The HONEYMOON! (PG)

Disclaimer: All photos/videos can be found on Facebook. Not sure if I'll post 'em here, too.

It's official - we've now been married for a month! It feels (in a good way) like we've been married longer, and it's weird to think we have just barely dated for 6 months. (Haha, we're shakers and movers, what can we say?)
The Honeymoon was a blast. We spent our wedding night in the Romeo Suite at Castle Creek Inn. It's a romanticly themed castle-looking motel over on Creek Road. They had movies in the dining room and we decided to grab two of them. Can't remember what they were, and it was a total waste of effort because we didn't watch either of them.
We had a balcony that looked out over a garden/forest with a stream and fountain. We saw several cars in the parking lot that were decorated like ours was (although I didn't see any other license plate covers that said, "It's a bird! It's a Plane! No, we're just super horny!").

Saturday, my mom graciously drove us to the airport around 5:30PM so we didn't have to leave a car parked and pay ridiculous parking fees. We boarded the plane and I took half a sleeping pill and prepared ourselves for a crappy night's sleep!

We arrived sometime around 5:30AM in Orlando, FL. Our connecting bus to Port Canaveral, where Freedom of the Seas was waiting for us, wouldn't be ready until about 10:30AM, so we napped in between an escalator and a pillar near the Royal Caribbean desk. When it was time, a RC employee woke us and we departed, again napping on the bus. We got on the ship a little earlier than our boarding time and went and crashed in our room.

1st Stop: Labadee, Haiti. Royal Caribbean pays the Haitian gov't. royalties for the peninsula referred to as Labadee. It's a nice area where numerous hammocks are set up ready for use, beach lounge chairs are in abundance, and an eating area has been built so they can unload food from the ship and feed you right there on the land. It was great. The shopping sucked (but we weren't there for the shopping) - they have two little areas: one for "Artisans" and one called a "Flea Market." Not really sure what the difference was as they both had pretty much the same stuff.
Tiffany and I had arranged to do a zipline but when we went over there at our allotted time we were told it was closed because it was too windy. We decided to take a nap in one of the hammocks and awoke to the sound of zipliners. We went over and asked if we could still go and we could. It was a blast! You start at Dragon's Breath (training zipline) and after you do that they take you up 500ft above the sea in Land Rover Defenders. You leave the compound (and there's a guard at the gate...can't remember if he was armed or not). Once at the top, you have a great view of the 2600ft zipline you'll be riding over land,sea, and land. It was beautiful to fly over the water, look down and see the waves roll in. Tiffany and I both agreed that while it was really fun it was one of those things you don't feel like you need to do again once you've done it. Don't get me wrong - I'd do it again in a heartbeat, but I would never pay that much to do that zipline again.

2nd Stop: Ocho Rios, Jamaica. I have never been offered drugs on a vacation before. Kind of a novelty. The annoying thing about Jamaica, however, was that EVERYONE is trying to rip you off. Everyone on the other islands are too, but just not as bad and blatantly obvious. Our waiter on the ship had given us the name of his friend that could take us around and to Dunn's Falls (we didn't want to book it through the ship as we had heard it was possible to get it cheaper without going through the cruise). When we got to the location, several people pointed us to a guy and said "That's Leroy." He had a full bus so another guy came up to us and invited us to his "office" (his car). We talked for awhile, he offered us a scenic drive, Dunn's Falls, and something else I can't remember for $70. It would have been at least $45-50 per person for Dunn's falls if we had done it through the ship. We got him down to $60 without the scenic overlook drive. We wanted to do a little shopping and get our "free" souvenirs. I'll let Tiff talk about that, though. After recognizing that we were newlyweds and on our honeymoon, and mentioning to me that going to Dunn's Falls would, "put some lead in your pencil," we were on our way!

