Honeymoon (Day 2)- Labadee, Haiti

So if you read our honeymoon story, you'll remember how D told me how awesome it is to go to bed and wake up in a different place. Well, he wasn't kidding. We went to sleep with the balcony curtains partially open (really, we probably just forgot to shut them...lol). I'm a light sleeper so as soon as that bright Caribbean sun hit our balcony window, I was awake. I immediately looked towards the window, and WOW!!!

All I could see was this... 

View from our room.

View from our balcony.

We spent most of the time on a beach that's no longer there. But we walked around some too and this is the view from the highest place you can walk at Labadee. If you go there now, this is just past the zipline and the last "BBQ" station.

View of Labadee at sailaway

D watching Labadee get farther and farther away.
(Sigh...we we're married only 3 days at this point!)

My FAVE picture of Labadee. This shows the GORGEOUS beach that we spent the day chilling on. See the little lightguard tower? We chilled a just to the left of it in between it and the rock. This pic was taken just as the ship was almost out of the cove we had anchored in.

D and I still talk about our first stop of our honeymoon. We remember the locals walking around trying to sell their drinks saying, "La-bo-do-zee! Getcha La-bo-do-zee! Its May-dee-cay-shown for your Vay-cay-shown."  And I for one, will NEVER, EVER forget that feeling I had when I woke up  that first day on my first cruise with my wonderful husband in what has to be one of the most beautiful places on earth.

Blessed beyond measure? Definitely.

Honeymoon- Setting Sail!

MARINER OF THE SEAS

January 15, 2006

Port Canaveral, Florida

We used the RCCL transfer bus to get from the Orlando Airport to Port Canaveral. This was my first cruise and D's second. He had told me that the moment I see the ship, I would be amazed. Amazed was an understatement. It was CRAZY big! We had decided to spring for a balcony room since it was our honeymoon. 

 Excuse my pictures...they're taken with my trusty, yet dated Kodak Point & shoot.  

I didn't get a DSLR for many more years...not that only having a point & shoot stopped me from taking 1,000s of pics! :)

 The view of Port Canaveral from our balcony of Cabin 8320 (a hump balcony!)

 People feeding the birds as we left Port Canaveral

 A Disney Cruise ship left a few minutes before ours did.

Ah, the end of our first day at sea....a sunset. Romantic? For sure!

The Honeymoon Story.

D and I got married January 14 ,2006. 

We went on a Western Caribbean Cruise for our honeymoon, but that really wasn't the original plan.

OUR HONEYMOON- THE STORY 

Nope, first we wanted to go to New York City for our honeymoon and stay in the gorgeous, swanky Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. We'd take tours of NYC, shop, see Broadway shows, eat at Tavern on the Green, and take a dinner cruise around the Statue of Liberty. We then  finalized our wedding date, and realized  a super cold honeymoon  in NYC in January probably wasn't the most romantic honeymoon we could choose.  

We  then  talked about  going to a Sandals resort in St. Lucia. How romantic would an  adults  only, all-inclusive resort be? Awesome, amazing we thought. We checked into prices and flights, but it was incredibly  expensive. I've always been a  thrifty person and I just couldn't swallow the $$$ of paying for the Sandals resort.  

That's when D approached me about thinking about going on a cruise for our honeymoon. He said he knew I was claustrophobic and knew I had panic attacks when I felt I couldn't get out/off of something, but he REALLY REALLY wanted to cruise and thought I would honestly like it if I would just try it.  My thoughts were...Just try it? On our honeymoon? Not a time when I wanna be "trying" anything  other than "trying" on marriage at that point. He asked me to just pray about it. He then proceeded to show me pictures of cruises. He spreadsheet-ed out the daily cost of being on a cruise and showed me that compared to staying in a hotel and paying for food. He explained to me how we could see several places on a cruise without having to travel by car or plane. Instead, he said you just get on  the boat  and wake up the next day in a new place.  So after praying I got a peace with going on a cruise for a honeymoon. We weighed different cruise options available the week after our wedding, and decided on one.  (Notice I said we decided one one- not we prayed about one.) So somewhere around the beginning of August 2005 ,we booked and paid for a cruise IN FULL. We booked the Norwegian Sun out of New Orleans. God had different plans for us, however, because August 28, 2005 Hurricane Katrina hit the Southern Coast of the US. completely devastating the entire New Orleans region. Our cruise was canceled.  

We immediately called Norwegian, but they refused to refund our cruise costs right away. They said it would probably take up to3 months to refund our money. THREE MONTHS!?! No way, needed that money to book another honeymoon ASAP. We called the credit card company that we had used to book the cruise with- CitiCard. And let me tell you, they were amazing. We explained the situation, and they said they would be happy to refund me the money now and then  they would fight  Norwegian to get the refund. YAY! So then, we had another decision to make- what honeymoon do we take now?

Well this time we prayed about it and got peace about going on a Royal Caribbean Cruise out of Port Canaveral in Florida.  (And little did we know just how much this decision would really change our lives- more to come on that in the  future) 

WE had a complete peace about booking this one. Both of us- not just one of us, but BOTH of us. Not only did we have a  God given peace, but the cruise was...cheaper, went to more places, left the day after we got married, and we could fly there for pretty cheap on AirTran the day of the cruise and avoid hotel costs. 

The cruise was on board RCCL's  Mariner of the Seas, which at the time was the Second Largest Ship in the Entire World! 

Stay Tuned for our Honeymoon Pics and more to the Honeymoon Story.