We’re Toasting the New Year With a Caribbean Cruise.

I’m going to come right out and say it: I don’t like January—especially, now that we’re back on the East Coast, where freezing temperatures don’t necessarily mean there will be snow. When we lived in San Diego, we knew what we were going to get. But Boston is a different beast. January on the East Coast feels like a month-long case of the Mondays. So to remedy the situation, we’ve decided to take a Carnival Cruise.

Earlier this week, we flew to Miami for a seven-day cruise through the western Caribbean. We’ll be visiting four ports on the trip, including Mahogany Bay, Honduras, which is part of the Bay Islands. We’ve had our sights on the Bay Islands for a while, in part because of their superb diving conditions. We took an introductory dive course in Grand Cayman on our last cruise, and I think we’ll be taking another one in Mahogany Bay, as Carnival offers a couple of diving excursions for the island.

With that said, our plan for this cruise is a bit different from our last. On that one, we did an excursion in every port, which was a lot fun, but it took away from us exploring the towns on our own. This time we plan to do a lot more independent exploration in the ports. In addition to Honduras, we’ll also be visiting Cancun, Belize and Grand Cayman, so if you have any tips or recommendations, definitely let us know in the comments.

We’re sailing around the western Caribbean on the Carnival Glory. The cruise ship has a few more dining options than the Carnival Dream, which is the previous ship we were on. In particular, we’ve been enjoying the the poolside burrito bar, BlueIguana Cantina, and the burger joint by celebrity chef Guy Fieri. Additionally, the cruise ship also features the Steakhouse, a favorite of mine from the last cruise, and the Chef’s Table, a culinary experience hosted by one of the ship’s master chefs.

Really, though, the thing we’re looking forward to the most is just having fun. We had a tremendous—albeit busy—holiday season selling our hidden pocket travel scarves. So, we plan to use our time on the cruise to relax and refuel for the upcoming year.

We got a lot of terrific reader recommendations for our previous Carnival cruise, so if you have any for the cruise ship or any of the ports we’ll be visiting, definitely let us know what they are in the comments below. We’ll be posting updates from our trip to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and would love if you guys followed along our journey with us.