Cheryl was next door!

We were in cabin 9256 which is a corner aft balcony room. Real nice views from there. I had the mini xmas lights wrapped around the rails of the balcony. Real pretty at night. This is a tradional thing for us.

More pictures on Serenade

Back on
the Ship.

The Famous sign at Orient Beach. This is a file photo from the internet. No Naked Nuts....sorry.

More St. Maarten Pics

St. Maarten

We visited the famous Orient Beach. The area where we were was in the more clothed side, so there was not many "sights" to be seen on this section of the beach. Chuck said we should take a walk down the beach. "You ever see a naked volleyball game?" he asked. I don't believe any of us had ever witnessed something like that so three couples took a walk into the "NUDE ZONE."

We had just gotten to the Nude Beach sign and the swim suits were now gone. We did like many tourists do.....taking pictures at the sign. But how will we get all of us in one picture? Solution...Chuck asked an older woman who was sunning herself if she could take a picture of us all. Yikes.... she was old, tanned and saggy. We had no trouble smiling for the camera.
Onward we walked.
A little further down the beach, we were noticing that the nudies would make sure the "clothed" tourists would get a good look, so some would stand and make sure. Thats how we spotted "Harry the Hose." No further description is really needed....lol. I noticed a woman getting up off a lounger ( I couldn't help it, I have peripheral vision ) and she was tanned where the sun don't shine. I said to myself, " Learn something new every day."
Orient Beach in St. Maarten was a great beach day that we soon won't forget.

St. Thomas

St. Thomas is a favorite of Cheryl. She likes it because: (pick one)

a) She has a favorite beach

b) She likes the birds

c) She has a favorite jeweler

d) She has a favorite club

Serenade of the Seas

RCCL's Serenade of the Seas .............7 nights............. 5 Ports.......2 Sea Days...... April 10, 2004
Built in 2004, 962 feet long at 90,000 tons with 2500 passengers. The ship is beautifully decorated and features much glass that affords ocean views from within.

The San Juan weather was picture perfect. After a number of cruises we have found that Late March and April are good weather months in the Caribbean. It looked to be the same this year.

We are headed for some ports we had never been to before. We were really looking forward to seeing St. Lucia, Antigua and Barbados as we have heard much about how nice they are. And we were also stopping at St. Thomas and St. Maarten, islands we had been to a few times before but are both really nice places to see.

The MIXED NUTS on Serenade of the Seas.

So there we were, finally on Serenade, which was the newest of the Radiance class ships. We met as planned at the Sky Bar and the fun continued from where we left off the night before at our pre-cruise dinner.

Sisters Jen and Liz and Cheryl and her daughter Heather were there today, having just flown in from their respective home areas and joing us at the sail-away party. As always, there are the core group folks and others who were now and then on the cruise critic thread. But regardless, all are always welcome. If you want to be with the MIXED NUTZ, the MIXED NUTZ want you. Since we started off cruising, it has been better and better each time. All Mixed Nutz are encouraged to expand the group anytime they cruise. Once a MIXED NUTZ, always one.

We took over the Sky Bar.

The Sail-away Party on Serenade

The Mixed Nutz party gets started on Serenade.

The night before while at the dinner, Chuck asked John what time he was planning to get to the Port. John told him "about 11:30." Chuck likes to be the first on line at the port so he was just checking on Johns' planned arrival time.

Knowing Chucks intentions, John decided to beat him there and arrived at about 10:30. We watched the taxi pull up and was fun to see the expression on his face when he realized he'd been beaten to be first on line and by whom. We set him up well.

Marinade on the Serenade!

The cruise name Marinade on the Serenade was coined accidently by Sandy. It stuck immediately. Ultimately, it was to be included on our name tags as well. During the long wait for the cruise we posted dozens and dozens of pages and chatted real time on Sunday nights, later expanding to Wednesday nights as well. Somewhere along the way Mr Bumper showed up. He claimed he was from Bangor, Maine and everything he posted was in rhyme. Mr. Bumper appeared to know little secrets about a lot of people and he would let out this information in poetic form. So who is he? Nobody knew for sure. Some thought it was Chuck, some thought otherwise. But then one day, his sister showed up. She also wrote only in rhyme. And believe it or not, one day, the mother appeared. Mr. Bumper even showed up in our live chats. They did not reveal who they really were. Just before the cruise, Mr. Bumper announced he too would be coming on the cruise. More on him later.

