My wife and I have been married for 10 years. That's a long time these days. I'm hoping for 10 more, but she said we'd take it day by day and see (just kidding. I probably said that...in jest...) Anyway, we have a yearly anniversary tradition. Money is always tight, so I let her believe that since we don't have any money I haven't made any plans. Then I surprise her with the plans I have made. This happens every year. She's precious like that. This year I saved all the extra money I could find for 8 months and bought us a 5 day Carnival cruise in the Bahamas. She was surprised. What follows is a set of pictures as well as my commentary on the trip.

There's our ship. The Carnival Ecstasy. 14 decks. 3,500 people on board. Ginormous. At least I thought so until we docked next to the Carnival Magic at Nassau.

That's the Ecstasy on the left. The Magic is in the center and I think it was the Imagination that was pulling on the right. The Magic was way bigger than our ship. It also had 2 waterslides. And a basketball court. And a ropes course. And five more decks. Boat envy.

After a day at sea we stopped at Half Moon Cay. It's a private island owned by the cruise company. It was great. The picture looks pretty overcast, but it was sunny and warm. The water was gorgeous and clear. We snorkeled. <-- Weird word.

Here is a picture of us standing at a sign. Please imagine us standing at a sign at every port, because we did. I'm not showing you all the signs though. Also, I wore shorts. For most of the week. (I actually had to buy said shorts for this trip because I didn't own any)

This is me standing on a bridge that crosses over to Paradise Island in Nassau. That's Atlantis Resort in the background. I think it was a really cool place, but the staff kept hassling us because we weren't staying at the resort, so we didn't get to see much of it.

This is a mobile police booth. In this booth Bahamian officers of the law operate with courage, integrity and loyalty. They are also very tall and skinny.

Goodbye Nassau! Goodbye snobby resort! Goodbye skinny policemen! Goodbye giant ship that I would not rather be on!

Ok, I lied. Here's another sign. The only thing Joanna wanted to do in Freeport (I had no ambitions this trip besides sunshine and books) was see the "International Bazaar." This site was featured prominently on internet advertising, onboard excursion literature, and a sign at the pier. When we asked a taxi driver to take us there, he said it had been destroyed in the hurricane. The one in 2003. *sigh*

This is what I did and looked forward to most of the trip.

I didn't take any pictures of myself. But Joanna did.

After we got back to Port Canaveral, we had a day to spend in Florida before we went back home. So, naturally, we went to the Kennedy Space Center to see ROCKETS!!!

All of these rockets were well and good, but I waited all afternoon for the mother of all rockets. The largest rocket ever built. The most complicated machine ever engineered by man: the mighty Saturn 5. We were not disappointed.

It's hard to conceptualize how amazingly huge this rocket is. It's just so big.

At the end of this long building, we got to see actual Apollo command modules and a lunar module as well as space suits, artifacts, moon rocks and a rover.

That was our trip. Mostly. I have a lot more pictures, but I'm not showing them to you unless you come over to my house. Or my desk at work. It's too much of a pain to upload them.