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Here’s how our 30th anniversary week on the Eclipse went:




Our son and daughter-in-law took us to LAX. We got to have dinner together, but it had to be at what appears is the only restaurant not in a hotel that charges you $15 to park your car for the hour you’re dining. It’s also my least favorite food chain: Denny’s. Nearly choked on how dry my grilled chicken salad was.




Left on time-9 p.m... Landed at Kennedy at 2 a.m... Must say, the terminal we were in was quite nice, except for the birds flying in it. We didn’t sleep, but knew we weren’t going to, so Steve suggested coffee. Found the food court where a Dunkin’ Donuts thankfully had a fresh pot and some decent low-fat muffins. We couldn’t believe we were eating at 3 a.m...




Got into Ft. Lauderdale airport at 11 a.m. Thursday morning. Found our shuttle, which took our half-dead bodies to our hotel in Miami. Beautiful hotel-nowhere near the expected South Beach. We were hungry and needed a walk. We found a great salad/wrap restaurant about a mile away.





It was upon our return that my husband realized that his 2 pair of dress pants were safely hung in his closet at home with his sandals. Fortunately our hotel had an inexpensive shuttle to the local outlets at the Dolphin Mall. Bought the pants and sandals, walked more and then had a snack. Came back and forced ourselves to stay up to get acclimated to EST. Steve crashed at 10; I made it until after the Mentalist.




Friday-we slept until noon. Went to a local version of El Pollo Loco for our “brunch”. Stopped at the salad place and brought our dinner back with us. Even though we had done 2 miles, we used the treadmills at the hotel and had our dinner by the pool.



Saturday-the hotel shuttle took all of us to the Miami Port. We got on the ship at noon and had, again, a late brunch.



On this first day-I had a massage. I really needed it after all that sitting and airport walking in my sleep. We hit the gym and just walked around the ship. My husband loves the trivia games and we met some great couples who also love trivia and we formed groups. I won the highest score of the first one. I'm now sated in Celebrity tees, key rings, gloves and decks of cards.




Our first port was Monday-the Grand Caymans. It was officially our 30th anniversary. We did the Stingray adventure twice and we're on a very tight budget, so we just enjoyed walking and window shopping.




To celebrate we did the specialty restaurant Qzine-it was the most unique and delicious dining experience EVER. I was too full to even eat my entree thanks to the very delicious and plentiful first 4 courses. We had BBQ’d pulled pork and vegetable spring rolls, sushi lollipops and disco shrimp. The “lollipops” were actual sushi pieces that were decorated with very different items-crushed Doritos, dried and crushed vegetables, wasabi crumbs and one other I can’t remember. The “disco shrimp”: a big bowl of ice with a battery driven candle that flickered. The chef put cucumber slices around a smaller bowl, shredded lettuce and avocado chunks on the bottom and topped it with a chili aioli shrimp mixture. With the flickering light-it looked like a disco. We also had a huge box with about 12 different small bowls of various Mediterranean tasting dishes in it!




While Steve found room for his filet mignon, served Thai style, I could only stare at the 12” sword (really a 12” sword!) filled with chicken kebob. Let’s face it; the “box” had a small lamb chop, garbanzo salad, falafel, lamb keebay, lamb chili, olive salad and a host of other items.




What I didn’t know is that my wonderful husband had brought a new silver Tiffany necklace with him and asked the server to hide it under the “dessert dome”!




This was truly one of our premiere culinary experiences-if you ever go on a Celebrity cruise, make sure you’re on one of these ships and have this experience.



Cozumel-we did this port 10 years ago as well. So we opted to explore the new and beautiful plaza and beaches by the port.



Costa Maya-beautiful and rustic. It had a great beach and pool in the brand new shopping area off the ship. I couldn't do the ATV or zip lining-so we took it easy. The swimming with the dolphins was right there-so we watched the others have fun.



Roatan-took a great tour of the island. We stopped at a botanical garden, bird/butterfly farm and the "downtown" area.



We were very good-our dining room BLU is created for the Aquaclass by preparing gourmet food that is low in fat, low in sodium and less calories-yet fresh and quite good.



We also made sure to either walk the city, the jogging track or use the gym all but the last day at sea.



Before we knew it, we were packing up and being shuttled back to the airport to reverse the trip back to Long Beach airport. It was then that we found out that our cell phone account had been hacked while we were in Miami. Sprint found the fraud, couldn't reach us and shut off all 7 family phones.



Into each vacation-something rotten must fall. Our son and son-in-law managed to get their 4 phones re-instated, but it took us until we got to Austin and had a 2 hour layover to get our phones up and running.