zip line: Bon Voyage

I love to travel. I remember the excitement of booking my very first trip outside of the US (I don't count all my nights partying in Tijuana as a college kid) with my former roommate to go to Costa Rica back in November 2001. I grew up in a family that did not really have the resources to travel outside of the US but we went on plenty of road trips as a kid. As much fun as those road trips were, I yearned to see the exotic and to meet people with different cultures, beliefs and customs than mine. When my roommate mentioned heading to Central America to visit her grandparents for a week I jumped at the chance. We went over Thanksgiving and it was right after 9/11 so the airports were being patrolled by the National Guard and security was very tight. It was a little scary. We landed in San Jose and then jumped on a 12 seater plane for the 45 minute (terrifying) flight over rain forests and volcanoes to the little town of Gulfito for a week of yachting, exploring, toucans, howler monkeys, Blue Morpho butterflies, kayaking and more. I knew that this would only be the first trip of many for me. Fast forward to 2005 and the international travel bug began to bite again. I found a cruise that departed from New Orleans (a city I've always wanted to visit) that stopped at 4 different ports in the Mexican Caribbean and Central America. I ran it by Jeff and we talked it about it a few times but ultimately decided to go on a much less expensive and shorter vacation to Hawaii that year. I tucked the cruise away into my mental file and moved on. In 2008 we went to beautiful Jamaica for our honeymoon and in 2010 went to Hawaii again. That satiated my travel appetite for a bit but I kept thinking about that cruise. After spending 8 days in New Orleans in 2009 and just falling in love with that city I knew we just had to do that cruise! It would be like 2 vacations in one! We finally bit the bullet and booked a cruise over Thanksgiving 2011 that departed from the crescent city and went to Cozumel, Mexico; Belize City, Belize; Roatan, Honduras and Costa Maya, Mexico. We booked a hotel few days before and a few days after so we could spend time in New Orleans. We arrived in New Orleans on Friday, November 18th around 3 pm and after dropping off our bags at Le Richelieu went straight to our favorite NOLA haunt Lafitte's Blacksmith Bar on Bourbon St. We spent the rest of the evening strolling up and down the quarter dropping into some familiar places and discovering some new spots. A waiter drew us a map of restaurants and bars with good live music that were less touristy and more 'local.' We told him we planned on going to Frenchmen St on Saturday and he told us we had to eat at Snug Harbor and to follow the music we liked best to see where we'd end up. The meal at Snug Harbor was to die for and we ended up at The Maison listening to a band called The Brass-a-Holics. The music was amazing and exactly what you would picture a NOLA band to be. We stayed until the very end shaking our booties the whole time. We were having so much fun we were shocked to see it was 3 am! We headed out and went straight to Cafe du Monde for chicory coffee and beignets and then hit the sack since we had to be on our boat in just a few hours.

Neither Jeff or I had ever done the cruise thing. It all began a little chaotically with thousands of people all checking in and handing off baggage and filing one by one onto the giant ship. Once we were on board we had about 4 hours to kill until departure so we went straight to the nearest bar, Henry's Pub. Our bartender was Armando and he ended up knowing us quite well by the end of the week. He would greet us by name and knew what 'the usual' was after the second time we ordered. Our room was small but not nearly as small as I imagined it would be. The ship was beautiful and clean and huge. Jeff and I spent the hours before departure checking out all the different restaurants and bars, the pool area, the casino and it just seemed to go on and on. Finally, at 5 pm the Norwegian Spirit pulled away from the dock and began its journey down the Mississippi toward the gulf.