.. boarding a moving hotel and all that jazz ..

we slept in the first day which was so great. after we all got up and ready and packed. we checked out of our room and then ate breakfast and were off to check out old san juan again. we had been told to check out the el mirro fort there. so we were off. we got to the first part of the fort and explored for a good hour or two. really neat place i have to say.





{playing on the cannonballs}


{view out of a shooting crevice}


{go through the tunnel to get outside.. or get scared by ghosts..}



we then found out that the other half of the fort was a mile down the shore. so we waited for a trolley which came once and was packed up with people and then we decided we would walk. so we walked and passed carmelo anthony's basketball court, pretty cool and found a really rad old cemetery. i always love to photograph those. too rad. 

{taken from the first fort.. do you see the other one?}

our friends t* and c* decided they just wanted to sit on the grassy hill and chill, so cody and i and my brother and sil left for the fort. this one i have to say was cooler than the first one.

{cody, me, e* and m* at el mirro}

it was built in the early 1800s to protect the island from the sea. way cool. we spent about a hour in there and took some fun, yet embarrassing pictures.


{like this one}

{we spotted our ship!}

after this we were all hungry, lunch time! so we went to a place called pizza e birra. SOO good, we went there the night before too, that is how good it is. we all had pizza and filled up, yum!


{at pizza e birra}

 after lunch we worked our way through the shops in old san juan and eventually back to the hotel to get our luggage and get onto the boat. 

{the boat}

we arrived at the port around 4:30p, we were told to be on the ship by 6p. so we figured we were good. we sent our luggage up with these cruise workers and then worked our way through the lines. but don't you worry we did get stopped and hassled for a picture in front of a fake cruise boat. too funny.

when we got to the line, we had some tricky stuff to fix. in order for my sil to get on the boat she had to have an adult, over the age of 25 get her on, since she is technically a minor. 20. so i was her guardian, cause my brother is only 23. so they booked me and my sil in one room and cody and m* in another room. so we had to check in and then work through the charging situation and then still it wasn't fixed. so we got on the boat and went straight to customer service to have cody and i put in one room and m* and e* in another. talk about a process. after all this we went and found our rooms. quaint little things huh? we  hung out for a few, then checked out the boat and waited for our luggage to show up. around 7 we were all starving and none of our bags had made it so we called up to the dining room to see if we were allowed to come eat, they have pretty strict dress codes - no flip flops, no swimsuits, have to have a shirt on etc, they said for that night only. so we went and ate. it was great. after we ate up, we went back to our rooms and found the luggage had arrived!! yay! so we unpacked settled in. we went to a introduction show that tells you all about the ship and then to the mandatory safety lesson - ie. how to work a life vest and get on a life boat. after this it was time to push off so we went up to the top deck and watched the boat leave. pretty cool.



and then it hit me. seasickness up the yin yang. i wanted to puke. so i ran downstairs showered, took dramamine and then told cody it was bedtime. 

the next morning we woke up to beautiful st. thomas..