As you can imagine, it was a marvelous week filled with family, fun, and sun…okay, not so much sun (it was really cold in New Orleans and the first few days at sea) but it was all very fun nonetheless.  We were gone the perfect amount of time–after a week, I was glad to head home to sunny (and much warmer) California!  I often complain about how much I miss seasons and snow and all that, but I was downright freezing in New Orleans on Saturday (it was a balmy 25 degrees), yet my family was heading back to my hometown in Northeast Missouri where it was only 4!!!  Brrrrr!  I was more than happy to land in SoCal to 70-degree temperatures!  Back to the cruise though…since I’m still in an end-of-the-year list-making mood, I thought I’d give you my top ten favorite parts of New Orleans/ The Cruise.

10. Gumbo. I LOVE Gumbo and I was happy to enjoy it on several occasions while staying in New Orleans. Okay and beignets.  I was happy to have those, too! Did I mention that I gained a few pounds on this trip?

9. The view of the French Quarter from our NOLA hotel room. We stayed at the Marriott on the edge of the French Quarter which put us in walking distance from a lots of shops/restaurants/tourist traps but also gave us a FABULOUS view!

8. Exploring the boat. I am still kind of amazed at the size of the cruise ship.  I went exploring on several occasions and was still making new discoveries on the last day!  I love learning how things work – the logistics of day to day operations (families with eight kids, amusement parks, cruise ships, etc.), so I found it very intriguing to try to work out how the cruiseline entertains thousands of people on a boat of that size.

7. The hot chocolate. I know that it’s usually the coronas and margaritas that one would usually talk about after a cruise, and I had plenty of those, but I also fell in love with their hot cocoa!  I’m a bit of a chocoholic and they served amazing hot chocolate on the ship (I was told it was Nestle Dark Hot Chocolate made with water)! I jumped on the opportunity to drink it with breakfast, lunch, and dinner!  Yum!!!

6. Watching This is It on the big outdoor screen with my fam. The ship we were on had a giant big screen tv outdoors by the pool area with oodles of lounge chairs.  One of the nights some of our party went out all bundled up to watch a movie under the stars!  It was pretty neat.

5. Cozumel. I had never been to Mexico, but I was really looking forward to the warm waters of Cozumel (we live right by the ocean but the water here in SoCal is ALWAYS freezing, so I rarely get in). Not only were the waters of Cozumel warm, but the water was the most beautiful shade of blue!  I really enjoyed it!!!

4. Playing charades with the fam. I have no picture for this, but one afternoon, the whole family met in our stateroom for a game of pictionary, but when we realized we had no paper or pens, it turned into a game of charades.  We were all pretty slaphappy and it turned into a pretty hilarious game!

3. The dinners. I know that some people don’t like the rigid structure of the formal dinners on most cruise lines, but I really enjoyed it!  I loved that in a week without a lot of structure, I knew that every day at 8:15pm our group would all rendezvous for dinner in the same place.  It reminded me of family dinners growing up! Oh, I also loved learning about napkin folding which I’ll tell you more about tomorrow!

2. Scuba Diving. I qualified for my scuba certification last February, but haven’t gone again since then (yup…due to the frigid SoCal waters I mentioned above…seriously it’s a hoax…California waters are NOT warm!!!!).  It was a blast to go with my hubby to a beautiful reef and in REALLY warm waters (I didn’t even wear a wet suit!). Oh, AND a guy in our group proposed to his girlfriend UNDERWATER! So neat!

1. Time with my family! Of course, the whole reason we went on the cruise was to celebrate my mom’s birthday and spend time with family, which was exactly what we did!  It was a great, great trip and I hope the rest of my family had just as much fun!!!!

Lastly, I’d like to thank my hubby the photographer who took most of these pics!