Allure of the Seas

Mike and I are big fans of cruises.  We've probably been on about 7 or 8 so far with Princess, Norwegian, Carnival, and Celebrity.  At this point, our favorite has been Princess with Norwegian a close second.

We like cruises because it gives us a chance to completely decompress.  No internet (unless you want to pay a hefty fee), no dogs, no work, and no other people.  I know, it sounds strange to say "no people" but that's why we do cruises.  While you're confined on a boat with thousands of others, it's often easy to find quiet places with little to no other people around.  We tend to avoid most of the other people on board while we spend most of the time reading, playing games, doing puzzles, napping, and eating.  It's the perfect way for the two of us to recharge.

The last year of vacations have been a bit rough.  While we had some fantastic vacations (Korea w/parents, Aspen w/friends), none of those gave us the time alone we needed to recharge so we were getting a bit frazzled around the edges (especially Mike).  We did a cruise in July for four days but it was right after derecho hit our area, and we ended up having terrible poison ivy (from chopping up the fallen trees), which made for a rather miserable itchy vacation.

So we decided to call a mulligan and try another vacation.  We compared an all-inclusive resort to a cruise and found the cruise to be more cost-effective for us.  While perusing the cruises, we found the Allure of the Seas by Royal Caribbean.  It's currently the largest ship in the world and has its own aqua theater, central park, boardwalk, and promenade.  Since we've done so many Caribbean cruises, the idea of the ship itself as the vacation intrigued us.  We signed up for a week vacation in December leaving from Ft. Lauderdale.

The following blog posts are our daily adventures on our cruise.

Allure on the right, Freedom (previously largest ship) on left.

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