This cruise started out with our good friends, Jim & Kim, traveling with Jim's sister & brother-in-law, Nancy and Lowell. The two couples had been married just a week apart and the cruise was to celebrate the joint 30 year anniversaries. When Kim mentioned casually that "wouldn't it be fun if we could join them"...the words were barely out of her mouth and we had the cruise booked! Bob and I would be having our 35th wedding anniversary in May so we would be celebrating too...just a little early!
Although we had taken five previous cruises, this would be the first time to do a southern Caribbean route and the first time ever to take a vacation in January. Our other cruises had all been in the summer. As a teacher, traveling in January was a bit tricky, but I was able to make it work. Jim and Kim had been on one 3-day cruise several years ago, but Lowell and Nancy were first time cruisers. Right away my cruise obsession kicked in and by default, I became the planner of the group.
The cruise others booked their cruise through a travel agent which included booking the air through Carnival and arriving in San Juan on the day the cruise left. I booked our flights myself and we went down a day early knowing that flying in the winter can often mean delays.
Although the winter was a relative mild one, the day we left, we got snow. The first leg of our trip was to make the three hour drive to Minneapolis on Friday night after work. We have two sons that live in the Twin Cities and the home of our number one son (age-wise at least!) was our destination for the night. My son owns his own home, but has three roommates who share the house and help take the sting out of his mortgage payments. He graciously let us have his bedroom and he took the couch for the night.
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| The photo is a bit blurry but if you look close you will see the temp was reading 7º….brrrr. |
Living on the frigid, landlocked prairie you can understand why we were so excited to be heading to the Caribbean!!
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