Introduction
Miami and Boarding on RCL Cruise
First night’s Show and Tina Fey’s BossyPants
Running on a Cruise Ship
Cococay Island, Viking Lounge and the second night’s shows
Nassau Cruise Port and Atlantis Resort
Back in Miami and to the airport

Because of my wife’s time constraints, we booked a short three day cruise to celebrate our first wedding anniversary in May 2011 and also to celebrate my first marathon. We also wanted to do a short cruise so that if anything went wrong, it would only be three days and all the ports were very close to one another. We searched for the usual companies and found Miami to be a convenient port. More ships sail out of Port Canaveral but Miami is easier to fly to on AA from Boston. Online, it seemed as if Carnival generally had more kids so we went with Royal Caribbean instead. Overall, we liked RCL.

The itinerary was going to RCL’s private island, Cococay on the first day. There’s not too much to do there as there’s not much infrastructure on the island. Just mostly nature stuff. The second day would be in Nassau in the Bahamas. Then on the 3rd day, the boat docks back in Miami. For the most part, the boat stops at each port at 9am and then sets sail at 5pm, which can make for a short day. Usually dinner starts at 6:30 anyway so it was best to come back a bit earlier to prepare for dinner.

I wanted to have a relaxing cruise for us so i only booked one event for each day. Our actual trip didn’t happen that way. We took a look at the excursions and booked most of them in advance. We choose the hiking tour of Cococay Island and Beach day at Atlantis resort in Nassau. I have been to the Bahamas on spring break a few years before this trip and I thought spending the day at Atlantis would be a good one day excursion in Nassau. There were a ton of other things to do but we just didn’t have time to go all over the island.

We choose to fly in a day earlier and take a tour of Miami with our rental car.  I decided to pick a beachfront resort and hope that we get to hear the waves in the morning. The following day we would return the car back to the airport and take a shuttle to the cruise port. We would then figure out how to get back from the cruise port to the airport.