Back from Vacation

Jarrod and I returned a couple weeks ago from a cruise vacation. We didn't book it all that much in advance, and in effect didn't get around to telling many people about it.

Our Carnival cruise left out of Galveston on May 2nd and we travelled to Roatan (one of the Bay Islands of Honduras), Belize, and Cozumel.

The beach we went to in Roatan was actually just voted the third best beach in the world on Trip Advisor, and I have to agree: it was the most beautiful beach I've been to so far. The water was incredibly clear and there were fish everywhere. The barrier reef in the Caribbean extends down to Roatan, and is the second largest in the world after the one in Australia. Jarrod had brought a snorkel along, and he said it was really cool. He saw numerous kinds of fish and coral. I wanted to try my hand at it too, but I didn't swim out very far because I didn't want to get too tired (little did I know, Jarrod actually followed me out there in case I did get tired, which was so sweet.) I made it a little ways, though, and saw a few fish! I'm glad I at least gave it a shot.

But aside from that, you only had to wade in a little ways—maybe have the water up to your waist—and fish would be swimming around you. I constantly had at least three fish around my feet, that I kept running into, and a few swimming up around my upper body. It was so cool. And even in four feet of water, you could still see your toes perfectly; like I said, the water was incredibly clear.

Belize City was nice, about as nice as you'd figure a foreign city would be. But our tour guides were

extremely interesting and we learned a lot. I found the countryside of Belize to be really beautiful, so green and lush. Our excursion that day involved a tour of the city and visiting some Mayan ruins. The site we went to is called Altun Ha, and it dates back to 600 AD. They were very cool, and kind of took me back to my childhood days when I was very interested in Native Americans.

Our last stop was in Cozumel, Mexico, which we have been to once before. Cozumel is a little island off the Yucatan peninsula and it's very nice, yet very touristy. We got a cab and went down the road to a park, which had a beach and a few things to do. It was extremely nice, as we were able to just do it at our own pace. The other two days were planned excursions, which were great but after two days in a row we were getting exhausted, and this day we decided to do our own thing. So we slept in a little bit, got off the ship after most people already had, and stayed at the park until we felt like going back. It was a perfect, relaxing day and exactly what we wanted.

During our trip, we had two "fun days at sea", where you sail all day, then the three consecutive days in port, then one day at sea to head home. Our ship had an adult-only deck, which was nice (and actually enforced!), we found ourselves a nice spot on the side of the ship where hardly anyone was, and where you could only hear the ocean. The food was wonderful as always, and we loved our dining room waitstaff. I got adventurous and tried some new foods; I tried rabbit, crab cakes, raw smoked salmon on a bagel, fried shrimp, and frog legs. And these frog legs weren't fried, so I really tried frog legs. They were in like a lemon butter sauce, and I have to say the texture was similar to that of a chicken leg. They weren't bad. The rabbit wasn't bad either, but I didn't like the raw salmon or the crab cakes.

Like our last cruise, we spent a lot of time at the Alchemy Bar, which is a specialized martini bar Carnival has on some of their ships. The martinis they make are like none other I've ever had, and we love going there. We had "our" bartender we liked to go back to named Kateryna from Ukraine. She was great and actually spent a lot of time talking with us, which was cool.

The day we got back, we marathoned it home in 13 hours 50 minutes, which is pretty darn good driving all the way from Galveston. Round trip, I think we put about 1700ish miles on the new car, so you could say we officially broke in the new car.

It was such a nice, relaxing time. Much needed. I can't believe we've been back now for almost two weeks.

Unfortunately, though, not long after we got home I got sick. At first I thought it was allergies, and my body readjusting to our climate (ya know... since there aren't any trees in the middle of the ocean!) And I do think that was the problem... at first. But by the end of last week it was clear I was dealing with something much more severe than allergies. I called my doctor and I've been on a med for a week now without much change. We are going to try one more thing—different meds actually—but if this doesn't work I am going to be checking into the hospital.

It's a bummer, to say the least. I don't know that I caught whatever I did on the cruise, but who knows. It doesn't really matter at this point anyways. I've been having absolutely debilitating coughing fits, where they last 10-15 minutes and I can't do anything else. Really, the other day during work one of these fits struck and I was in the middle of typing something and it sat that way for ten minutes.

So please keep me in your thoughts and prayers that I can recover from this, though I have a feeling that I will be ending up in the hospital in the next week or two no matter what. The oral meds are a temporary fix, and I'm hoping they can get me through till next weekend when we have a wedding to go, but we'll just have to take it day by day.