The cruise was set for April 10, 2004. It was leaving from San Juan, Puerto Rico at 10 Pm. Due to the distance many of us chose to fly in the day before. Since we were in San Juan ahead of time, we decided to get together and meet at a pre-cruise dinner. Some of us had never met before, which is the way the MIXED NUTZ keep expanding. Usually, we meet on the cruise thread, chat for a year and then meet at the port and our sail-away party. But this time would be different. One of our group, Dave from upstate NY, had been in San Juan most recently and knew of a place for dinner. We agreed on the place and Dave arranged for us to meet and eat at Tony Roma's.( famous for Ribs)

Everybody who was coming to dinner were booked in close by hotels. They started arriving and we were seeing old friends and meeting new friends. But...............no Mr. Bumper. Hmmmm.

The MIXED NUTZ Plan the Next Cruise.

We were barely home from the Navigator when the core group of MIXED NUTZ decided to cruise together again. Most of us were regularly e -mailing each other at this point so there was lots of communication between us. Plus, we were regularly chatting on AIM each Sunday night. It didn't take long for us to decide on which ship and itinerary.
It was going to be SERENADE OF THE SEAS departing from San Juan and making stops at St. maarten, St. Thomas, St. Lucia, Antigua and Barbados.

Now the fun will really start.

Day 8

Miami

We arrived back in Miami early in the morning. This is a sad day for cruisers.

The party is over......... for now.

The MIXED NUTZ are planning for the

next cruise already.

Misc Photos

Day 6

The sixth day of the cruise was the port at Cozumel, Mexico. Cozumel is an excellent beach day and you can count

on it being HOT HOT HOT.

The boys rented waverunners. They both got dumped off in a high speed turn

attempt.

Most of us were on the Fiesta Party Boat. Chris and Joe participated in an "adult" type game. ( no details...lol)

Day 7

At Sea

Sea days are fun on the Voyager class ships. The pool deck offers lots of space for music, socializing ,tanning, drinking the frozen drink of the day and of course, the pools.

GRAND CAYMAN

Day 5

Grand

Cayman

Grand Cayman has been one of our favorite stops over the years. We have done varios things for excursions each time we visited there. On our first visit back in 1999, we did a Stingray city tour. I can still hear the screams of the ladies as they saw the large dark shadows swimming silently below the shallow water. The shoal we stood on was no deeper than 30 inches deep. The Rays moved in and the women went up onto the shoulders of the men as they screamed in terror. In just a few moments I realized that they were not attacking.....just hungry.

It was decided by a few of us that we would do a combination Stingray City snorkle, a reef snorkle and Beach lunch. We started off with Stingray City.

We were the first boat there in the morning. The captain said the Rays would be hungry and will be looking for food when they realize we are there. The ship has a bucket of squid to use if you want to feed them by the stairs at the front of the Catamaran. Mike was ahead of his brother so he didn't see Matt stick his hand in the bait bucket and he patted his Mike on the butt as if to be saying " get a move on."

They entered the water and the huge hungry Rays started to attack the squid smell on Mikes Butt. I heard him saying" What the heck!" The water was about four feet deep and the Rays were swarming the bait smell. Finally with others in the water with bait to feed the Rays, the attack dispersed somewhat. Matt had the last laugh this time.

After awhile, we weighed anchor and headed towards the barrier reef. The current was strong here...... really too strong for me. I was trying to catch up with the "guide" but with the strong current, I was losing my strength. I was then trying to find my youngest son who I was worried about but it turned out he was keeping up with the guide. I was spent. So I blew some more air in my vest , turned onto my back and floated. My son Mike swam by, saw me and asked me if I was okay. I said I was okay but out of gas. So..... he towed me back to the ship.

Next stop was the beach and lunch. The food was much better than I anticipated. Carol and her parents and Marie wound up on the same beach with their beach excursion, so we snuck them some lunch.

George and my boys took a high speed banana boat ride that was very thrilling for them. I was hoping that Mike would keep his little brother Brian from falling off. He later told me that Brians butt was consistently bouncing off the banana boat but he kept him on.

Another fun day in Grand Cayman.