Now I Need a Vacation......

Now I need a vacation to recover from the vacation. Whew! It's easy to forget how exhausting traveling can be.

I was tempted to purchase some internet time and at least check in with you guys (and, admittedly, my Facebook friends) last week, but I went cold turkey and went without being connected for an entire week. 

I won't be able to do our trip justice in this one (sleepy) blog post, so I'll just share some teaser photos and save the good stuff for later. I'm afraid I didn't do a very good job with photos this trip; I'm not sure why. The sun was usually coming up off our side of the ship, and I tried to get some sunrise photos. But every time I took the camera out on the balcony, the lens fogged up, and all those shots were blurry. Drat. (Question for you excellent photographers out there: How does one avoid that? Please don't tell me to be patient and wait for the camera to adjust to the outside temperature. I'm afraid that's not in my nature.)

Looking down from the ship into the shopping square in Falmouth, Jamaica. The commercialism bothers me, and the aggressive nature of the merchants bothers me even more. I guess if we are to go on cruises, though, it comes with the territory. Sigh.

I love the colors of the tropics.

We walked down to this (public?) beach, but we didn't come prepared to swim.

Those storm clouds produced a late-afternoon shower that was actually more refreshing than annoying.

Some things that are worthy of their own posts:

• Our waiter and assistant waiter, Rolando and Juan
• Cruise staff customer service in general - wow
• Our table mates for dinner every night - at least the ones who showed up
• Our ports of call - Labadee, Haiti; Falmouth, Jamaica; Georgetown, Grand Cayman; Cozumel, Mexico
• The weather and its limited impact on our trip, but its major impact on our sister ship, Allure of the Seas 

For now, though, it's early to bed. Maybe I can sleep without Tropical Storm Isaac rocking me to sleep.