Our 10 day cruise out of New York, had 4 ports and 5 days at sea…but it included Turks and Caicos, which we had never been to before. We left from the Salt Lake City airport

The cruise set sail from New York. Jim helped load the luggage into the transfer bus

Our ship was the Carnival Venezia and we sailed from the Manhattan Cruise Terminal.

Since we had never embarked from New York, we bought the ship’s picture 🙂

The cruise was a super good deal, but maybe it was because our room had bunk beds…lol

A few pictures from the top of the ship before we set sail. The ship in the background is the aircraft carrier the USS Intrepid that is now a museum. We know it from the movie, National Treasure, when Nicholas Cage jumps off the back into the Hudson River.

New York looking towards upper Manhattan

We left just as the sun was going down. We loved how the sunset reflected off of the buildings.

One of the reasons we wanted to cruise from New York is to sail past Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty at sunset. The ship was late in leaving, but not to worry, the view was amazing.

Ellis Island opened in 1892 and was the busiest immigrant inspection and processing station in the United States. 

“The Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World” was a gift of friendship from the people of France to the United States and is recognized as a universal symbol of freedom and democracy. The Statue of Liberty was dedicated on October 28, 1886 and was designated as a National Monument in 1924.  (National Park Service booklet)

Words can not describe how we felt passing the Statue Liberty with the beautiful sunset. Cindy’s grandfather sailed past the Statue of Liberty 97 years early. He was headed to Ellis Island to immigrate from Sweden in 1926. Wow was all we could say…

We had one last look of New York before sailing under the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge.

It was now cruise time and we saw our first towel animals, a bull dog in our room and a bear at the pool.

Our first two days were at sea and the weather was abit rough but that didn’t stop us from eating burrito bowls

We attended the Captain’s Toast in the Atrium welcoming all the guests on board

We had a great time at the Rock and Glow party. I asked Jim to look excited…lol

Our first port was at Half Moon Cay, Bahamas. We rode the tender with the barbecue crew

Half Moon Cay is the private island for Carnival.

Our ship the Venezia, was a Costa ship that Carnival bought and refurbished. It’s maiden year was 2023, and we were the first cruise of the Christmas season

We chilled on the beach with Willy P and Spuddy

40th Anniversary Heart….Awwww 🙂

Cindy took these pictures, then dropped her phone in the ocean. She didn’t realize she didn’t have the phone for about 10 minutes. Someone found the phone and put it on a beach chair. It still worked but we had to dry the charging port. (Back on the ship, we used Q-tips and a hair dryer on low)

After the frantic search for Cindy’s phone, we enjoyed our “victory” with lunch from the beach buffet.

Heading to the tender boats to return to the ship

Our next port of call was Turks and Caicos….We docked on the island of Grand Turk which is where the capital of Cockburn Town is located. The country consists of 40 islands, 59,000 residents, and covering 170 sq miles. The country is divided into the larger Caicos islands and the smaller Turks islands. Nine of the islands are inhabited. Grand Turk is the largest of the Turks islands at 8 miles long and 1.5 miles wide, and has a population of 5000 permanent residents.

We relaxed on the beach while waiting for our tour. The water color was truly amazing

We had decided to do a catamaran tour to the Turk Wall. It was an amazing day on the water

The Turk Wall reminded us of the Finding Nemo movie…the sea floor goes from 40-70 feet to a sudden drop off of 2000 feet. It was truly snorkeling over the dark abyss.

After snorkeling, the catamaran stopped at a beach

Gotta have a beach heart and with it being our 40th anniversary, well we got plenty of pictures!!

The beach only had our tour group…

After our tour, we walked through a NASA display and learned that when John Glenn became the first human to orbit the earth 3 times, his space capsule landed in the water near Grand Turk…by mistake.

Wow that sunset…we could have sat here forever!!!

What an amazing day in Turks and Caicos

We ended the day with a beautiful sunset, a movie by the pool, and popcorn. It can’t get any better than that.

The first 5 days of our early Christmas cruise had been relaxing and wonderful…5 more days to go.