About the spa....

During all of my research I heard of a 1 day spa pass.  It was for part of the spa called the Rainforest Room, which sounded really amazing.  I was super set on getting my hands on one of these so I made sure to get to the spa ASAP to sign up.  Well, it turned out that they didn't offer one day passes, just 1 week passes.  I had my heart set on this place so much that I decided to spring for it anyway, even though that was a bit expensive.  Oh well.  

The Rainforest room had 2 main sections, a sort of self-guided spa, and a relaxation room.

I first checked out the different showers.  Each one had different lights, temperatures, and scents.  Within each one you could also choose one of three options.  For example, you could choose "southern storm" in the "tropical thunder" shower.  In that there were lightening flashes and some red lights.  In the rainforest shower I could smell a distinct eucalyptus scent.  Very cool.

After the showers, I tried the "hamam", which was a steamroom where you could also apply a body scrub and rinse it off with a big wooden ladle.   In the subsequent visits I did this first before the showers, so I could rinse off the oils better.  There was also a hotter steam room, as well as a dry sauna.  

After the spa portion of the room you could visit this other room which had these unique tiled loungers that didn't feel hot, but were just the perfect temperature to relax.  just outside the room were 2 small hot tubs, but also a superb view of the ocean, or a port if you happened to be at one! In this room I read my book, or just lay there and enjoyed the fact that I didn't have any chores to do.

An unexpected bonus of the spa were the shower facilities.  Although our room was fine in terms of space, there were several times where I went to the spa later in the day, and showered there and fully dried my hair in the change room.  Plus the change room had higher end shampoos and soaps, as well as an extremely amazing smelling body lotion.  Oh, and a massive shower! I would leave the spa feeling like a million bucks and pretty much ready for dinner.  I would definitely do this whole thing again.  Mike either ran or went to the gym every day, but I didn't feel like doing that on the cruise, and going to sit somewhere with a book would have been ok, but this was better!

Cruise day 4:Tortola

On the night before our day 4 Tortola port adventure we made sure to sign up for breakfast room service! I think we had to meet our tour group before 9:00, so breakfast in the room was a must.  Henry ate a normal breakfast and was back to his old self.  PHEW!!

Our excursion in Tortola was an open air bus tour and beach break.  We had to carry all of our own waters from the ship as well as 5 heavy towels.  We were sweltering.  The tour ended up being super long, and was made longer by the fact that our bus broke down.  We ended up boarding an air conditioned bus with another group of people, but by then it was overcrowded and people were sharing seats.  

But here is where we started off:

We finally finally made it to this beach and luckily there was a bit of food (chips) to buy because the kids were starving.

It definitely feels good to go in a nice cool ocean after sweating for hours!

Henry was wiped after the morning and needed a sleep!!

We were able to have some lunch and make sure Henry slept before pirate night!! So fun to all dress up as pirates, and head out for dinner and partying!

After a pirate themed menu at the restaurant, including a smoothie for Henry in a flashing skull cup (we wanted him to eat or drink anything at this point as he still wasn't back to his full appetite!), we headed up to the first pirate party that was abruptly rained out.  The characters were dancing around on stage when suddenly it started to pour and all of the crowd started running away screaming.  Since that was a no go, we headed in to get good seats for the main show which was a hypnosis show.  The show had us in hysterics.  The girls were laughing so hard, particularly Paige, who laughed several times on this trip like nothing I had ever seen.

 Then there was the much anticipated pirate party.  The rain had cleared up, although it was a bit windy.  Luckily all fireworks still ran as scheduled! When the dance party started though, we had to get the kids in bed.  The show started sometime after 10:00.

Day 3. Another day at sea...thank goodness!!

I should start with the after midnight part of Henry being sick.  He had a restless night after the incident, but luckily did not throw up again.  He slept in until 10:30, and I think the girls caught up on a bit of sleep too.  I wanted to keep Henry in the room as long as possible to rest so I ran up to the buffet with the girls to grab some food items for everyone to share for breakfast in our room.  Henry ate a bowl of cereal which was fantastic.

After this he continued to sleep for the rest of the day.  It would actually have been good to have a stroller this day.  Mike had to carry him around sleeping when we were all out of the room.

Henry had really wanted to see the crawling baby races but he was too tired to care and just fell asleep on me and then I transferred him to mike.

Unfortunately Henry had to miss the Anna and Elsa meet and greet.  We were really excited for Henry to see them mainly, but the girls wanted to go anyway.  

While we saw Anna and Elsa, Mike decided to go grab a beer while Henry continued to sleep.  :)

Cool circular bathroom in the cobblestone hallway between pubs and night clubs. 

When Henry had his nap I had a nice little reading time on the balcony.  I read so much less than I ever thought I would.  Only about half a book and I was debating downloading a third book before we left.  There just wasn't a ton of time, and I found that it was late or I was too tired when we would go to bed at night.  

 On this day Rose was scheduled to go to the bippidi boppidi boutique! She got her hair, nails, and makeup done, and brought a dress from home, although some people buy a dress from the boutique.

She had fun, and she loved her sparkly hairstyle.  It was great that she was all set for dinner!

So Henry was pretty rough still, but we still went out for dinner because there's not much choice, but also a dinner in the room would have been sad for Rose all dressed up.  There was nothing on the menu that was good for a kid who has been really sick, but Henry asked the server for peanut butter.  They were able to make toast and peanut butter happen and he ate the whole thing.  He visibly had a bit more energy after eating something, but we still made sure to make it an early night and skip the show.  We knew we had an early morning excursion and had to be hopefully recovered by then.  And a lot of me was scared another one of us was going to get sick!! (no one did--thank goodness!!!).  I'm so happy this happened on the day that it did, when it wasn't formal night, a port day, or pirate night!