Good weekend

So this weekend was pretty kick-butt. Liss and I had (as always) our date night Friday night. Nothing fancy.. we ate at Qdoba and hung out at Barnes & Noble to catch up on some reading. It was a really nice night of just getting to slow down and spend some time with each other.

Saturday we met our small group (I love those guys!) downtown to see Get Smart, eat at the Flying Fish and Cheesecake Corner and generally have a good time. Get Smart was quite funny (Steve Carell made it awesome, especially when waxing lyric about Chuck Norris), but I'm pretty sure the rest of the group got their chuckles from watching me laugh so much... Oh well. The Flying Fish was quite good (the crawfish po'boy had enough heat to get my nose running, always a good sign for me), and if you haven't been to the Cheesecake Corner, you're really missing out.

Anyway.. much to the chagrin of the rest of the group, I took along my trusty D70S to document the whole outing. I've posted some good ones below. If you're friends with Liss on Facebook, be sure to check out some more. If you'd like 5x7s or 8x10s of any of these photos, you can mail a check to Matt Roberts in the amount of $1,000.00. Bulk discounts are, of course, available. I hope you enjoy the photos... I'll try to be better about getting some other stuff up soon!

eh...Hello! Cruising sure was fun.

Alright, so...yeah... I didn't post at all in May (as if Liss isn't the only one who reads this blog on any kind of a regular basis). I blame it on the cruise.

Seven days of total awesomeness. The bluest, most perfect water you've ever seen in your life surrounds you night and day. We had perfect weather, and our ports of call (the Bahamas, St. Thomas and St. Maarten) were incredibly fun (as always). 

The Bahamas:

The last time Liss and I were in the Bahamas, it was the first day of our honeymoon. Needless to say, we didn't do a whole lot of exploring.... yeah... Anyway! We took the time to actually walk around Nassau, and I'm so glad we did! I took my camera (Nikon D70S), and I got some photos that I'm pretty excited about (we're getting the one below framed to put in the kitchen).

St. Thomas:

This is by far mine and Liss' favorite port of call so far. From the port, there's about a mile and a half walk to the downtown area. Of course, the main streets are tourist havens, full of shops that have been setup specifically for cruisers, but if you walk from the water-side street to the alleys that run perpendicular, you'll find some great shops with everything from handblown glass jewelry to Belgian chocolates to pirate and colonial artifacts. OK, I know that last one sounds lame, but seriously - ever seen a real pirate sword? Heck, if you've got a few grand to plunk down, you can buy the sucker.

Once we'd gotten our fill of shopping and walking around downtown, we walked back towards the port and got on the St. Thomas SkyRide. After a 5-10 minute gondola ride up to the top of the mountain range (well.. that's probably an exaggeration) that splits the island in two, we got an awesome view, lunch and adult beverage. When we retire, we'll retire to St. Thomas.

St Maarten:

The cool thing about St. Maarten is that it's split between two separate countries - France and the Netherlands. We disembarked on the Dutch side and caught a cab over to the French side. While we were there, we did some open-market shopping and picked up some really tasty crepes with Nutella (that stuff rocks, by the way).

Back on the Dutch side, we avoided most of the touristy stuff and parked it on the beach for several hours. I kicked back with a book under the umbrella, and Liss laid out. It was gloriously lazy and relaxing. Before we caught the taxi back over to the ship, we picked up some ice cream at this great little creamery that's along the beach front (Liss and I first saw it the last time we were in St. Maarten).

So yeah... that's about it. Well except for a gluttonous amount of food, Vegas-style shows and a lot of hanging out in the pools and on the water slide, amongst other things (all on the ship). Good times were had by all!