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Taking to the skies for vacation

I do a lot of traveling, but almost all of it lately is for work. Today, though, I'm writing from my comfy first class seat on a spacious Delta Boeing 757 jet heading to rendez-vous with my family in Fort Lauderdale, FL. We haven't done a group vacation in almost five years and although it's unfortunate that my little brother Dave and his lovely fiance, Colleen couldn't make it, I've been looking forward to this trip for MONTHS!

Tomorrow our eight-person group departs from the Fort Lauderdale cruise port for seven days of fun and sun aboard the Ruby Princess. Our ports-of-call are the Bahamas, St Thomas, St Marten, and Grand Turk islands. I've taken an eastern Caribbean adventure with Princess and Carnival before, but neither time have we stopped at Grand Turk. Site seeing and learning more about its history is one of my two main highlights for the trip. The other highlight is FINALLY swimming with dolphins off the coast of St Thomas! I've wanted to splash around with Earth's most intelligent water-dwelling creatures for years and have no idea why I didn't do it on an earlier cruise.

Naturally, I can't talk about highlights for my vacation without mentioning the main reasons I've been looking forward to the trip itself. The original reasons we planned to go on a family vacation together again is because (a) we really enjoy spending time together and haven't done so like this in so long; (b) my sister, Collins finally found and married the man of her dreams (I'm not jealous, but can't wait to do the same :-); (c) I took a new role at work finally propelling myself down a new, but related career path I only dreamed about before. Recently we added two more reasons to make this a wonderful celebration: (d & e) both of my brothers recently got engaged to wonderful girls!

The other big reason that I particularly am excited to go on a cruise is because this is one of the few ways to truly break away from the fast-paced, technological world  we live in. That's why I left my work Blackberry at home and will be     turning off my personal Android before embarkation tomorrow. I find these holidays from the 21st century itself are extremely enriching and rejuvenating.

Well it's time to land, get my bags, and kick off the relaxation! Wish me luck :-)


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