honeymoon – Jo McVey Photography

Our Honeymoon: Grand Turk

Our last stop on our Honeymoon Cruise was the islands of Turks & Caicos. Grand Turk to be exact. We had scheduled an excursion of swimming with the stingrays here, but after talking to some of the other passengers who had experienced this before, we decided to cancel the excursion and just explore the island on our own.

Well, it turns out that Grand Turk is probably the last island in the Caribbean that you’d want to explore. I’ll explain in a minute.

When we docked, we pulled up right along side the Carnival Pride, one of the ships in the Carnival fleet. I think our ship looks much bigger and prettier than Carnival’s cruise ship, but maybe I’m just a little biased.

Here we are as we exited the ship on a beautiful sunny day in the Caribbean. Little did we know that the beautiful sunny day wouldn’t last.

A little home away from home. I’ve only ever seen Margaritaville in Nashville, but here it was! On Grand Turk! And this Margaritaville was awesome…..minus how crowded it was. They had a full restaurant, plus a gigantic pool with a swim up bar! Since both our ship and Carnival’s ship were docked at the same time, that meant that there was barely even swimming room. Side note: notice the beautiful blue sky above.

So since we canceled our excursion, we decided to rent a car and explore the island.

Yep that’s a cow…..and yep….that’s rain on our window. It was sunny and beautiful not ten minutes earlier. This was one of many cows, horses, and donkeys that apparently roam the island freely.

Some wild horses.

We finally found a gorgeous, not-as-crowded beach to hang out at, but five minutes after we arrived, it started pouring again. So rather than lay out in the rain, we decided to explore some more.

On our drive we saw this big fella. This was seriously the biggest horse on the island, and the only painted one. All the others were a brownish red color or dark brown.

Well hello there! Aren’t you a handsome boy! And very happy to see us apparently. Gross.

Don’t mind us. We’re just sitting in our car staring at you while you eat.

This was the only school we saw on the entire island and it was completely deserted and run down. Looks like the doings of one of the many hurricanes or tropical storms they get probably every year….maybe several times a year.

This cute little donkey family was right outside the school. Daddy (in the front) was not too happy with some other donkeys that kept getting to close to his wife and baby. He would chase them off while kicking and making that ridiculous honking sound that donkeys make.

Oh hi! It’s you again!

That’s right! Being the horse lover that I am, I got out and pet him. Luckily he was a very friendly horse, and not skittish like all the others.

Nice horsey! And look how big he is!!

Isn’t this little fluffy baby donkey the cutest thing?! He ran away when I took another step, unfortunately.

This beach was on the unpopulated part of the island. Well, the whole island is not very populated, but this part had no houses nearby, so I would say it’s unpopulated…..for a 7 mile long island.

This next beach was along side a little row of shops on the islands “main street”….which could only fit one car at a time.

Steve bought this local beer and thought, “What a good opportunity to take a picture of my e-cig in a beautiful setting!” He said the beer was excellent! I wouldn’t know. I don’t like beer.

On our way back to the dock we saw this big fella. You don’t want to hit this guy going 50 mph. Pretty sure he would just stand still and our rental car would be totaled.

I mean look at the size of this guy! His balls are practically hitting his knees as he walks. That can’t be comfortable. Oh, and notice the lovely blue sky that appeared as we were about to leave. Wonderful timing.

We posed for one last picture on the island of Grand Turk before heading back to the ship. I don’t think we needed to be back for another couple hours but we had pretty much seen all the island had to offer, and Steve wanted to get back to the casino. Geez.

Here’s the view of Grand Turk from the dock. Of course they have the beautiful touristy beach all beautiful with planted palm trees perfectly manicured and a wonderful shopping center just off the dock. But don’t let that fool you, folks! We know the real Grand Turk, and it is not all that pretty. Yes the water is….but the island itself….not so bueno.

I do have to say that the water at Turks & Caicos was the prettiest water we saw on our cruise. We were still docked in this picture, standing out on our balcony. Steve bought that sweet necklace at one of the shops, and I got a dress. We also bought a hand-carved, wooden sculpture of two dolphins dancing. It was a great experience, but I think once in a lifetime is enough of a visit for this island.

