Cruise Day #22: Tortola

Welcome to Tortola!! Well it's another port day....and it was a bittersweet day because it was our last port (except for Disney's private Bahamian island, Castaway Cay) before the end of the trip....which means that we're headed home soon....AAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!  Honestly, where does 24 days on the boat go?!?!  It really does seem like we JUST got on and even though I know when I go back and read all these posts it will be clear to me just HOW MUCH we did and saw....it feels like this vacation shouldn't be even close to over yet! :(

OK...before I make myself cry thinking about it being over....let's dive right into our experience in Tortola today...and to probably one of the excursions I was most looking forward to:  DOLPHINS!!!  Remember.....I love anything to do with animals...especially aquatic animals and/or exotic birds!  I'm getting ahead of myself, though....

....before I describe our day in Tortola, please note our fabulous magnet for the day...with our "signature characters," Tigger & Roo....so cute!

Alright....so we had the dolphin encounter scheduled for today...but we didn't have to be at our meeting place until 11:45am....but we were into the port well before that.  So we woke up in the morning to a lovely view off our balcony:

Tortola was a lovely little port and town...but the island itself was decidedly less developed and/or populated than others that we'd been to so far....or at least the portions of the island we could see were.  Because we had some time to kill in the morning, we decided to eat a quick breakfast and then head into town to get our magnet (we had an early "all aboard" time here and we weren't sure if our dolphin excursion would take up the whole afternoon or not).

One thing that we found curious about Tortola (and this is a special mention for my friend and coworker, Megan) was that chickens and roosters just run free ALL OVER THE PLACE!!  They're everywhere----on the sidewalks, in the parks, on the porches and stoops of houses and shops....later in the day when we went to our dolphin encounter, they were even running around all over the place at the dolphin park!!

So we spent a couple hours in town and we did find a magnet we liked...but also happened to go into another jewelry store----as we were still toying with the idea of getting a new set of nice wedding rings.  In this store, they had some very similar styles to what we'd seen in St. Maarten the day prior...and at about the same price (probably a little cheaper).  There was nothing we were absolutely in love with, though.  They had one ring that we both loved, but they didn't have two identical rings that would fit us (the problem with titanium rings is that they cannot be sized....so each store in which we looked had a limited selection and what they had there in the case is what they had...and if they didn't fit then you were out of luck.  It was hard to find any matching pairs....and even harder to find matching pairs that came in my size and Jason's.  This store did, though, have one pair that was probably about 90% of what we were looking for and that fit...but Jason wasn't fully invested and said we should "leave and think about it and maybe come back" (which I immediately knew meant we wouldn't be back LOL).  Ironically, however, on our way back to the ship we noticed a jewelry store we had walked by earlier and hadn't seen and decided to go in and have a last minute look----and good thing we did AND good thing we had decided to not commit to anything in St. Maarten or the store up the street earlier....because we found our rings in this store!!

They really offered everything we wanted---and we loved them almost instantly.  They are classy, but contemporary---they're unique without being too eccentric---they had just two that were exactly alike and they were, fortunately, the exact sizes we needed (it felt a bit like cinderella and the glass slipper.....because I tried one on and it fit and I just knew it would be my luck that when she handed the other one to Jason it would be too big or too small...but it fit perfectly!!)----they're high quality...and they gave us an AMAZING deal (I don't want to be tacky and put the amount----but let's just say that they ended up selling us BOTH rings for just a little bit more than we'd been quoted for ONE ring in St. Maarten)!!  The rings are designed by Edward Mirell and are titanium rings and feature, in a diagonal gap in the titanium, a suspended 0.15 real diamond.  We felt very lucky and we love them....it was definitely a little more Disney magic for us!!  Here are some pictures:

(Note:  Even though in this picture you see us wearing the rings on our left hands...we decided (again to be non-traditional) that we are going to wear them on our right hands....at least until we're able to legally marry like everyone else...then we'll consider switching them to the "correct" hand! LOL)

So after getting our rings, we had to rush back to the ship, change into our swim suits and get to our meeting place for the DOLPHINS!!  The dolphin experience was just incredible.  The dolphin we met was named Lilo (how appropriate for a Disney cruise, huh?  Although our trainer did tell us that there was, unfortunately, no dolphin named Stitch there LOL)  We learned a little about dolphins and got our directions first and then we got in the water with Lilo.  Everyone got a chance to pet her and stroke her....and dance with her, give her commands to swim, splash and sing...kiss her and then, the best part....each person, one at a time, got to swim out into the lagoon and wait and then, at the trainer's command, Lilo came out into the lagoon and swam up next to you and you got to hold her fins and she swam with you back to the platform.  IT WAS SO AMAZING!!  I have always loved dolphins and whales...but this experience, being up so close...was just wonderful...and something I will never forget.  It was a perfect way to start the final few days of this amazing trip.  Here are some pictures:

Once we got back to the ship, we joined Johanna for a final round of chip it golf in the lobby.  Don't ask me WHY Jason and I played so much golf on this vacation (mini golf in Orlando, "chip it" golf several times on the boat and Jason played pool golf, too!).  We don't even LIKE golf! LOL

After golf, we went with Johanna up to the top deck to watch as the ship pulled out of the port:

 ....and then we took a dip in the pool and then went back to the cabin to relax and enjoy the gorgeous weather out on our balcony (and I tried to catch up on some more of this blogging).

After an hour or so of relaxing, it was time to get ready for dinner.  Tonight's ties were dalmation ties----although once again I forgot our camera to take a picture of us in them...so you'll have to settle for just seeing the ties themselves (for now):

After dinner, we quickly changed into our pajamas...and our towel animal was waiting for us:

(Note:  the Minnie mouse tags you see there next to the towel animal are our luggage tags for disembarkation from the ship....a sure sign it's all coming to an end *frown*)

After changing into our jammies, we went down to the movie theater for a late night screening of "the Sorcerer's Apprentice" (which we actually enjoyed very much!)...and then went to bed....ready to enjoy a very relaxing FINAL (*sniffle*sob*) sea day tomorrow!