Playa Mia boats and beach

Last post about Playa Mia, until we go back next time that is! We really enjoyed this place.

They had many different types of boats to try 

Just peddling around 

She loved being able to steer 

All of us on the beach 

They work hard in the sand while I relax

Row your Boat

Madrid has some beautiful buildings and monuments. We wandered past this one and then decided we needed a closer look.

 

We originally stopped to take a photo with that monument. Then we noticed the people in boats all around.

We had plenty of time so we rented a row boat. Only this isn't as relaxing as you might expect.

That's better.

Here we are getting close to the monument. This is much more relaxing when they do all the work. I highly suggest bringing a couple of your own when you visit.

Kids Activities on a Cruise

So once on the ship, what were we going to do with the kids? We started by trying the kids' club.

It was essentially just people watching groups of kids playing. While they had scheduled activities, most seemed to be more adult done or wouldn't take nearly as long as they had scheduled. Our shy introverted child actually enjoyed going in and playing without anyone bothering him. Our outgoing child would have preferred more interaction and it wasn't her favorite part of the trip.
 

 They have photo booths set up all over the ship every night. When there wasn't a line, the photographer let our kids play with the props. We didn't buy the photo, but the kids had fun.

Only one child was willing to pose with the giant talking cruise ship guy. I don't remember his name.

Honestly between eating, which we did a LOT, and getting ready for things - getting dressed for dinner, getting ready for kids club, etc. There wasn't a ton of time left. I do wish the kids club would have started earlier. Our kids wake up at 7, so by the time the kids club opened at 10am our day felt like it was half over. Each day we took the kids to the running track. They needed to use some energy and we were reasonably out of the way. Our kids weren't tall enough to ride on the slide. They were both fully potty trained, but the pools were often too crowded or too loud. The music on the top deck was at a painful level. It hurt our ears and our noise sensitive child FREAKED out when we even got close to it. We had to avoid that deck (and thus most pools) for the majority of every day.

Overall while I love cruising, Carnival didn't sell me on their offerings for kids, especially kids this age.

Cruising with Two Year Olds

I love cruising. We went on many cruises before kids, but this was our first time to take the kids on a cruise. We weren't sure how they would handle it. Would they be sick the entire time? Would they need more space to run around? Would the noisy hallways keep them awake? We decided to take the cheapest, shortest cruise from our local port to find out. This post covers our room.

They loved finding new towel animals every evening. Some nights they even fought over who got to sleep with the towels. Seriously.

Since we needed room for 4 people to sleep, we were in one of the "larger" rooms, but certainly not a suite or even a balcony with our budget. Here sweet daughter is posing with the ladder up to the top bunk. You can see the band she has on her wrist. All children were required to wear those the entire trip so that everyone would know which muster station they belonged to in case of emergency. It was not comfortable and our kids complained about them the entire time.

We did have a window. They loved watching what was going on outside and seeing as we pulled into and out of ports.

Here is a photo of the bunk bed (the couch on bottom also turned into a bed). We let them both sleep on top for naps when we were awake and watching, but made them both sleep on bottom at night. It's a long way down and we didn't want any injuries.

A song about what you can see outside the window of a cruise ship (some imagination required).