Newport and Sea Days

As I previously touched on, Bermuda was cut from our trip due to the $40 per person fee that they require from passengers. It is their only remaining COVID requirement. We were given Newport, Rhode Island as a substitute, and whereas it is a lovely little town- it is not in the incredible blue waters near Bermuda, nor does it have lovely pink sand beaches.

We did enjoy Newport, though we didn’t get to be there for very long. We were delayed in NYC for 6 hours due to an unnamed maintenance issue and were, therefore, 6 hours late to Newport the next morning. Factor in the line for the tender and we had only about 4 hours in port. Unfortunately, that meant we didn’t get to see The Breakers, which my sister raved about. These are her pictures from a couple years ago:

Having seen Biltmore, I knew The Breakers would be gorgeous but also expected that the kids would be bored with it, so it wasn’t a huge loss. We were lucky enough to see Biltmore during the Chihuly exhibit in 2019, however!

We did do the Cliff Walk, and it was a spectacular view and the fall leaves were gorgeous!

We spent our planned 5 sea days and I survived them! (I was seriously worried about it.) But we spent time in the gym, reading, playing board games, eating at the buffet, and laying around the pool. Jade even kicked everyone’s butt at the Hula Hoop contest!

And THEN on the 5^th day we hit a tropical storm that had run into Hurricane Martin and became “Frankenstorm Martin”. We were not able to go to Horta, as planned, and instead spent approximately 30 hours in the middle of the Atlantic being thrown about like a kids toy boat in a bath tub! We had sustained winds of 75 miles an hour and 15 foot waves. I am so proud of the kids and how they handled it. Jade has plenty of reasons for choosing the Air Force, but if the Navy knew how well she handled rough seas they would be begging her to join!

The storm is mostly over now and tomorrow we will get to visit Praia da Vitoria, as planned. We are very excited to get off the boat. We are halfway through the cruise portion of our trip and I am learning lots of cruise hacks. I am sure a post on those will be coming to an inbox near you soon!