Sisters Cruise - January, 2023

We took a Sister's Cruise. It was epic. I was going to make a list of all the hilarious things we did accidentally, but actually I have a better list of tender mercies that were felt throughout the whole adventure. We said "Thank you mom and dad!" every night before we said our prayers. 

 

We flew into Fort Lauderdale and called our Hotel, the elegant-sounding Crown Plaza to request a shuttle. The person who answered the phone said, "Is this your first call?" That should have been a dead give-away. Oh my GOSH. It was almost an hour before they picked us up. And then they dropped us off in what can only be described as a construction site at the end of an alley. We made our way through a crummy door and found ourselves standing in what one google reviewer called a "garage" and it was their LOBBY! The elevators were so slow we seriously contemplated dragging our 50-pound suitcases down 16 flights of stairs at one point.

Here we are, happy as can be though, having dinner in their restaurant.

Our waiter didn't seem like a typical waiter. He seemed like a visitor from another country or something exotic. We finally decided he might be one of the three Nephites.

The next morning it was MAYHEM outside the Hotel as we all tried to get a shuttle. MAYHEM! Somebody was berating the woman who was in charge of everything and said "This is CHAOS!" After the irritated person huffed off the lady in charge looked at me and said, "This is not chaos." I'd hate to see what chaos is then. She told me there were FIVE cruise ships leaving that morning, and there are usually only three. Five cruise ships with over 3,000 people aboard them. No wonder it was chaotic. Traveling is not for the faint of heart. The travel days of getting there are no fun at all, and super stressful! However, we finally got on board our beautiful Holland America ship, named the NIEUW STATENDAM (no wonder I couldn't remember it). And one of the top 10 moments of the cruise was standing here with these folks on the ship, watching Fort Lauderdale fade away as we pulled away, and listening to another cruise ship's big horn play the theme from The Love Boat. It was magical.

Why is my writing little tiny? The photo below is taken toward the end of our trip, but you can get an idea of our spacious (in cruise ship terms) room. I slept on the fold-out couch which you can't see, but I'm taking the photo from where that is. When they folded out my bed every night it was hard to get around the end of the bed between the dresser but all in all it was a great set-up and we slept better than I had hoped or dreamed we would. I downloaded a white noise app and plugged that into my phone every night and it really helped me sleep. I'm having trouble getting text under the next two photos so I'll write what they are here. The picture of me and the lady is so fun. She's my NEIGHBOR! I couldn't believe it when I walked into the dining room and there was Christine and Brian Mikkelson. They work for Latter-Day Travel, Renew 23, which we were part of. I knew they were involved in the cruise industry but was always a little fuzzy on the details. 

 

 

 

 

Here's the most happening part of the cruise ship. Holland America is more sedate than other cruise lines it seems. No rock climbing walls, etc. Not a lot of kids on the ship.

I wanted to play shuffleboard, eat shrimp cocktail, and have multiple soft ice cream cones every day. I was thwarted on the ice cream the first couple of days and had to settle for raspberry ice.

But then finally, they got the ice cream machine working.

Amy and Andrea can upload movies onto their blogs but I need to have them show me how because I've got some awesome movies. Most all of them are of Julie, who is the more adventurous of the three of us. I have one of her shouting "I"M THE KING OF THE WORLD" and this is a photo from a video of her singing "SAILING SAILING OVER THE BOUNDING SEA" from our balcony. It was so fun to sit on our balcony and watch the majestic sea.

I had king of jokingly but not really said at one point after mom and dad passed away and we got a little lump sum of money "WE SHOULD GO ON A CRUISE!" But Julie was the one who nailed it down and found one where Jenny Oaks Baker was playing with her children and there were other LDS presenters, and she was not sure Denny and I would take her up on it and was happily surprised when we both did! This is the venue where the presenters spoke and played and it was absolutely gorgeous. There were about 300 or so people who were part of the LDS tour which they called Renew 23.

This photo below is a snapshot from the movie I took of Jenny Oaks Baker and her children. They performed on Sunday and it was a magnificent show. World class.

Elaine Dalton also presented and I really loved listening to her. She's almost 80 years old! Tony wanted me to make sure to say "hi" to her because he and Cindy have become friends with Elaine Dalton and her husband.

There was another speaker who I guess is a famous podcaster with a podcast called Leading Saints. He did a good job. It was fun halfway through his presesntation he put up his next powerpoint and said "Anthony Sweat, Steven Harper and another professor" have written a paper on (I can't remember what it was now :-) and then another photo was of his office and he had one of Tony's prints of Jesus and the one of Joseph Smith painted with lots of colors (I think that was what it was). 

I brought mom and dad's 60-year-old Boggle game with us and we had a great time playing boggle one day.

We also dressed up all fancy schmancy and went to a specialty French restaurant one night. It was divine. There was no library on the ship (Denny was so bummed!) and they didn't have karaoke which was too bad. We could have really made a spectacle of ourselves with that!

Our first stop was Grand Turk! We had signed up to go snorkeling and had to get up at the crack of dawn, but unfortunately it was raining. But we had a memorable day at Grand Turk which is, as Julie put on Facebook :), "God-forsaken." Oh my goodness. They can't even grow their own trees, fruits, or vegetables. Our guide pointed out every little thing, "This is a private home....here is the dump..." You can see from the second photo below that the devastation from the last hurricane has still not been cleaned up and it was a couple of years ago.  

