Our 10 year Anniversary Trip

 

I know this post is long over due, but better late than never! Last month David and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary! We always said we were going to do something grand to celebrate and after a rough spring/summer I made sure we did something fun! We needed something to look forward to!

We thought about going back to Mexico where we spent our honeymoon but then settled on trying something new. We headed down to the Bahamas to stay at Atlantis!

 

 

We splurged and stayed in the Royal Towers hotel and this was the view from our room!

 

The ocean there is just gorgeous!

Our first evening there we explored the property.

The resort is surrounded by different salt water pools of aquatic life. We enjoyed seeing sea turtles swimming around.

This was a huge sting ray (a bit hard to see with the glare).

And we saw tons of sharks!

We ventured into The Dig which is one of their big aquariums located in the bottom of the hotel.

It was fun seeing fish swim over our heads.

We spotted some colorful sea horses.

And exotic looking jelly fish!

Eels might be the creepiest creature in the ocean. EEEEK!

Did I mention that we brought Finley along on our anniversary trip?

Most people probably think we are crazy, but I knew if we didn't bring him I would not only miss him, but also wish he was there to enjoy all of the fun stuff too!

Plus it was a pretty educational trip!

We learned about different types of fish.

And lobsters.

 

But most importantly sharks!

The next day we headed out to the water park! Behind us is our hotel and this water slide on the left is called the leap of faith. No one in our group tried it. I realized during this trip that I am not into 'body slides'. You end up sore, with water up your nose and in your face, and most of the time with a wedgie at the end. Not really my type of water slide.

The leap of faith and also the serpent slide take you through a shark tank.

How cool is that? You can see the tube in the shark tank if you look closely.

 

Finley wasn't quite tall enough for most of the big slides, but we managed to sneak him on the serpent slide one time so we did get to go through one of the shark tunnels. 

He loved playing in the pools and waterfalls though!

There are an endless number of pools there!

And plenty of small slides to keep us happy. (Please excuse the quality of these pictures as the ones at the water park were taken with one of those waterproof cameras)

There was one huge spray ground area that Finley had a lot of fun playing in.

Being in a tropical location this time of year meant that storms would roll in and out on a regular basis. During one of our storm breaks we went to a PALS store which is kind of like build a bear.

Finley helped make "Super F" aka Froggy and he got to adopt him before a judge too!

Exploring more of the property we found a pool of adorable baby sea turtles.

And cute sting rays!

We then ventured over to predator's lagoon.

This place was so much fun we visited it twice!

The underwater tunnels were so much fun!

I swear they must have a thousand sharks on site there!

They never cease to amaze me.

Or scare me!

That night we celebrated our anniversary by making reservations at one of the fine dining restaurants. It was delicious!

The next morning it was time for the main event! Swimming with dolphins!

This is something I have always wanted to do!

Because Finley is on the younger side we opted for the shallow water interaction with the dolphins.

When it came time to kiss our dolphin named Palmer, Finley got a little nervous and wouldn't get too close.

But Palmer knew what she was doing and came right up to Finley instead! She ended up kissing his chin. Too funny.

Here's our selfie!

David had no problem getting up close and personal to the dolphin.

Palmer was such a sweet dolphin and entertained us with lots of tricks!

Finley also got to feed her several fish too.

One of Palmer's tricks was splashing us.

We got to pet her.

And give her some good rub downs.

David was even chosen to let Palmer pull his finger. She then made a very funny farty noise. Ha ha ha! Poor David.

During another break from the pool/sun/storms we headed over to the Atlantis speedways.

Finley got to race a remote controlled car around the race track.

Each race they set up different obstacles to get around or through. It was pretty tough for the kids to maneuver the race cars as the remotes were very different from what we are used to. One race lasted almost 10 minutes because of this! Ha!

 

They had several shows going on at Atlantis, but they were all too late for us. We did have fun posing in front of the magician's photo opp though. 

 

David's cracks me up.

 

Round 2 at the predator's lagoon. 

 

Check out this gnarly fish. It looks like a shark, but it is actually a sawfish. They are endangered but Atlantis is helping them make a comeback!

 

We found a fun swinging bring that gave us great views of hammerhead sharks.

 

Man those things are so cool looking.

 

And a fun lookout for a family photo! That's our hotel behind us. The part of the hotel that is the bridge between the royal towers is called the Michael Jackson suite and you can rent it out for $25K a night with a one week minimum stay. Who does that? Not us!

 

The next morning Finley was able to participate in a fun program called Sea Squirts for children ages 3 - 6. I am so glad he was young enough to participate!

 

He got to hold and feed baby sea turtles.

 

And a starfish.

 

Here is his little group.

 

This is a sea cucumber.

 

And no one wanted to hold the sea slug, but we got to feel it. It was gross and slimy.

 

A horseshoe crab.

 

There was a tank with these itty bitty sea turtles, but we weren't allowed to touch them.

 

This is a tiger shark's mouth.

 

And we saw a couple of baby sting rays.

 

 

It was so cool to see some of the behind the scenes of how they take care of all the aquatic life there. 

 

And last but not least they went outside to feed and pet a shark!

 

Finley kept calling it a zebra shark, but it may have been a nurse shark.

 

It was four years old and wasn't dangerous to pet.

 

But there was also another shark in the water and the instructor told them not to pet that one which made me a little bit nervous.

 

 

 

On our last day there we finally made it over to the beach. The water was spectacular!

 

Why can't our beaches look like this? The waters were so clear - no worries about shark attacks here!

And this is what happens when you take a selfie and can't check to see how it turned out. Sorry Finley!

The sand was also very different too. It wasn't sticky, but soft and it was a lot thicker than normal sand.
 

  

We had fun with a few underwater shots.
 

 

And those were the good ones :).
 

 

Our fun quick getaway was such a blast! We really had a great time exploring the beaches, pools, water park, and checking out all the aquatic life on display. It was the perfect anniversary trip! Thank you David for allowing us to splurge! Ten years down, eternity to go! I love you babe!