DAY 5 HALF MOON CAY

Here we are...HALF MOON CAY DAY! WOO HOO.

We were up at 7:45am this morning and I couldn't wait for this day to begin. 

We headed up to the buffet area for breakfast, me and my little ducklings (hubby and child)...I say this because they follow me around like little ducklings and I like to mess with them. Sometimes I will turn left...they follow then back a sharp right, they do the same, and back left again until they catch on. HEE HEE HEE. Yes, that's the type of relationship we have...always laughing, joking and messing with each other. It keeps us on our toes.

I had my normal breakfast and added a few things.

Now I do have to mention that there's something with all the "toppings" on this cruise. Everything was so "watery". The syrup poured like water, the butter the same almost...then there's the (what is supposed to be) cream cheese????? YIKES. I have no clue what was up with it but it wasn't cream cheese as any person I've ever come across knows it as. wow.

Sakari loves bagels and I just KNEW when I was "spreading" (and I use that term lightly) the unknown "cream cheese" consistency of I don't know kinda topping on her bagel that it just might go off too well. Yep, I was right. The face she made after one bite I couldn't help but totally laugh...like out loud to the point the people behind us turned around. I grabbed my camera and only managed to capture her tongue still sticking out...but the facial expression was gone. DARNIT!

Like before, the muffins and sweets were good...what a pleasant change from NCL's tasteless "goodies" section.

We were due to arrive at Half Moon Cay at 9am and we were pulling in and "parking" at 8:45am. Time to get a move on it and grab our beach bags and head to....get this...customer service to put our FTTF to use!!!

Read my full review by clicking the tab below. This is such a beautiful place!

We made it back to the ship and the ship was actually pulling out a little before 5pm as originally scheduled. Hey I guess if everyone's back on board, why wait right?

We headed to the room and I headed for my balcony to get the last shot as we left.

After we pulled out of HMC, it was shower time and we got dressed up for dinner. My schedule was really changed up on this cruise. We were going to the dinner at 5:45pm (instead of our normal 10-11pm dinner at home). This was really odd, but of course we managed by just calling this dinner 1 and we'd have dinner 2 at our normal time. wink wink.

We arrived at Normandies and there was already a line formed like always. Sakari took stance at her favorite spot by the piano playing by itself up we started moving up and in we went.

Everyone ordered chicken noodle soup for starters and it was yummy.

The hubby had an egg roll and said it was good. 

For dinner I had the spinach lasagna and it was really good as well. I'm getting use to eating these yummy meals at the MDR. I'm really starting to do this more often on cruises now.

I also felt the need for some shrimp... I really love shrimp so I ordered a plate of that too.

I'm really now sure how they do this shrimp and make it all long like that. Is it fake? I know when you eat it, it's super full inside the breading and really good...for about the first 3 shrimps...then you can't stand it anymore. I'm not sure what it is about this stuff.

The kids ordered off the kids menu which was always more than just a menu. It had several activities and pages and pages for things to keep the kids quiet while waiting on the food to come.

The only problem was, it was always a competition between Sakari and Brayden to get things done first. They had seek and finds in them and every time it was a race to finish first.

Now Brayden is a BIG eater. So just to let you know, they will allow you (even kids) to order more than 1 meal. He always ordered the chicken nuggets meal and the pb&j meal.

Sakari on the other hand is a big eater in another way. She likes to eat about every 2 hours...even at home. She'll eat 1 thing, like a sandwich and she's good to go for 2 hours and then want food again.

Sakari is definitely MY child and has weird taste and eating habits. She does NOT (and never has) liked hot dogs...like ever. Not in any shape or form (hot dogs, coney dogs, corn dogs). She also does not like french fries for the last few years (not my kid on this one, I love potatoes in any shape or form). She will eat fries maybe 1x a month if that.

But give that kid ice cream and she'd live off of it. She had to have ice cream every day and we LOVED the soft service ice cream and cones out by the pool.

It was time for our desert and here's how I'm also weird with eating. 

I don't (and have never) liked things like steak, so don't ever ask me about going to any specialty restaurants that involve something like a steak house. I'm not a big meat eater either (I would make a good vegetarian) and don't eat things like pork chops or most red meat and so on. I WILL eat things with hamburger in them and hamburgers with no problems. I do love my seafood and chicken though. I also absolutely positively hate tomatoes. I will pick them out of everything. I will pull up my pizza and swipe off the sauce. I like the sauce on my spaghetti to be really light or I will ordered pasta with Alfredo sauce on it. The other thing that I can't stand is chocolate (unless it's white chocolate or chocolate milk). But to eat chocolate cake, icing, ice cream or anything like that...NO! However, I do like brownies every now and then.

So...all I ever read about on these boards is how wonderful the chocolate melting cake is. I just knew I HAD to try it and form my own non-eating-chocolate-self opinion. I was afraid I wouldn't like it, so I told the hubby to order the apple pie so I would have back up...just in case.

Now I have to say the apple pie wasn't anything to write home about and what you see in the picture is all I ate of it.

The chocolate melting cake...

YES! I liked it. Surprise. It tasted like a brownie to me and the added vanilla ice cream made it even better. Hmmm, I may have a deep desire down inside to like chocolate that I don't know about.

After dinner we dropped off the munchkin at the kids club...wait where are they this time? You just never know.

We headed to the casino to donate $40 and then decided we just wanted to sit and relax some.

We caught the tail end of the show and it was a little crowded so we headed upstairs.

After that we headed over to watch some karaoke in the lounge and had some great laughs until it was time to pick up Sakari at the kids club.

After picking up Sakari we headed back to the room to watch more commercials telling us to "Cruise Like A Norwegian" while laying in our hard uncomfortable Carnival bed and Sakari played with her new towel animal for the night.

We talked about what we were going to do while in Freeport the following day. I had really struggled with this port and it being such a short day there. We were just there in November and went to Paradise Cove/Dead Man's reef, but we were there much longer. It was really hard to plan anything and afraid of getting back too late, I was torn.

I originally planned on doing the Carnival excursion with the kayaks to Gold Beach. NOT because of the kayaks, but because I have really been wanting to see this beautiful Gold Beach at Lucayan Park. I knew with it being a Carnival excursion, they "should" wait on us to return. It was a 6 hour tour and with the time it left, it would actually put us back at 1:15pm. Only 15 minutes before the ship was due to pull out.

After Kendra & Brayden decided to book, I knew that excursion would be more than what they would want to spend while there, so I decided it was out of the question.

I started researching either Grand Lucayan or Junkanoo (Taino Beach) and figured I'd head to one of them.

The more I thought about this and the time frame, the more I got worried. Not because I haven't done this before in other ports, but because we had 2 of the S-L-O-W-E-S-T people known to anyone with us. It just wasn't a good match.

So, the hubby and I just decided to give my nerves a rest and not go anywhere in Freeport the next day. I wouldn't have to stress over whether or not we could make it back in time with Kendra & Brayden in tow and we could sleep in, have a nice breakfast and just get off the ship for a quick stroll around the port, a souvenir and then back on to enjoy the ship.

I drifted off wondering if I was making the right decision....