Our Honeymoon: St. Thomas

I’m sorry it has taken so long to write another honeymoon post. I guess I’ve just been focused on updating the website, among other things, that my little blog has taken a back seat…..again. But don’t worry! I’m back, and blessing you with more images from the lovely Caribbean!

As you probably remember from my previous honeymoon post, Steve and I went on a 9-day Caribbean cruise for our honeymoon, which stopped in 3 ports. Our first port was Bermuda, and the second was St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. This was by far our favorite port of call on the cruise. Many of the passengers were saying how St. Thomas was the best place for shopping, but we weren’t really looking to buy a lot of jewelry and diamonds, which is mainly what you can get deals on in St. Thomas. So we went on a snorkeling and sailing excursion where we were able to swim with lots of turtles and beautiful fish.

This was the view as we were pulling into the dock.

Here’s the tug boat that helped guide us in. You can see how much sand our ship kicked up in those usually clear aqua water.

These big fellas were sitting on rocks all along the pier welcoming us to St. Thomas.

This was the beautiful catamaran we sailed on. It was practically brand new and had only been taken out a couple times before we went on it. There were about 40 people on our excursion.

First we stopped at Honeymoon Beach for lunch. How fitting, since we were on our honeymoon! We got to swim a little in the clear water, and then we had a delicious BBQ lunch. This part of the trip had a bit of a damper to it though, because Steve sprayed sunscreen on my face and I couldn’t open one of my eyes for about an hour or so. But luckily, after several times flushing it with water (and tears) it finally cleared up and I was able to see again!

Here we are on our way out to Turtle Bay, an island that’s protected by the government as a natural habitat. We weren’t allowed to set foot on the island, but we had a lot of fun snorkeling in the water around the island. We saw several turtles, and lots of colorful fish. Steve had hurt his leg snorkeling in Bermuda, so after about 20 minutes he went back to the boat and I got to explore the rest of the water on my own (well, still in a big group, but without Steve).

Gotta love that sensitive Scandinavian skin! An hour of snorkeling and I had this lovely face mask imprint for the next couple hours.

The catamaran had two cargo nets on either side that we were allowed to put our feet on while we sailed back to the dock. It was fun to be able to see the water right under our legs.

The ride back was very relaxing and fun. Instead of using the motor on the boat, they put up the sails and we leisurely sailed back to the dock while listening to music and drinking unlimited rum punch.

We saw this old school pirate ship on our way back. Straight out of Pirates of the Caribbean! How fitting.

It was our favorite excursion on the cruise, and I’m sure if we ever go back, we’d love to do it again! Oh, and the best part? A dolphin swam right up along side of the boat! Unfortunately it dove down before I could take a picture, but that was the only dolphin we saw on the entire trip. So it was pretty special.

Our Honeymoon: The Caribbean Princess

As many of you know, Steve and I went on a Caribbean cruise for our honeymoon a couple weeks ago. It was wonderful, and I really enjoyed seeing a part of the world I had never seen before. In this post, I’m basically going to show and tell you everything about the ship we were on, the Caribbean Princess.

This was my first cruise ever, so I didn’t really know what to expect. I knew it was going to be a huge ship, but nothing can really prepare you for the massive size of a cruise ship.

This was our first view of the ship while driving through the parking lot. I couldn’t even fit the whole thing in my view finder!

Here’s a full view of the ship from our excursion boat in Bermuda. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Excursions are coming in a later post.

We splurged and decided to go for a balcony room. It was our honeymoon after all! And I’m so glad we did!

Uh huh….I could get used to this!

Here’s our teeny weeny bathroom. Steve said that it was actually pretty spacious for a cruise ship bathroom. I don’t think it could have been much smaller.

And there’s me in the tiny shower taking a picture of the other side of the bathroom. We went to two comedy shows on the cruise, and both comedians made jokes about the tiny showers. Like, how if you dropped the soap, you wouldn’t have enough room to bend over and pick it up. You would think it was funnier if you actually had to take a shower in one of those!

While we were docked in Brooklyn, the Statue of Liberty was about 1/2 a mile away from our balcony. So of course I took several pictures.

Doesn’t this picture look like it was taken 100 years ago? 🙂 I just had to process it this way since that old ship was in the foreground. It wouldn’t look right any other way.

