Our Honeymoon: Southern Caribbean Cruise with Norwegian Days 9, 10 and 11, St. Thomas and At Sea

Well, we are officially at the final honeymoon update. I may tear up a little bit because I miss being on vacation! Time to plan our next trip :)

Our last island day was in St. Thomas and we had an excursion planned through the ship. 

We arrived in St. Thomas super early and ate breakfast at the buffet before we went to meet up with our group to head to Coral World.

We booked the SNUBA excursion at Coral World which is in between scuba diving and snorkeling. We were each breathing through our mouths to an oxygen tank which was up on a raft above us. I have to say that is was very hard to learn to breathe in and out through your mouth. Both of us struggled a little bit with it but once we did get a hang of it we enjoyed exploring up to 20 feet below the surface! 

If you want to see more of our SNUBA adventure along with underwater video (and video of our entire cruise you can view my Youtube Travel Vlog. 

After our SNUBA excursion we had some time left before our ride headed back to the boat so we walked around Coral World which to be honest was kind of lame. We thought it would be more of an aquarium but honestly the exhibits were kind of lame. The best part was the baby turtles and the iguanas that seemed to be everywhere.

We walked over to Coki Point Beach to swim a little bit in the crystal clear water.

St. Thomas definitely has the clearest water of all the islands we experienced. I would definitely want to go back in the future. 

I loved trying out my new waterproof case from Amazon. It worked great!

I wasn't great at aiming the camera to get us both in. The struggle is real when you wear contacts and can't open your eyes underwater. 

The beach was busy but not overcrowded and I could've spent the entire day there but we had to get back on ship and back to the sea. 

After some shopping in the port (which was really well organized and there were so many shops!), we got back on the boat and sat on the deck while we pulled away from the port. We ate some lunch and laid in the sun for a bit and I admired the fact that my legs weren't pasty white. 

For the rest of the day we kept ourselves busy with Bingo, dinner, having drinks at O'Sheehan's, and playing Last Man Standing. We really cleaned up with the prizes during the game. Tim won three times and I won twice! 

We also played Where Are You Going which was a really fun game hosted in the Spinnaker Lounge.  

The show on this night was a comedian who was hilarious. We really enjoyed this show! 

After the show we went to Bliss for karaoke where we watched some fellow vacationers really embarrass themselves. After some drinks at O'Sheehan's to finish the night we headed back to our room to rest up for another day at sea.

Our last two days at sea were full of activities.

Every night had a beautiful sunset which we always tried to get outside to enjoy.

Tim participated in Battle of the Sexes where he had to compete on a team of guys and do all sorts of ridiculous tasks. 

We also attended a towel folding tutorial which was really cool! 

There are so many different towel animals and it was cool to watch how they created them!

We played Bingo and Deal or No Deal and also a few different trivia games they offered.

Another towel animal that was left in our room!

Ate the most amazing cheesecake at O'Sheehan's. 

Enjoying the sunset again :)

At the end of the final show many of the crew came on stage as they sang You're Norwegian Now which made me want to cry. 

I thought a really cool feature on the last day was a Q&A with the captain, chief engineer, and the hotel manager. It was fun to hear about what life on the ship is like for the people who work there.

Posing in my Mrs hat to read our last itinerary!

On the last night we met another couple that we really liked! We wished we had met them earlier in the trip.

The guy taking the photos is Nemo our favorite bartender! He was truly the most engaging and wonderful server we had on the trip and if you ever go on the Norwegian Gem in the next six months or so, go find him!

Our final towel animal was an elephant and it was so adorable. 

The next morning we got up and had to disembark and head home. We were so sad that our honeymoon had come to an end but know that we will 100% cruise with Norwegian again someday! 

Thanks for sticking around for my honeymoon recaps! If you have any questions about anything please leave them in the comments or email me at balancingonmytoes@gmail.com and I may create a Q&A with helpful cruise tips if there is interest!

Our Honeymoon: Southern Caribbean Cruise with Norwegian Day 8, Antigua

Hey loves! Welcome back to the our honeymoon recap :)

Today we are talking about one of my favorite trip days, our day on Antigua!

We arrived early on Antigua and ate our breakfast quickly so we could get off the boat and get our day started!

We walked around the port for a little bit because we had reservations with Triflexcursion for a bike, kayak and hiking tour. 

We were in a small group of nine with the addition of our two guides. Giles and Mark were amazing hosts and although they just created their company in December they are super professional and we truly enjoyed this tour!

It had been YEARS since I had been on a bike. Tim joked that there's a reason they say "it's like riding a bike" but let me tell you the first few minutes were a little shaky for me. I only ever ride the stationary bike at the gym and this was very different. I ended up getting used to the feeling and was totally fine (definitely a little cautious) and would love to purchase some bikes for us to ride at home since we had such a great time!

They also did a great job of helping us with the bike seat heights and making sure we were on bikes that were appropriate for our heights.

We biked for a few minutes and stopped briefly at a harbor where our guides described some of the area we had already biked through.

Our next stop was kayaking!

The water was pretty low but both Giles and Mark were willing to help us when we got stuck. They pointed out the birds that were hiding in the mangroves and also helped us find the jellyfish that were floating in the water.

Pictured above is one of the jellyfish!

We really enjoyed kayaking around and got a great upper body workout!

After finishing kayaking we helped bring the kayaks back up to storage and then hopped on our bikes to head to Fort James Beach!

This beach was absolutely gorgeous! We were sweating from all of our biking and kayaking and were more then ready to jump into the water which is exactly what we did!

The water was warm and Tim and I enjoyed swimming around. I would've moved to this beach it was so gorgeous! The water was the clearest I had come across and the waves allowed us to do a little bit of body surfing.

This huge yacht was on St. Martin when we were there as well. It is the largest sailing yacht in the world and we actually watched a little boat come out of the big boat. Totally insane.

We swam a couple times before Mark and Giles announced it was time to take a quick hike.

We walked over to Fort James where cannons were fully intact.

It was an easy walk and we all mentioned that it was nice it was untouched but would be even nicer if it could be fixed up a little bit. There is also quite a bit of trash left in the area but if there was someone manning the area and maybe a trash can it would be in a little better condition.

Tim and I both agreed that we need to come back to Antigua some day and spend a full week on the island. It was absolutely gorgeous and is a place I would like to explore more.

We did a bit of shopping before getting back on the ship to eat lunch and hang out on the front deck while we pulled away.

Our night consisted of a buffet dinner, getting a drink at O'Sheehans,  Deal or No Deal, and a show called Swing. We thought the shows put on by the singers and dancers were okay but we really did prefer the comedians and acrobats. The songs that were done this particular night were all songs from the 50's so we didn't recognize many of them.

We were completely exhausted from our active day and we had another great day ahead of us in St. Thomas the following morning!