Grand Turk

As Michelle and I are off for a weeks vacation cruising in the Atlantic Ocean I'm going to write a series of absentee blog posts relevant to what we are doing that day. There are two deck cams on the Pride, the Bridge and the Aft where you can watch to see if you see us. Watch the Forward Cam as that is where the ice cream machines are that I tend to find.

Today we will enter our first Port of Call which is Grand Turk. We should be pulling into port about 7:30 or so, and it's always a whole lot of fun seeing all the natives our there waiting for us to arrive. It is my second favorite port of call.

Our agenda for the day will include snorkeling and going to Jacks Shack to eat some Conch and play with Topher, the worlds coolest dog. A trip to Margarittaville's giftshop might also be on the agenda, we've eaten there a couple of times but Jacks is this awesome little hole in the wall that everyone tends to go to.

Grand Turk

As Michelle and I embark upon our fifth Cruise and enjoy our vacation, I will also be taking a little break as a blogger and writing some pre-written canned blogs. You can check more of what we are into on mine or Michelle's Facebook Page.

You can follow us on either the Front Web Cam, the Aft Webcam or just simply be tracking our location.

Today Michelle and I land in our first port of call, Grand Turk. This is a place where there is a Margaritaville on the Island, but Michelle and I will go and visit Topher today and maybe even get our pictures taken with him once again.

One thing Michelle and I love to do is Snorkel and this year is going to be no different than before when we stopped here. The water is absolutely crystal clear and beautiful, snorkeling in these waters is almost surreal.

That'll be our day.

Grand Turk

As Michelle and I are on Vacation this week aboard the Carnival Pride, you can track our Ship Location and watch for us on the Ships two cameras in the Aft or in the Forward Cameras. I am obviously absentee and will be writing my blogs absentee as even bloggers need a vacation.

Today we enter our first Port of Call in Grand Turk. A place that we will do a little bit of snorkeling and a little bit of site seeing. Last year we ventured to the other side of the walkway to see what was over there, and we found this NASA Exhibit over there. Amazing what you can find when you go to places other than that wonderful beach and Margaritaville.

There are always amazing things to see in the waters there. There is the Canon as pictured there as well as a huge anchor and a few other lost treasures that lie beneath those beautiful crystal clear and calm waters.

We will be taking our underwater camera with us as well today, maybe we can find a special shot or two or three to talk about next year.

Have yourselves a great day and know that we are. =)

We are Doing It Again.

Carnival Pride

We waited long enough, I was waiting to hear something about our contract, but something tells me that there is going to be another extension and waiting so we went ahead with our Cruise 2015 booking.

We are now once again booked for our 2015 cruise which will be in 189 days (let the countdown begin) and we will be taking the same cruise once again for the fourth year in a row. We absolutely love this cruise and the ports of call, and the Carnival Pride was just updated to a Funship 2.0 this past fall, so we are once again setting sail to Grand Turk, Half Moon Cay and Freeport the Bahamas this September.

Dani and Roy Marsh

We are also taking a couple of first time cruisers with us as Michelle's Sister Dani and husband Roy will be joining us for this years cruise. We both booked and paid for our cruise last night and we are all set to go. We helped them through their booking  last night as we booked ours and we will be in side by side rooms, meaning we can have the partition on the deck between the two rooms opened up and we can have one big deck to all share. Because we booked this weekend and Carnival has a special going on, we already have $50.00 worth of on board credits to use.

Michelle and I are all set to go, agreed to everything and filled out all the information including our passport information and our online account. All we have to do is print out our boarding passes and luggage tags and get ready to go.

We will be assisting Dani and Roy as they prepare for their first cruise. Our dinner companions from two years ago Jim and Pam have also booked once again on this cruise and we are looking forward to meeting up with them once again.

This year the Carnival Pride has installed not one, but two deck cams for everyone to watch.

Cruise 2015 is set and ready to go and we could not be any more excited. Anyone else want to join us?

