Holiday Cruise, Days 1-3: At Sea

We celebrated Christmas and New Year's Eve on an eight-day cruise with both sets of parents (apparently, this is unusual...)! We also celebrated our anniversary and both sets of parents' anniversaries. We went on a Carnival cruise to the Eastern Caribbean. We were on the ship Carnival Valor (which the girls had sailed on to the Western Caribbean in 2009). Ports of call were St. Maarten/St. Martin, St. Lucia, and St. Kitts.

Carnival Valor

We took approximately a billion pictures (we combined pictures taken by six people), so I'm going to break this up into parts (by days at sea and ports of call). If you're wondering why it took so long to post about this, that's a lot of photos to sort through and pick just a few to highlight on the blog.

We embarked and sailed from the port of Miami late afternoon on Christmas Eve.

View from the ship leaving the Port of Miami

Christmas day was pretty low-key and relaxing. They had a large gingerbread scene on display, as well as Christmas trees, garlands, and other decorations throughout the ship.

Part of the gingerbread display

Carved watermelon Christmas wish in casual dining area

We had an "elegant" night (i.e., we were supposed to get dressed up for dinner) and we all met the captain.

Us with the captain

At dinner, they brought each couple a special dessert and sang to celebrate our anniversaries. Our table was huge and round and the lighting was kind of dark in the dining hall, so it was kind of difficult to get good photos of all of us at dinner.

Daniel and Bernadette (Jennifer's parents) at dinner

Cindy and Ed (Ed's parents) at dinner

Us at dinner

For the next couple of days, we were at sea. It was kind of nice to have a couple of days to relax before getting to our first stop. We amused ourselves on the water slide a few times. Well, some of us went more than a few times. Daniel and Ed, Jr. lost count of how many times they went down the slide.

Ed on the water slide

Jennifer on the water slide

Ed got a shot of Daniel doing what he enjoys most:



We also figured out that the hot chocolate was a fountain drink (no extra charge!), so it became part of our daily routine to stop for hot chocolate in between meals. Or ice cream. Or both. Together.

Next up is our first stop: St. Maarten/St. Martin.