Sailing Away.

This post is long overdue... I still have a couple of drafts sitting in the draft box. But anyway, I FINALLY have time to blog. =]

I finally turned 20 years old on January 11. I feel so old but at the same time I'm excited that I'm less than a year away from turning 21! haha

My parents took me out for sushi which was the best idea ever! I can live off of sushi if that was the only thing I have to eat for the rest of my life. I actually prefer fish over meat any day. We went to Ginza which is newly opened and the sushi there is pretty good. The white tuna is the BEST...it's so buttery that it literally melts in the mouth! The sushi quality is great...but I was sadden that they didn't have any pink tuna. Haha I don't think that's what it's actually called but the tuna is pink and super, super good!

And I finally found the best place for fried iced cream! It is the BEST I've ever had...totally beats the fried iced cream from Fuji Sushi...it's cheaper and get double the amount. It comes in two flavors, vanilla and green tea. The vanilla is the best because it has hints of citrus zest and it overall tastes better than the green tea. The green tea over powers the tempura and it doesn't taste as flavorful as the vanilla. Wow, I sounded like a semi-food expert there. haha =]

And the best present of all, I finally got my Louis Vuitton Damier Ebene Neverfull MM! I originally got the monogram but took it back because at the time when I went to the boutique, they were sold out of the damier and I didn't want to leave without anything so I went ahead and got the monogram. I thought about keeping it too but I just wasn't happy with it so I took it back the next day and got the damier! It's Made in France too! Both of them were lol. Makes me even more super excited since a lot of popular bags now are made in the USA, like my speedy. And that picture of my bad looks terrible, haha. I promise it's a great bag in real life.

The day after my birthday, my cousin and godparents flew in from Albany and Boston a few days earlier before we drove to Miami for our cruise. If you follow me of twitter, I posted my miserable updates haha. It was the longest car ride to Miami--ever! But it got better as we checked in and boarded the ship. We cruised with Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) Pearl...the name of the ship is Pearl. It is a lot bigger than the Carnival ship I went on a couple years ago and the food is WAY better...even though they didn't have the smoked salmon bagels that I loved from Carnival...but at NCL, they have the BEST turkey burgers. I pretty much ate one every time I went to Garden Cafe for lunch which is like a buffet set up with Italian, Asian, Grill, America, Pastas, and more. I only ate breakfast there once when they were about closing and I only ate dinner there once too...the night before we disembarked. There was fro-yo at every corner of Garden Cafe and I think the restaurant behind Garden Cafe was called like the Outback or something...of course, I over-ate everyday that I was there. The freestyle dining is the best thing ever... I get to eat whenever I choose and even at dinner. The ship took us from Miami to Samana, Tortola, St. Thomas, and Great Stirrup Cay which is like their private island in the Bahamas.

I never got my hands sanitized as much as I did on the ship. They have designated people spray sanitizer at you when you board the ship and at the Garden Cafe where people go eat. They also have a ton of automatic sanitizer dispensers all around the ship. I wish I took a picture of them, LOL. My cousin and I swear we were going to be left with no skin because we were constantly being sanitized. It is a bit sad that I have to manually sanitize my own hands now, HAHA! I took tons of pictures of the food and menus. My cousin and I didn't do much but eat food. We literally jumped from one restaurant to another... it's all free and paid for and everyday there is a gratitude charge regardless if you eat or not so we look advantage and ate pretty much 24/7. There is this one restaurant called Blue Lagoon that is open 24 hours and my cousin and I would go there at like 12am or so to eat. We ate there for a couple nights until we ran into my mom because her room is on that same floor and a cornered turn from Blue Lagoon where she spotted us eating... then from that night on we ordered take out from Blue Lagoon and took it back to out room. We roomed with my grandma and she's normally asleep already or we order more food and share with her. =] Since we're on the 11th floor, there's no running into my parents or the godparents AND we're a floor away from Garden Cafe so there was food everywhere! I like gained 50lbs from the 7-day trip.

My cousin and I didn't leave the ship half the time and when we did, we were forced because my parents wouldn't stop bitching at me... we didn't for Samana, Dominican Republic. I honestly liked it better that way rather than getting off the ship. There was nothing to do in the islands (for me that is) and sight-seeing isn't my thing that I like to do...unless it's a place I am interested in, I don't care. Half the time I though we were circling around Puerto Rico since everything looked the same...haha I got nice pictures from the ship just fine. Another plus that I didn't get off the ship is because they have to take those mini saver boats to get ashore and as if being on a ship for 7-days isn't enough, it's timing wasting in my opinion. My mom said the island inside itself isn't as nice as the outside and it's way dirty too...*shrugs* My cousin and I spent the day tanning and relaxing without the elderly (HAHA) around us...though the boat was filled with overly tanned old people. I fear that some of them would just explode because they were soo tanned...like super extra crispy tan--it's scary.

That's the Princess ship, I think. It was anchored near us...and so looked like I photoshopped the picture.


Our next stop was Tortola, British Virgin Islands. We actually made the effort to get off the ship and went on this taxi tour with my parents and grandma minus the godparents. Stupid taxi driver ended up fighting with a Jamaican because he was driving on the wrong side of the road and blah, blah, blah. Taxi driver said the guy was from Jamaica because of his foul language and that everyone is to get alone by law in the Virgin Islands...He was a horrible driver...and going up and down the road was horrific!




At St. Thomas, my cousin and I went on our own around the shopping center that was about a 5 minute walk from the port. My cousin had her eye on a Olympus camera and thought about buying it since everything was duty free then after some intense thinking she decided not to, lol. There wasn't really anything to see at St. Thomas. I didn't get what the hype was about from my mom saying it's so pretty there...maybe because I wasn't at the beach...? *shrugs*


I wish I had brought proper tanning equipment with me...I got tanned and then I became super blotchy like I got some island disease or something. I swear I had so much complications... I broke out twice, one the night before with hives and then a few days before we disembarked I broke out again and was super itchy.

At the last stop, my cousin and I had the most fun "photo shooting" at Great Stirrup Cay...the sun was beautiful that day and the clear, clean water made me super happy. =]




And now for the food porn. =] Not in any particular order...the food was pretty amazing.













There's way more and I'm getting lazy posting them all up lol. We also tried the Shabu Shabu that was on the ship. Of course it's major disappointment because it's far from the Boston hotpots...it was still fun. =] I was a pro at controlling the fire too. XD


Yummy mango mochi ice cream too!

We took a while bunch of the Lipton teas that was available on the ship haha.

This is just my side of the pictures on my camera...I still haven't gotten the pictures from cousin. Overall, I had a fun time especially since it has been so cold in Florida and I got a tan from the trip. My cousin and I are planning to go on an Alaskan Cruise soon...maybe next year after she comes back from Japan. Hopefully China this summer will go as said. Haha.

♥