Our stateroom was toward the back of the ship, so when we looked out our balcony, this is what we saw.

We ordered a room service breakfast almost every morning, and I always ordered the ham, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwich, while Steve ordered plain ole cereal….and a banana. We ate breakfast every morning on our balcony.

Isn’t this the tiniest glass you’ve ever seen? It was pretty much the size of a double shot glass. Two sips, and it was gone!

We had 2 formal nights on the cruise, so I took advantage of it, and did a little photo shoot with Steve on our balcony. Hey, it’s not very often that I get him dressed up, so I have to seize the opportunity when it presents itself!

Isn’t he handsome?

Mr. GQ

Ok, I’ll stop now. 🙂

If you’ve never seen a hallway on a cruise ship, you have never seen a hallway! This thing was so long that you couldn’t see the end! Now I know why Rose had so much trouble finding Jack when he was handcuffed on the Titanic!

Here we are at the bow of the ship (that’s the front for those of you who are not sailors).

This was the pool area at the back of the ship that was supposed to be “adults only”, but I saw kids in there a lot, and it was really annoying when you were trying to lay out peacefully and then get splashed by a kid doing a cannon ball into the tiny pool.

Before we set sail, all the passengers had to do a safety drill where we learn how to put on our life jackets and where to meet. We’re prepared for anything with these lovely orange ensembles!

Can’t get enough of our balcony!

Here we are on formal night #1. Shortly after we sat down for dinner I had to go up to the room and take some Dramamine. Yep, I was feeling sea sick! I couldn’t believe it! Luckily it was just a little nausea with no other visible side effects….if you know what I mean.

Formal night #2. On each formal night they had photographers set up all around the ship with different back drops. We ended up buying 5 photos. I know! It’s a little excessive, but I liked all 5 of them, and I couldn’t choose!

I can’t forget our couples massage!!! We had a 50 minute full body massage, and liked it so much that we scheduled another one for the next day. Except the second massage was 75 minutes and also included hot stones! Mmmm….I could use a massage right now!

Steve pretty much spend each sea day in the casino. In his defense, there really was nothing else to do on the boat, unless of course you wanted to attend an anti-wrinkle seminar, a teeth whitening seminar, or a “glee” choir rehearsal. I’ll admit, I did do one activity on the boat: a photography walk around, where the head photographer on the ship took a group of people around the ship and gave pointers about photography. The only problem was that 80% of the group (of about 50 people) had point and shoot cameras. This activity is not for you, people!!! It’s for those of us with nice, professional cameras….cameras where you have to actually look through the view finder instead of the large screen on the back of your little $200 camera. So that was a little frustrating. The instructor spent most of the time trying to show the P&S camera people where each setting was on their camera instead of actually teaching. But, oh well. You can’t win ’em all!

This had to be Steve’s craziest hand! I mean look! Five 4s! How often does that happen?!

Here’s the main plaza. I was actually expecting something a lot bigger. It was only three stories tall, and from what I’ve seen, normally cruise ships have plazas that run the entire height of the ship.

This is from the top deck looking down at the pool. I can honestly say that I did not set one foot in any of the pools on the ship. They were just too crowded. You’d have to wake up at like 6am to reserve a chair, and then people would lay their towels on the chairs (like you see toward the bottom of this picture) and just leave for the rest of the day, so you didn’t know if someone was sitting there, or if they just felt like leaving their towel behind. It was very frustrating.

Steve and I own our own business, and our honeymoon was our first vacation in 4 years. Naturally he was worried about the business while we were away, so he and I both did customer service emails on our honeymoon. I know, romantic, right? But sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.

Every night at dinner, we sat with the same six people….all New Yorkers, and all complainers. Whenever we’d try to say something positive about the service or something of that nature, they’d find a way to say something negative. They were nice to us, but just never happy with anything.

On a side note, have you ever seen anyone as tan as that woman below me? I mean, my goodness!!! Someone has taken one too many trips to the tanning salon! Enough is enough!

One thing is for sure, being on a ship in the middle of the ocean, you sure do see some gorgeous sunsets! Isn’t God such a wonderful painter?

And of course, the typical honeymoon shot. Happy couple in love, with a beautiful sunset in the background.

Next three posts will be about each port of call. Hope you’ll come back!