I was actually on a cruise to the Bahamas with fifteen of my ATS lovelies for spring break. Pictures are forthcoming.There was sun and sand and water and food and….

Oh, the food. Good lord, the food. There was a buffet open for breakfast and lunch with a surprisingly large vegetarian selection, plus a pizza bar open until 3am with enough cheese and tomato sauce to satisfy late-night cravings. Dinner was a gourmet ordeal — three courses with the option of ordering more (an option that most of our male contingent took to heart). Admittedly, there wasn’t always a choice for my entree, but the desserts more than made up for it. Tiramisu, cherry jubilee, chocolate cake, key lime pie, and more ice cream than you could shake a spoon at. Also, there was a cold fruit soup appetizer every night that, aside from the first evening’s watermelon-and-tomato oddity, was always very tasty. There was a pear soup the second evening that was essentially pear-flavored applesauce. Why nobody has yet marketed pear-flavored applesauce, I still do not understand.

Aside from stuffing our faces, the sixteen of us also jetskiied, parasailed, and generally chillaxed all over the place. The cruise docked in Nassau, Bahamas; Coco Cay (a private island owned by the cruise line); and Key West, FL. It was really windy the first few days, so we wore jackets over our swimsuits and only entered the (cold!) Caribbean waters with hesitation. However, Key West was a spring break dream come true. Gorgeous weather, a cute window shopping district, and an extremely chill Australian ex-pat surfer with the most adorable boxer mix doggie. He was a self-employed painter from New Jersey who decided to road-trip down to Florida for a vacation with his adopted rescue dog. We first started talking to him because we wanted to play with his dog, but ended up chatting for awhile about weather, high-strung people, and places we’d like to travel. In Key West, I had a second jetski adventure (after the first in Coco Cay) during which I saw a sea turtle and fell into the ocean after an uncontrolled jump (the two incidents are unrelated). My third large purchase, after a Steinway Model D and a Kawasaki Ninja 500, when I become a Real Person Earning Money will be a jetski.

We returned to Boston at 4am on Saturday morning. It was frigid. Today, it is raining. Sigh.