Trips, Pics, and Tales

So, after our final night, all that really was left was packing up and leaving! First, our vacation wasn't over though - we had one more day in Miami and one more night too!  But before we get to that - some final thoughts on the cruise and the Celebrity Reflection! First, as I mentioned at the beginning, we booked this trip solely for the reason that it was a Top Chef cruise. Keith is not a fan of cruises, but he agreed to this one because he's a chef and he liked the idea of the Top Chef activities since we're both fans of the show. Also, we'd been on the Eclipse previously and did enjoy the quality of the food and the experience in general. Initially just the two of us planned to go as our "grown up away from the kids" vacation, but when I booked, there was a special that made it really a no brainer to bring the kids - so it became a family vacation.  I had some doubts as to if the kids would have enough to occupy themselves with three sea days on Cele

So, it's been quite some time since I had a chance to continue our journey!  We were away on another trip...which I'm super excited to share as well!   But first, there's still a few more days left on this trip to experience!  So let's move along! I'm always a bit down on the last day of the cruise! Aren't we all? But today would be a pretty exciting day, as far as Top Chef activities go, so that had something going for it. I really didn't take too many pictures though because pretty much they really all started looking the same! We really covered most of the ship, and the cooking demos looked about the same, just different chefs! But we did have a great day! So - to start off, I'm sure we had breakfast in the buffet. That was our thing and we always tried to get a table outside. Based on the pictures, we ended up on the lawn. I do believe we went out there to try to play bocce. However, no one knew where the balls were - we asked and were told that

It was now time for our Top Chef Cooking Class! This was something I was really looking forward to. And something that I really debating paying to have the kids participate in. On the one hand, the whole point of picking this cruise was for the Top Chef activities and to not sign them up seemed like they'd really miss out. But on the other hand, this was a pretty expensive event! Would they enjoy it? But really, we pay for excursions on port days, so I had to look at it as this was like an excursion. Would it be worth it? Let's see..... I chose to do our cooking class with Hosea. I'm not really sure why, but I just had a feeling that the class with him would be most relatable for the kids. So, we were told to meet at the Murano Restaurant. When we arrived there was a group of maybe 20 there, and as I thought, my 2 kids were the only ones there, but that was fine. We had a brief introduction and were led into the kitchen. There were stations set up with most of the food alr