February Fun

Coming back from our cruise took a little settling in. The girls were a little out of sorts and it seemed like we spent a couple of weeks trying to get everything back on track.

Here are a few pictures from the last couple of weeks in February...

After our cruise mid-February, we had an evening flight that, long story short, we couldn't change once we realized that we would be getting off the boat in the morning. We wanted to go home, but since we couldn't, we made the most out of some extra time in Fort Lauderdale. We hit up the beach, ate lunch and had these huge cocktails along the strip, and did a little bit of window shopping.

Nora was invited to a cute birthday party where the kids made their own pizza as part of a cooking class at Taste Buds Kitchen. She had a lot of fun! And thankfully, they had backup pizza dough because I am fairly certain the dough she actually made was not edible.

We wrapped up the month celebrating Mardi Gras! Really, their school was celebrating and passed out these cute little goodies. So festive...

And here's one more cute shot of my little grocery store helper! Janie loved pushing the cart through the story and yelling at people, "Here I come!" like a total wild thing!

We're seeing glimpses of spring... ready for the real thing to happen next month!

Freeport, Grand Bahama

Our last stop was on Grand Bahama Island. We knew that this would be a smaller stop and without an excursion, it wouldn't be worth getting off the boat. We had planned on renting a car and traveling around the island ourselves. Krista and Michael were going to come with us, but since Krista wasn't feeling well, we were on our own little adventure for the day.

Freeport, Grand Bahama Island

We secured a rental car through Avis. We had to call them to come pick us up from the cruise port and then they shuttled us to the airport to get the rental car. From there, it was a pretty easy drive to get to where we wanted to go, we just had to drive on the left side of the road. The roads are not marked very clearly but there also aren't many of them. We also knew that where we were headed was right off the main highway.

Once we got our car, we headed out to the Lucayan National Park. It's not very big, but they have a couple of underwater caves to look at, short trails through the mangroves and a beach that you have access to all of with a $5 entrance fee.

We started by walking to the see the two caves. We had been to Mexico recently and went swimming in the cenotes, which are similar to these two caves we saw. The caves here were inaccessible to swimmers though we did see some divers go into them {requires a permit}.

It was hard to get a picture with the lighting and the stuff sitting on top of the water...

After seeing the caves, we went through the mangrove trail to Gold Rock Beach. It was high tide when we got there, which is the opposite of the time you want to try and be there, but it was how timing worked out for us. Even though it was high tide, the beach was still very nice. The sand was white, it was relatively quiet, and there was plenty of space for us to sit on the sand and lounge. The biggest draw back to the day was that the sun was covered by lots of clouds!

Walking through the mangroves. Wishing I hadn't worn flip flops!

Gold Rock Beach at high tide - and lots of clouds.

We stayed for a bit and then ventured off to find some lunch on the island. We had to ask the man working at the national park where to go to find food. We did end up using Google Maps {hooray for free data plan!} to help us make sure we were on the right path because like I said, the roads are not clearly marked! The place we found was small but had a table to sit at right on the beach. They took credit cards, but as it turned out their machine was broken {second time this happened to us while on the islands}. If we had only had enough cash to cover a real meal & drinks it may have been that much more fabulous!

We stayed there a bit and then headed back to go to the beach. Low tide, which is when it is recommended you visit this beach, was supposed to be at 5:30 pm or so on this particular day. We needed to be back at the ship before then, but the later in the day it was, the lower the tide went. We sunbathed awhile and watched the beach reveal more and more as the tide lowered.

Gorgeous! Justin was trying to mess with the clams or crabs or 

whatever was making bubbles under the sand...

Gold Rock Beach at low{er} tide.

Playing on the sand bar.

It really was a beautiful beach when the water retreated. The water was shallow for yards and yards and you could walk along the sand the length of the whole beach. Coupled with the clear blue water, it was amazing. And, as you can see there was hardly anyone else there with us! One of the highlights of the trip for sure! We really would have loved to see what happened after a couple more hours, since we had to leave before the true low tide.

A side by side comparison of high tide & lower tide.

But, we did have to head back. We returned the car and got our shuttle back to the cruise port with plenty of time to have another mudslide by the pool. We definitely enjoyed our last port of call on the cruise!

Nassau, Bahamas

Our second stop on the cruise was Nassau. We had no excursions planned for this stop either as we were just planning on exploring around by foot.

Part of Nassau from the ship.

