Cruise Vacation 2010 - Day 1

For our first official family vacation, and by this I mean, we actually went away and did not visit family, we decided to go on a cruise! Jay and I had taken a cruise 5 years ago and we loved it. There are quite a few reasons that I liked being on a cruise - we visited more than one country, I only had to unpack once, you could be as formal or casual as you wanted, there were plenty of dining options (especially for someone as picky as me) and besides what is not to love about being on a boat and enjoying the warm sunshine and beautiful blue water. So when we began to plan our vacation, we thought a cruise would be a great option for us, and it was! We ended up booking the cruise with Carnival, not necessarily my first cruise line choice, but since Arabella was traveling with us and they cater to families and kids, we thought it was best to book with Carnival. (In another posting, I will post my take aways from this cruise).

So bright and early on October 9th (I was up at 4:15 AM), we packed up the car and left the chilly autumn in Montreal and headed for the HOT sunshine in the Caribbean!


Arabella was so excited and couldn't wait to get on the plane!

First stop, San Juan, Puerto Rico. We arrived a day early since we did not want to chance missing the boat if our flights we cancelled or changed. Arabella did great on our two flights (we were on the planes for about 8 hours) and she had a good time. And getting in early allowed us to relax a little and check out the beach near our hotel in San Juan. Once we checked into the hotel we headed out to dinner and then to the beach, it was dark, but Arabella was still able to run off some energy and dip her toes in the very warm water of the Atlantic! And after the beach, we even went to the pool at the hotel. After the pool, it was time to hit the hay so we could get up and go to the beach in the morning before heading over to the cruise terminal!