The good life mum: Independence of the Seas part 1

If you have been wondering where we have been the last few weeks we have been floating on a 160 thousand tuns of ship cruising round the Med on the Independence of the seas.

A few years ago this was the largest cruise ship in the world but now there are 2 more ships that are twice the size that are kept in the Caribbean as they are to large to sail over to Europe. The Independence of the seas is Amazing with a capital A it is massive and takes about 3500 passengers and 1500 crew and there were 14 different floors to visit many for cabin and also quiet a few packed with incredible activities and restaurants.

When we boarded we were not allowed to go to our cabins as they were turning them over from the morning departures that had left at 9 o'clock we boarded at 10.30 and were allowed into our rooms at 1pm which we thought was amazing that the staff worked so hard turning the boat around in such a short time. While we waited we got to explore the ship so we headed to the top deck to get a view and the first thing Sophie saw was a ice cream machine where you could get whirly whipped chocolate or vanilla ice cream free when ever you wanted it, as you can see by the big grin Sophie was over the moon and over the holiday she took full advantage of free ice cream.

As we toured what we thought was top deck we walked round and counted up 6 big swimming pools and 6 hot tubs, the pools were amazing too they were varies depths from giant splash pools with brightly coloured fun objects in for the kids to play with, round pools with glass sides and long cool pools and long warm pools for people who liked to do lengths as well as lazy pools and pools with waterfalls in them, two of the hot tubs were hanging off the side of the ship to give birds eye views while you bubbled, the pools were amazing.

That was not the only water activity they had they also had a flow rider on the back of the boat which was great fun. A flow rider is a surfing wave and this gave us loads of comedy to watch as brave buff 20 some things got up to ride the wave most doing massive wipe outs and being thrown back into the surf at the back of the wave. On one visit we watched as the youths were tossed about a middle age balding fat man was in the queue and as he mounted the board we already had our hands up to our eyes as we waited for the inevitable crash to the surf, but he was really good and even did some tricks we really didn't expect success. After the middle age man was a 70 year old man very thin and looked like he would do himself a mischief if he came off and again he was awesome and the crowd went bananas cheering, of course all the dads decided that they could do it after watching the two older guys and went for the wave and the comedy continued for the spectating crowd.

As we explored we found a running track that lapped the boat, and Sophie took daddy for a lap of honour needless to say daddy was pooped at the end of it. We found a really high climbing wall a full length basket ball court and a good size mini golf pitch. At the other end of the boat was a two floored Spa and gym and this gave the final two decks. The spa was amazing not only did it offer the normal massage, facial, tanning services but also a large array of cosmetic procedures at incredibly cheap prices like lip plumping, botox, teeth whitening, crows feet removal loads of other the list was enormous.

At night the pools were light up and we got to have a party under the stars and people drank lovely cocktails and danced the night away.

Inside the ship was just as amazing as outside and everything was incredible opulent and there was a huge casino, loads of different music bars and lounges. There was loads of big sculptures and art everywhere and Sophie loved this big red dog poking over a balcony.

We even went to a proper multi floored theater and caught some shows and they put on all sorts of shows from comedy to proper theatrics, everything we saw we enjoyed.

Another show we went to see was an ice show on real ice and as you can see with all the people on the rink even that wasn't a small size, the show really captured Sophie's attention and and she thought it was so pretty and the costumes were bright and colourful. The costume changes for the ice skating team were incredibly fast considering there were 10 of them and most of the time they were all out on the ice, the stunts were fantastic we even saw the head banger and ladies in the air as well as somersaults, twists and turns that kept the audience cheering through out the show.