We first went to a shopping area and told the driver we'd only be an hour. He said okay and told us he'd meet us there in an hour. I was a little surprised as I had thought our $60 had reserved him for the day. Nevertheless, we did our shopping and ended up only taking 15 minutes, so we decided to look at all the stores and met back in an hour. Our driver was a 1/2 hour late. We would have taken another taxi (since we had not yet paid him) but our towels were in his vehicle. When we got back in the vehicles we saw someone else's shorts on the seats. He moved those and we were on our way to Dunn's Falls. We told him we were a little frustrated that he was a half hour late. "Traffic, traffic!" They tell you. Bull.
Dunn's Falls was gorgeous! Fall after fall after fall, all pouring beautiful white water. We were so glad we hadn't hired a tour guide as it would have taken us several hours. If you hired a tour guide you had to hold hands and slowly move up the falls. There were probably several hundred people there, but we made it up the falls in about 45 minutes, with little breaks here and there to take footage and pictures.

It was at Dunn's Falls where Tiffany was given a "free" carving of a woman's head. The young man asked Tiffany her name and he hurriedly carved it into the back of the carving. He then asked me what my name was. I told him, "Bubba." He carved that and then I took it and he said, "It's free with a $20 donation." I said, "You told us it was free." "Her's is free. Your's requires a $20 donation." I told him that was okay and that we didn't want it. (I had learned from a similar experience in New York last October: A man was yelling "Free CD" and so he wrote my name on the CD cover and said, "this is free with a donation." Once I heard I had to pay for it I didn't want it, but he had already written my name on it, so I felt obliged. It was some crappy rap cd with poorly announced audible "DJ Whiteowl" occasionally inserted over random parts of the songs. Total ripoff). When I told him I didn't want it he said, "come on, man." I told him all I had was five dollars (which was true). He hesitated for a moment and then finally relented. AH HAH! Who screwed who here? Tiffany and I giggled in bitterness about this later.
When we were finally done with Dunn's Falls, we only ended up waiting 5-10 minutes (probably because we had given him a good talking to ;o). He took us back in to town near the ship and we did some more shopping, Tiff had her hair braided (and got ripped off, but Tiff was strong and didn't give in...too much) and walked to the ship.

3rd Stop: George Town, Grand Cayman. Sting Ray Snorkel! This was awesome. We had been told $35 per person. We met up and went out (1/2 hour boat ride to the sandbar where the stingrays are). It was quite windy and the water was about 5 1/2-6ft deep, so Tiffany and I did a good bit of swimming. We should have taken life jackets off the boat so we didn't have to swim. We got to pet a stingray. They're so soft and slimy in a good way. It was fun to see them so close. They took a picture of us "kissing" the stingray, but we didn't want to pay $60 for a photo. We've got the memory... We fed the stingray some squid and I kind of got bit (didn't break the skin, but it pulled blood to the surface) because I held the meet wrong. You hold it in your hand like a fist with your thumb tucked inside. Those stingrays have incredibly strong suckers for mouths! Tiff wasn't feeling great because she was getting tossed to and fro with the waves and had swallowed a bunch of sea water. They then took us over to a deeper area and we put on life vests and snorkeled around. It was blissful snorkeling arm-in-arm with Tiffany. We saw some coral and were told about "Fire Coral." Nasty stuff. Like Stinging Nettle. We saw some more stingray and a few conch shells.
On the boat ride back they pointed out to us Sylvester Stallone's island home. Pretty with a lot of archways. We had talk to a few other people and asked them how much they were being charged. One couple with two little girls were paying $60 for the four of them, so Tiffany and I thought we could get away with $paying $50 instead of $70 like I was previously quoted, and we did! Tiffany is a great bargainer, by the way...

4th Stop: Cozumel, Mexico. Two-tank Scuba Dive! We had gotten Tiffany scuba certified in July. I have always wanted an eternal dive buddy. I finally have one! This was her first dive and my first DRIFT dive. What a blast! We saw so many things! We swam through a coral archway, saw a barracuda, needlefish, giant lobster (he was hiding in a crevice - all you could see were his whiskers), a trunkfish, jellyfish (little one), lots of coral, tropical colored fish, conch shells, sea slug (looked like a giant, um...Tootsie roll (Better than the noun that first popped into my head, haha). The dives were so much fun! The first one we went down about 80-85 feet. The second was only about 40-45. We had fun. We saw some "wild" iguanas near the dive shop just laying around. I also saw some ants carrying a hard candy mint up a wall. Tiff's ear didn't unclog for about a week or two.

Seven days and seven nights of soft-serve ice cream, amazing food, room service, food, shows, ship exploring, and quality time together. Honeymoons are tons'o'fun!