We did decide to take a group taxi over to see the Atlantis resort on Paradise Island. It was about $10 per person round trip to get over there, plus a fee for getting over the bridge one way. We were able to walk around the shopping area, through the casino, and around the outside of the casino portion of the hotel. Otherwise, you had to have a wristband or room key to get into other parts of the resort. There is also an aquarium which was charging about $50 per person to get in to, so we opted to just walk around.

The first thing I saw was this adorable sparkly mermaid swimsuit in one of the stores, which cost $98!! We walked through the casino, which was not super busy as it was before 10 am, and saw the Chihuly glass sculptures and light fixtures. We got a bit past the casino and then were turned away since we didn't have resort access {this costs about $100 per person}. We walked around the outside, which had beautiful views, and got a taste of the things that we were missing with the $100 day pass. We took some pictures and then headed back towards the city of Nassau itself.

I wanted to find the straw market, so we walked to that and looked around. It was an open building filled with lots and lots of people selling lots and lots of things. A lot of it looked the same as the next vendor, but I'm sure if you spent enough time there you could find some unique things. Our group was splitting up and Justin was getting bored, so we made our final purchase {straw fans for the girls} and headed towards the beach area to find some lunch.

We found the beach! If you look closely, you can see the tip of a cruise boat in the far right. 

Just to note distance from the port from where we were.

We walked a lot farther than I was anticipating. It wasn't too far for us to handle, but I would have worn different shoes had I known. We also went farther than the beach since we were looking for some local food and ended up quite some distance away from the cruise ship. After we ate lunch we took a cab ride back to the cruise dock and just sat by the pool with family the rest of the afternoon.

Sunset from the boat!

Participating in some kind of nightly activity...

Helping out the comedian on stage!

Next stop: Freeport!

Great Stirrup Cay, Bahamas

Our first port of call on our Bahamas cruise was Norwegian Cruise Line's private island, Great Stirrup Cay.

It was actually intended to be our last stop of three but due to some weather related issues, the captain reversed the itinerary of our ship. I had read that it was sometimes an issue on this island, since there is not a port on the island itself. Instead, the passengers tender back and forth between the cruise boat and the island. It was nice that they thought to do that so we could see it, but it did mess with our self-planned excursion that was scheduled for our planned port of call. Luckily, we were able to move our rental car to the last day without too much trouble.

Justin and I had no official excursions planned for any of the stops. We did plan on doing a few things at each port of call with the exception of this one. They had lots of things you could sign up to do; water sports and activities. But we very much enjoyed the relaxed feel of the day.

We got up and ate breakfast on the ship {for the record here, I never slept in past 7:00 am}. Actually, I think on this first day we actually got up, worked out, and then ate breakfast on the ship. Then we started to think about getting off the ship and heading to the beach.

To get off the ship, you had to go claim some passes with a boarding group number and then wait for your group to be called. That took awhile... but probably around 11:00 we were able to get on a boat and tender over to Great Stirrup Cay.

It was basically a long stretch of beach with lots of chairs. We all ended up with chairs close to each other so that we could visit as we liked. The bars were open and served free drinks since our cruise was an all-inclusive ship to begin with. Basically, the beach was an extension of the boat. I remembered at this point, as I typically do on these types of vacations, that I really enjoy a mudslide.

I went down to the water and discovered that the water was a bit cool. I prefer pretty warm temperatures. There were plenty of people swimming in the water comfortably, I just wasn't one of them! But the water was gorgeous. It was so clear and a beautiful shade of turquoise.

So happy to spend time with BOTH of my sisters!

Around lunch time, a buffet of food was set up on the island for everyone to eat from. The food was different from the ship's buffet, at least I think it was {only really ate breakfast there} but they had a good selection & I very much enjoyed the ribs that had a jerk-like rub on them.

Our cruise ship from the island.

So, we drank, we ate, we lounged, and then in the early afternoon, we decided to head back to the boats before most of the other people did. Once back, we hung out by the pool on the ship.

We had a lot of fun on this little island. I probably could have just stayed put the entire week and done this. It was kind of like an all-inclusive resort where you had the beach and the pool except your room was floating... It was a really good first day at our first stop, though! We are looking forward to our next stop: Nassau!

DISCLAIMER: I did not take very many pictures of anything after we got back on the boat each evening... and if I did, there aren't many worth sharing!!!

Happy Valentines Day

Happy Valentines Day!

We hope everyone had a great day filled with lots of love!

With love,
The Peiperts

Can you guess which child threw a fit right before this photo session??

And if you're wondering what most look like when you try to take pictures of your toddlers...