Even though this was the fourth time that I was going to Miami, I haven't actually seen much of it because I'm always working when I'm there. I have been to South Beach once before but I wanted to go and have another look so when we arrived on Monday lunchtime that's what we did.
Chris kept himself busy while I was at work. He took a tour of the Miami Marlins baseball park...
Went to the home of the Miami Heat, the American Airlines Arena...
Visited Vizcaya...
Took an open-air bus tour...
And took numerous trips to Sushi Maki! This photo is from the night that he took me and we had chicken and waffles sushi!
At the end of the week we spent a night staying at my friend Trish's apartment. She has a penthouse and the views are amazing especially at night...
On Friday lunchtime we took a taxi to the Port of Miami and boarded our cruise ship 'Majesty of the Seas' for a weekend cruise to the Bahamas. We had arrived really early so boarding was such a smooth process and it only took us a few minutes and we were having lunch onboard. After lunch we found ourselves a couple of good sunbeds on deck and spent the afternoon relaxing while everyone else boarded. At 4pm it was time to leave Miami and head the 150 miles to the Bahamas!
It's a nice ride out of the Port of Miami, you get a great view of all of the expensive celeb homes and of South Beach. On one of my previous trips to Miami I did a boat trip past the celeb homes and was told who lived where so I was desperately trying to remember who's house was whose!
On Saturday morning we woke up in Nassau the capital city of the Bahamas. We took a small passenger ferry over to Paradise Island to the Atlantis resort. I always thought this resort looked amazing and I would love to stay there but after our quick trip I don't think I actually would want to now. Admittedly we were being tight and refused to pay for a visitor pass to get into all the best bits but I just thought it was looking a bit tired and worn out and if I'd paid all that money to stay there I wouldn't be too pleased with day visitors coming in for a nose around every day.
After Atlantis we walked down the road to the public beach. It was so hot so as soon as we reached the beach we just stopped and found a space. If we had more energy we could have walked further down the beach to find somewhere a bit quieter but we couldn't manage it!
After a couple of hours on the beach we headed back to the city. It's not a very nice city, it caters for the cruise ships which is not a good thing. We did manage to walk away from the tacky touristy shops and went to the Queens staircase and the fort. Unfortunately the fort was just closing after we'd climbed all the way up the hill to get there but we still got to walk around outside.
On Sunday we arrived at Coco cay which is Royal Caribbean's private island. We got off the boat early and once we got to the island we walked right over to the other side of it hoping to get a quiet spot. Our plan worked and we had the pick of the best sunbeds on a lovely bit of quiet beach.
When we decided to walk back to the beach later in the afternoon, we realised just how busy the beach closest to the ship was, it was absolutely packed. I'm so glad that we walked that extra bit further to the other side of the island.
This was a very different cruise to our Princess cruise to Alaska. The Princess ship was definitely much nicer and the food much better than Royal Caribbean. It was also just a totally different type of cruise. This was a bit more of a party cruise. I did enjoy it but 3 nights was definitely long enough. My view of cruises is still that they are a really relaxing and easy way to go on holiday but I wouldn't want to take every holiday on one. I quite fancy doing one of the Norwegian Fjords cruises so maybe we'll do one of those one day but I don't think I'd ever cruise the Caribbean again.