 We posed on the sea wall. I learned how to pose from the cute girls that were in our shuttle van that took us around the island.

Lots of mangy dogs and mangy donkeys.

Julie, once again the adventurer, wanted to feed the donkeys. A guy was selling carrots for $1 so she got out of the van and fed the donkeys, and one nipped her on the butt!

These are the cute girls who taught me how to pose. They were taking the most darling photos of each other. They were with their mom, and were from Guiana.

There was some good entertainment on the ship. This string quartet was great, but not half as good as Jenny Oaks Baker and her family. We were spoiled.

And there were two great bands, one was a rock band and the other was a jazz and blues band and they were rocking out every night! We listened to them almost every chance we got.

The Renew 23 gang also had card games every night, and this is "Grandpa Beck" who invented "Cover Your Assets" and lots of other games. He was part of our tour group.

I played cards with the group one night and Jenny Oaks Baker and her kids were playing at the table next to me. We kept bumping into her 16-year-old son Matthew who was so darling and polite and respectful, but I kept wondering what he was doing with himself all day. I was glad he looked like he was having a great time playing cards with his family that night.

Our next stop was San Juan Puerto Rico! We were big fans! After Grand Turk we didn't know what we would expect but it was very civilized and beautiful. We spent the day there and made lots of memories hiking around a beautiful old battle wall, and then exploring the old town.

Stunning harbor! They say it's one of the world's prettiest.

W

We had dinner at a restaurant that, come to find out, was supposed to have closed but the kind woman didn't tell us that, although we wondered why we were the only ones there. We ordered Mofongo (above) which is a local dish made with mashed plantains! It was good. We also found a CVS Drug Store down by the ship that night as we made our way back and I was so happy to see something that looked American! I didn't realize I needed so much cash. Everything is done in cash. You can't stroll along Grand Turk and find an ATM either! And they had good phone service so we took the opportunity to sing "Happy Birthday" to Uncle Steve (91 years old!) and sent him a text. Our ship looked so inviting sitting in the harbor all lit up. And they had made us a towel animal.

The next stop was St. Thomas which was delightful. It has lots of hills and beautiful homes on the hills. We took a wild bus ride through the city and up the mountain and back down in order to get to Magen Bay which was supposed to have good snorkeling. But it didn't. Julie rented snorkle gear though and had fun out in the water. I was not at all inclined to get in the ocean for some reason! I think maybe because it was a bay and not the ocean with the pull of the waves?

The biggest yacht in the world (according to one of the multitudes of people we got to meet and chat with during our week) was parked right next to our cruise ship. They said it's owned by Nancy Walton, of Walmart fame.

Julie was delighted to find someone playing steel drums and she marched right over and he handed her the steel drumsticks and she played them. I have a cute video of it, this is a still shot from the video.

They had an absolutely captivating shop with hundreds of gems and polished rocks and necklaces. We spent an hour in there. I could have spent $1,000 but I didn't. I decided I have enough polished rocks. But I kind of regret not buying something.

Then we got to watch a beautiful sunset from our private balcony.

There was even a rainbow out in the middle of the ocean one day.

Pictures of food. I know, I know. But the food is half the cruise experience. Here is a yummy crab salad, and below that are photos of other delicious meals, including the second one down of SNAILS! Escargot. We all ordered them at our fancy schmancy French restaurant. I liked them!

This is Lori who was assigned to eat dinner with us in the dining room every evening at 5:15. She was lots of fun to get to know. She's a widow and came all by herself! She said she kept thinking it was a mistake, but then she got into the swing I think. It came up that I was Tony's mom, we were talking about nicknames or something and Denny or Julie asked her if she'd heard of Anthony Sweat and her jaw dropped. She's a huge fan. She even showed me a file she has where she has transcripts of all of his Instagram messages and other talks. That was cool.

Our last day was Half Moon Cay in the Bahamas. We were looking up things to do the night before and there was one slot left for a get to be with some Stingrays event, so Julie took that and had a great time and got some great pictures that she put on Facebook. You can see the two cruise ships in the distance. The far one is ours, and the one on the left was our "sister" ship the Rotterdam which pulled in two hours after we did. There were no beach chairs left for those poor 2,000 folks!

I really wanted to play Shuffleboard and we ended up pulling it off. The lady who is with us was at our table when we went to Afternoon Tea (Denny wanted to go and it was so nice. We had hot chocolate). When I said I wanted to go play shuffleboard next she said "Can I join you?" And so she made it a foursome. We had no clue how to play, but then another couple came up, who actually play shuffleboard competitively, and they showed us the ropes. 

The ship had a musical theme, which was another little tender thing that made us feel close to mom and dad. Every floor was a composer - our floor was Mozart.

Oprah Winfrey christened the ship! Woo who!!

We wanted to get a quick picture in front of the one photo of organ stops because again" HI MOM!" and we asked a man if he would take the photo and it turned out that he was a professional organist himself! Really, stuff like that happened all the time. It was cool.

A couple other glamor shots.

Julie wanted to line dance. So we went up to the upper deck and the gal who was teaching it had a really thick accent and I took about two "shuffle ball change" steps and thought, welp, this isn't going to work for me. I can't dance when they're yelling out the instructions in ENGLISH!

So, I went to the end of the deck and found a deck chair and laid down. Pretty soon I thought I could smell cigarette smoke and yup, I was in the smoking area. Oops!

Well, there is a nutshell of our fabulous cruise! I will hold the memories in my heart for eternity! Thank you mom and dad!