we're back from the carribean, and it's a new year. our vacation was incredible. but it's good to be home today. i had grand plans of writing posts every day and putting up lots of pictures, but (a) daniel left the memory card for the camera in his computer at home and (b) we forgot the cord to upload pictures to our laptop. so, we have about 10 pictures, and i was having too much fun relaxing to write regularly. besides, who wants to read seven posts about someone else's vacation? anyway, this is grey and misty, but if you look closely, you can see cuba. we were sailing around its coast for awhile, and it was one of the highlights for me emotionally. i would give almost anything to actually go there and stay for a short while. any ideas on how i can do that without getting thrown into jail? here's a view of the dock at ocho rios, jamaica. i took it mostly for the mountains. jamaica redeemed itself for us (after the honeymoon hurricane) with a pleasant town and a really great meal at "passage to india," a rooftop restaurant. i had forgotten that there is a large indian population in jamaica, and we ran into karan, our butler from bombay, at lunch. (yes, we had a butler. more on that later.) georgetown, grand cayman island, was our cleanest port. it's also the fifth largest financial center in the world, which was evident by the cost of living that appeared to be the same or slightly higher than the u.s. daniel and i had a great day here, though - we stumbled onto a fabric sale (nearly heaven for the creative genius husband), had great big curry plates for lunch at a place where there didn't seem to be any other tourists, and dreamed a little about buying a cute island home with a fenced-in yard complete with chickens. but all dreams of living on grand cayman competely disappeared as soon as we got to roatan, honduras. as daniel told a new friend on our ship, "some people are grand cayman people, and some are honduras people. we're honduras people." i've become convinced that the only way to really see an island when you only have a day is to rent a motor scooter and let yourself get a little lost, which is exactly what we did. we were going slow enough to see the jungle and wave at the kids along the road, but fast enough to go from one end of the island to another, and to get far enough up the hills to see beautiful houses nestled in the trees and to see the cutest little beach town ever, where you essentially walk out of your hostel room right onto the boat that takes you scuba diving. our other port was nassau, bahamas. it was actually our first port - lots of duty-free shopping, and i did jump into the fray to buy my first-ever (and probably last) designer purse rip-off. kate spade, thank you very much. time for a break. i'll give the lowdown on the ship and being a VIP in awhile... happy new year!!