Today I’m sharing the rest of our cruise with you: our stop at the cruise line’s private island, a stop at Nassau, the last day at sea, and the day we left. If you missed part 1 yesterday, click here.
I was SO excited for our first stop on the ship. I had researched the private island, Half Moon Cay, and we had decided not to do any excursions but to enjoy the island as if it were a resort–laying out and swimming in the ocean. We ended up staying in the ocean the entire time minus eating lunch because it was the most beautiful water ever!
For those of you who have never cruised before, be prepared to take 184,973,827 pictures. Seriously, there are photographers roaming constantly wanting to take your picture, so we had to get a picture as soon as we got off the tender boat onto the island. (These pictures are so expensive to buy so we took a few pictures of the good ones.)
This stop required a tender in which means instead of walking straight out of the boat onto the island, we had to board a 2 story boat and ride over to the island. 
Can you see how gorgeous the water is? It was the clearest water I’ve ever been in and you could still see straight through to the bottom even when we were 5 feet out. You can see why we ditched laying out and played in the ocean the whole time instead.
Riding on the tender boat back to the ship.
For dinner that night, I wore this romper and it’s back in stock!!!! I bought it around Easter and it flew off the shelves and online within a week, so I’m so glad Anthropologie brought it back. Remember, if you’re long waisted like me, this romper will work for you!
For our dinner each night on the ship, we ate at our assigned table with the same people. I was hesitant about this at first because I was afraid we would be sitting with people that we couldn’t carry on a conversation with, but we lucked out and had great people! All of them were young married couples like us.
We became friends with the couple sitting next to Dustin on the right–Joy and Justin from Tennessee. They were on their honeymoon!
The next day we docked in Nassau–home of Atlantis. We were really excited about this port until the cruise director came over the intercom right before got off the boat with a warning from the US Embassy–don’t wear jewelry off the ship and stay in highly populated areas since there was a high security threat. Great, right?! Way to make us feel safe!
Our view of Atlantis that morning from the ship.
Obligatory picture of the ship 🙂
Tomorrow I’m going to be sharing some tips and advice for first time cruisers, and so I’ll share about what it’s like when you get off on an island and the amount of locals who bombard you wanting you to get in their taxi or do their tour. I bet there were 50 people we had to say “No, thank you” to while making our way to downtown. And they are persistent people, too.
Basic white girl when…
You get off the ship and see a Starbuck and you demand go in so you can order a frap and use their free wifi haha! Notice how they spelled Sarah?
We walked around downtown for a while before deciding to go back to the area where all of the taxis were. We decided not to do an excursion on this island either since they are outrageously priced, but we decided to hop in a taxi and let them take us to Atlantis for the rest of the day.
We LOVED Atlantis!
Visitors are allowed to walk around in most of the hotel, but you must purchase a wristband to go to the pools, beaches, and aquariums which is the back of the property. We decided that the package was worthy of buying because we would be spending the majority of the day there–and plus, we’re just a couple of big kids who wanted to play in their famous pools 🙂
Everyone must get a picture in this chair! Thanks to the sweet lady who took it for us!
The grounds on Atlantis are GORGEOUS! The property is huge and we were constantly looking at a map trying to find our way around.
This is the lagoon that they have on property. People were snorkeling here, paddle boarding, and swimming.
We then walked all through the aquariums…
And this is what this guy did the entire time–taking pictures of wildlife. Once a wildlife science guy, always a wildlife science guy 🙂
We got to see the sharks!! This aquarium was one that a slide went through. I’m not sure if you can really tell, but there’s a tube at the bottom of this picture and one of the drop down slides at Atlantis ends through this aquarium where riders ride through on an inner tube to the pool outside. I kept waiting on a shark to try attacking that tube haha! Oh, and there were also people scuba diving in this aquarium, too, and I’m pretty sure that was about $200 a person.
This was the Atlantis version of a lazy river. It was a rapids river and so much fun! This was my favorite thing to do while we were here. It wasn’t too violent except for one time when a rapid came and pushed a guy’s inner tube into mine which shoved me into the wall and I almost flipped. Other than that, the rapids were lots of fun!
Atlantis has lots of pools so we would spend some time in one pool and then rotate to another–we wanted to take advantage of it all!
The casino inside–it was massive and this is just a small portion.
They had a shopping area in Atlantis–David Yurman, Fendi, Versace, and Gucci just to name a few 🙂
This was one of the beaches on their property. We didn’t stay here long because it wasn’t as pretty as Half Moon Cay, and there were also a lot of people trying to sell us stuff and they were pretty aggressive.
Toward the end of our time at Atlantis, it started storming so we decided to go ahead and leave and take a taxi back to the ship. It was pretty scary–especially since we had received that warning from the cruise director before getting off the ship. The driver kept putting people in this taxi that literally sounded like it was going to fall apart at every turn. The girl in the backpack in front of us mentioned that this wasn’t the same route we took from the ship to Atlantis and that this was taking much longer to get back–she was right. Our driver took us through the hood and we got to see what real Nassau looked like–and it wasn’t pretty. If we weren’t in a van with a bunch of people, I would have been terrified.
This picture doesn’t do it justice, but we were packed in this tiny van.
Dinner that night
And remember how I told you we made friends with a couple from our dinner table? We hung out with them some and we decided to take a picture together to be funny since the poses the photographer puts you in are ridiculous.
He made us all hug each other haha! We really enjoyed getting to know Joy and Justin and had so much in common with them.
Heading home like…
Check back tomorrow for some tips and advice!
Linking up with Jenn
