Wednesday morning we were docked at Nassau, Bahamas. Zach and I had already been to Nassau several years ago on our 17 day vacation…we actually prefer Freeport to Nassau so we weren’t mega pumped about our day there. We did skip the over priced tours of Atlantis (fyi if you ever go to Nassau you can pay a taxi boat thing under $10 to take you to Atlantis and you can do a tour for free! We did it on our prior trip!) but paid to do what I thought would be the coolest thing – stingrays. Zach and I love to snorkel but we got SPOILED on our honeymoon (we went to the Maldives) with amazing snorkeling so why even bother? We figured the stingrays would be our best bet to actually SEE something ya know?
another bright and early morning off the boat!
heading out to the stingray island thing
I love when people offer to get a picture of us together
goodbye boat!
I was pretty pumped when we got to the stingray location and found out that they actually had captured a bunch of stingrays so we were for sure gonna see something. On the one hand it was sad that they were captured and that their stingers were removed, but on the other they were safe from predators and guaranteed food everyday which isn’t too bad.
ready to get our snorkel on!
it was a VERY pretty little island and very secluded which was nice
If you are a long time blog reader then you may remember a little known fact about me: I LOVE touching stuff. I know that’s random but I just like to get hands on with things, even if they are gross. Remember our trip to the aquarium? It’s just cool to be able to say I’ve touched things that many other people have never touched! That included the nasty dead fish we had to hold in order to feed the stingrays…
awesome bangs Emily
I held on to some random lady when I put my hand down to feed them haha
Zach’s turn!
so serious
he screwed up and didn’t have his hand flat and the stingray bit him!
Don’t you wonder how I got all these pictures in the water? I was a BRAVE girl and brought my camera in and was just super careful not to get it wet. It was scary but totally worth it to be able to have pictures of us holding stingrays! They felt so cool and it was AWESOME!!!
like a pro
We all wanted to see the mouth of them and here’s a video showing that!
The stingray thing was 3 hours long and we were done after holding them which only took about 30 min. So we spent the rest of the time just lounging around getting some sun and reading. It was very relaxing and nice to have a beach all to ourselves!
We also got to play pirates 🙂
Why didn’t the pirate go to the movies? B/c it was rated “arrrrrg”
on our way back to Nassau
On our original trip to Nassau we both really enjoyed the straw market where you can buy things from local vendors. I know most people hate stuff like that but we enjoy haggling 🙂 We got some stuff for Kye (a wooden flute thing with his name on it, a wooden shark, and a little drum thing that has stuff hanging from it so you can twist it and made sounds), thank you gifts for our parents for their help (cute salad serving utensils), and some little things for ourselves. It was SUPER hot and I didn’t even think to take a picture (I know a sin!!! I repent! I repent!)
When we first went to Nassau we have a picture of both of us under this little welcoming thing. I SWEAR it used to say “Welcome to Nassau” but it doesn’t anymore.
had to get one with Atlantis in it right?
kinda gives you a hint at how HUGE the boat was!
After we got back on the boat we had appointments to use up more of our money on massages. After all the stress I’d been under I needed one and I know Zach did too! It was pretty good but I was annoyed that the lady stopped 10 min early in order to try to sell me a bunch of massage crap. Zach walked out with a bag FULL of the stuff and his girl didn’t even tell him it cost money – she just handed it all to him and asked for his cruise card to ring him up!!! Totally sneaky and not cool and I’m thankful I caught her before she did it!
Before dinner we HAD to have the “I’m the king of the world” moment and go to the very front of the ship…and it resulted in my favorite pictures from the whole vacation of us 🙂 (isn’t my dress pretty? It was Nana’s!)
I think this one is my favorite!
We had time to kill before meeting the dinner gang so why not take more random pics?
After dinner we kinda wanted to spend the last night just the two of us so we left pretty quickly from eating and went to spend the rest of the Aflac money 🙂 We had about $100 left and since Zach had worked so hard this year I was 100% on board for him getting to spend that money! He ended up buying a super nice Guess watch with it and it’s black and red – his colors 🙂
How could I complain? Not only did he earn it but I got hooked up myself! I got a cute straw purse from the market, we got an ornament from the ship to put on our tree, and I got an early birthday present too (a “Coach” duffel from the market!!!).
The next morning our VIP status paid off again as we got to be some of the first people to get off the boat and head to the airport! This time our ride was a suburban and we enjoyed it.
Once at the airport I started making all my calls back home to Mom and Mrs. Charlotte to check in on Kye and catch up on everything I’d missed. I took a bathroom break to pee and to put some eye drops in because I noticed one of my eyes was fuzzy (after two rounds of Lasik my eyes will occasionally act up so I didn’t panic). When I looked in the mirror I freaked…notice anything wrong???? (at least my Garden Party Chandelier Earrings still look cute!)
If you make the picture above bigger you can see how one of my pupils was HUGE and the other was tiny. It was FREAKY. The eye with the bigger pupil was also the fuzzy vision one and it made me nauseous. I started googling on my phone and typed in “one pupil bigger than the other.” Guess what the FIRST thing that popped up said? It said it’s caused from touching the anti-nausea patch!!! And guess what I had just removed from behind my ear while I was on the phone? Yup…that patch the lady had given me early on in the trip to help with my sea sickness!!!
The sites I googled talked about how it can cause PERMANENT damage. Not good. I called my eye doctor right away (of course they didn’t answer) and I tried to get a hold of the lady who gave it to me so I could get the specific name of it and see if that company had any information on their site. Then I ended up calling Mrs. Charlotte and having her call her eye doctor. They said, thankfully, that it should go away after a couple of days and if it didn’t that I’d have to go in for an appointment. It caused me to get quite a headache but it did, thank God, go away!!! Ugh my luck huh? 🙂
The good news was that we FINALLY got to sit first class!!!!
Yay for business class fliers! Zach LOVED it as he could stretch out his legs!!!
(1. do you think it was obvious to the other first classers that it was our first time? I mean I did take pictures like a lame-o haha 2. this pic is in black and white b/c freaky eyes look wayyyy more freaky in color!)
To be honest, this trip ranked very low on our list of favorite vacations, especially when ranked on the Aflac-only ones. We decided we just aren’t cruise people. I felt sick the entire time, even with the patch, and felt sick for days after (which I heard can be caused from the dang patch!). Zach also said that he felt sick majority of the time too. We both got headaches and were just very lethargic. I know a lot of people love cruises. I think cruises are especially great for people who like to drink and party – but we all know that’s not our scene. Honestly, if we didn’t have that Aflac money to spend the trip would have been sooooo boring (b/c you KNOW we wouldn’t have spent any of our own money haha).
I don’t want to sound the LEAST unappreciative. Aflac is an amazing company and I’m just thankful we got to go on a trip and I’m so proud of my husband for giving us that opportunity…but if it was up to me I’d probably never go on a cruise again. However, we already know we will be! The Aflac State Trip for next year is an 8 DAY Mediterranean Cruise to Barcelona, Spain; Livorno (Florence/Pisa), Rome, Naples, Italy; Palma, Mallorca!!! You think I’m gonna pass that up?!? Heck no! I just probably will not use a patch (or at least will NOT touch my eye after touching one!) and will pray I’m not having a monthly visitor 😉