Vacation Day 5, Grand Turk

During our 2013 vacation we did a video log each day. This year instead of writing about where we are or what we are doing, I thought I would share with you our previous years experience. I am on vacation this week and since we are doing the same trip and are staying in almost (next to it) the same room, I'm going to post the previous years video blog. Enjoy.

Grand Turk

I will be writing a series of absentee BLOGS while Michelle and I are on vacation. I'll be letting everyone know where we are and what we will be doing each day.

Well we are visiting our first of three ports today, we are in Grand Turk and guess where we will be eating lunch at today? You guessed it, Margaritaville where you can find the worlds best calamari. This will be our lunch today, the rest of the day will be filled with snorkeling in the Ocean.

The water there is crystal clear and there is little to no vegetation in the water due to the high salinity content and the higher temperatures. This makes snorkeling optimal in my opinion and this will be what we will be most of the day.

Last year we did one video log, and it was after we visited Grand Turk. I'll try to do one for every day during the vacation, but I tried to do that last year as well.




Half Moon Cay, Carnival's private Island and our favorite port to snorkel is where we will be tomorrow.

Photo Flashback Thursday

Trying something a little different this week for the Photo Flashback. We did this video log last year and I forgot about it.

Here is our video log that we did after our first stop in Garnd Turk.

Photo Valentines Day Flashback

Once a week I like to take a little bit of time out and look through all of my pictures and select just one special pic and write a little blog about. Today I dedicate my blog to my beautiful wife who I love with all of my heart on this Valentines Day version of a Photo Flashback. So help me relive this lost moment in time.

This weeks special blog to my valentine is something we plan on doing again this year. This was our first (and not last) trip to a Margaritaville Restaurant. This particular one is in Grand Turk in the Caribbean and had the best calamari on the planet. We had a great time here as this was our first land stop on our cruise last year.

We're planning on eating here again while we're doing our snorkeling this September. It was a trip of a lifetime and I was fortunate enough to be able to do it with the love of my life.

I love you sweetie, Happy Valentines Day

Carnival Pride

Same trip we're taking, it you look at the 2:35 mark, the guy below the camera. That was our room for our trip last fall.

Cruise 2013

We enjoyed ourselves so much in 2012, that we booked and paid for our 2013 cruise yesterday afternoon. Carnival Pride here we come again this fall. We will be doing the same trip during the same weekend, on the same boat we went on last year, only this year we used last years experiences to determine exactly what we wanted.

Yesterday afternoon we booked and paid for in full our 2013 vacation. We had contemplated a few other options, but this is what we wanted to do and it really is the most cost effective vacation you could ever do. We semi-considered departing out of other ports, but that would have shortened the actual cruise time and made it more costly. We were in heaven last year at Half Moon Cay (shown in picture) that we really wanted to return this year.

We changed a few things up this year, with a little first hand education last year we realized that the back end of the boat really is not the view that you would think. The Sun rises on the port side and neither sun up or sun down was visible from our room. We didn't make that same mistake this year. We're not on the top level this year, but we opted for midship, that way you are not far away from anything.

We're both excited!!!!!!!!!

Grand Turk Island

Disclaimer: This week I will be on a week long vacation with my beautiful wife. These blogs were pre-written to keep a flow of my blog going and to let people know where we are that today and what we plan to be doing.

Today we are landing on our first port Grand Turk Island. This will actually be the first time either Michelle or I ever set foot on land of a foreign country, or even outside of the United States.

One thing that we want to do today is make our first ever trip and visit to the Margaritaville Caribbean which is just outside of the port. Something tells me these two parrot heads actually will be having two cheeseburgers in paradise today. It's only appropriate since we manage to make the trip to Pittsburgh every year to go see Jimmy and the Coral Reefer Band. It was the one thing I mentioned about any of the ports that made Michelle's eyes light up.

We'll dock at 8:00 AM and are scheduled to be back on the boat at 2:00 PM. Obviously this is going to be a short day, but anytime white sandy beaches and blue oceans are involved I'm, all for it.