" category on each night's menu; i.e. a "did you ever..." opportunity to try something unusual. We tried snails, frogs' legs, alligator, etc! And since we were paying the full adult price for Finley on this cruise (no discount is given for kids, but since we got a last minute deal it still worked out pretty fair in total), we had no qualms about ordering him a full three course dinner if we couldn't decide on only two menu items per course for ourselves. Hahaha!

Formal night

Formal night

Formal night

Towel animals are always fun...

We found that the ship had hardly any options for children under 2... they aren't allowed in the swimming pools if not toilet trained, are too young for all of the kids' club activities, can only visit the kids' club with parental supervision for 2 hours in the morning (when Finley was still asleep anyway, due to the time zone change!), and there wasn't even a playroom anywhere on the ship where parents could watch their kids play. We were a bit disappointed about this - particularly that last point, given Carnival's "family friendly" branding - so I made sure to provide feedback about it when they sent me the post-cruise survey.

Finley, however, still had a great time! He is generally very sociable, so he loved meeting people (and being seriously clucked over) everywhere we went on the ship, and he was well looked after by our three waiters each night at dinner. We also took him to empty lounge areas and long corridors and let him crawl and walk and explore to his heart's content. One night he wasn't tired at bedtime, so Ben accompanied him while he walked a stateroom corridor the entire length of the ship, and up six flights of stairs. That did the trick! :D

To be continued...

Central Europe trip, Post 11: Prague again

The final 2 nights of our Europe trip - from Monday, January 6th, to Wednesday, January 8th, we spent back in Prague, where we had started our road trip 3.5 weeks earlier.

En route between Vienna and Prague on Monday, we spent a few hours in Brno, the second largest city in the Czech Republic. We ate kebabs for lunch, treated ourselves to some truffles from a chocolate shop, and wandered through a small fruit and veggie market. We also witnessed some kind of nativity parade! It was a fun little interlude.

Back in Prague, we checked in to the excellent Hotel 16 (note the mention in the link of where afternoon tea is served!). We'd chosen this hotel due to its walkable distance from Charles Bridge and its very high TripAdvisor rating accompanied by rave reviews citing superior customer service. We wanted somewhere a bit nice since the next day was my 30th birthday!

The rating (and raving) turned out to be well deserved, as it was certainly the most impressive service we've ever encountered in a hotel. It was only a small hotel too (at a guess, less than two dozen rooms). An example of the exemplary service is that, on our last day, we needed to leave extremely early for our flight... so they set up the breakfast buffet just for us at 3:30am!

On Tuesday, my birthday, we wandered through the streets and along the Vltava River until we reached Charles Bridge. This historic 15th century pedestrian bridge, adorned with gothic statues, is one of Prague's most famous attractions, but we had not seen it on our previous visits to Prague. It was time to rectify that situation with a leisurely stroll across the bridge, checking out the artists, buskers, vendors, statues, and city views as we went!

Charles Bridge

"Sailors" advertising river boat cruises

Entrance to the bridge

Buskers

Prague, as seen from Charles Bridge

Busker

The street at the far side of the bridge

Once we reached the other side, we wandered the cobbled streets for a while before choosing a restaurant for a mid-afternoon birthday lunch. Then we re-crossed the bridge and walked back to our hotel, where the task of packing for our early morning departure awaited us.

I'll leave you there, dear reader, with thoughts of picturesque cobbled bridges rather than tales of stressful airport rushes and 10 hour flights with a baby. :) It's now about 4 months since we got home, so I'm very glad to have finally finished blogging this! Thanks for joining us on our trip!