Our Caribbean Cruise
by Jodi
(Portland, Oregon)
At the Train Station… 1/5/07 8:04 AM Friday Tom and I made it to the train station in Klamath Falls, OR. It’s freezing here! We won a Caribbean cruise which departs from Fr. Lauderdale, FL. Delbert McClinton and friends are to be performing.
At Sea… 1/7/07 8:05 AM Sunday For the first time in my life, I am doing a journal entry from Nassau in The Bahamas!!! It’s gorgeous here, about the same as Florida was, warm and a bit humid. It was nice to see palm trees again, too. The ship is huge! I’m amazed they can keep so much afloat.
1/11/07 11:02 AM Thursday We’ve left Puerto Rico and are headed for the Grand Turk. I’m only just now beginning to have more fun, feel more comfortable, and sleep better, though not as well as I’d I see nothing around me but sky and sea. The seas are a bit choppy today. I can see whitecaps all the way out to the horizon. Except for the casino, the ship is a cashless society. Each guest puts money on their key card which is also what’s used to scan when making purchases or leaving/entering the ship at each port of call. It hasn’t been as hard to find my way around the ship as I thought it would be. Perhaps that’s because half of the floors are staterooms, as they call them rather than cabins, belonging to both guests and crew. There’s really only 4 other floors we’ve been doing things on. We’re on deck 4. Deck 9 is the Lido deck. That’s where the free dining is, though they only serve food during certain hours. They have a small variety of things. There’s Italian, a bistro, the Wok, a deli, and a section for drinks and sweets either. They only had lobster once at the bistro, but it wasn’t a whole lobster. It was just a lobster tail. I could’ve had 5 of them! Also on deck 9 are two pools at either end, one a family pool by the grill that serves cheeseburgers, veggie burgers and fries At the very top is the observation deck and a basketball court with a rope-fence.
We had fun swimming in the adult pool earlier. It was so cool how the water sloshes around and makes waves due to the ship’s movements. Decks 2 and 3 is where the casino is, along with a photo and art gallery, a shop that mostly sells jewelry, and the coffee shop I’ve been to a few times. The shop has a little drugstore and also sells clothing which is pretty expensive, and designer perfume as well. promenade, lower veranda, veranda, upper veranda, Rotterdam, sun’s not as strong. I love the waves the ship’s motion causes within the outer pool. There’s a wooden bench that runs along the outside, then the outer pool for the water to spill over into with walls that are 2 or 3 feet high. The water’s usually ankle-deep in this area. Neither of the pools are diving pools.
I can’t wait to get back home! Sure I’m not looking forward to the cold and snow, but I miss my Tinkerbell. I’ll also let them know the hot tubs were closed half the time, nor did we get our room service menu till the end. I had been getting coffee from the get-go via room service, but we didn’t know what other things we could get until we got the menu. The selection wasn’t that great and not all things were available at all times. They’re playing a movie on overhead screens that are spaced every 15’ or so along the isle. You can hear the voices on one of their 12 channels, but like I said, the interruptions get old. As long as the kids stay civilized, I’ll just listen to the hum of the engines. To back up to when we got aboard the ship, we had cabbed over to Port Everglades where the ship was docked. We then stood in a very long line in a very large room. After what seemed like quite a while, we went up to a window with our tickets and to get our key cards. They took our pictures from their computers. This displayed on the ship’s screens when the card was scanned, and of course we had to walk through metal detectors and have our stuff x-rayed. There were lots of ships docked in Florida, and small boats owned by individuals who would cruise around the area, too.
When we first got onboard we couldn’t go to our rooms because they were still working on them as the previous group of cruisers had disembarked just hours before we got on. We waited up on the Lido deck and had a snack, since only the sweets section was open at the time. If I thought dealing So anyway, once the guests got situated in their rooms, it was off for an emergency escape drill where we had to don our lifejackets and line up on a particular deck, women and animals first. While waiting on the deck until our room numbers were called and checked off their list. I could suddenly hear the soft hum of the propeller and feel slight motion. I got up and ran out to the veranda where people were cheering us off from a large apartment building. I couldn’t see anyone, but I could hear them. Because the ship’s so big we had a small pilot boat guide us out till we were out on the open ocean. They use tugboats to push ships into spaces against the docks which have little bumpers alongside them. It sure was weird falling asleep in the US and waking up in The Bahamas! The sun was just rising when we were approaching The Bahamas.
Because we visited a touristy section, we could use US currency. They were giving guided tours on buses and horse-drawn carriages, but we remained on foot. I was shocked to learn that The Bahamas consists of over 700 islands! The beaches we saw seemed wimpy and remote. There wasn’t much of a shore or very many people on it. While in The Bahamas, I got blue glitter nail polish that turns green when in sunlight. We also got a couple of postcards we decided to keep for ourselves, along with the postcards we wrote out to each other in Georgia. Lastly, I got a couple dresses. There was a Disney ship docked next to us and it looked way cool, though I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be on it. There was a really cool waterslide on We spent Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at sea, since we couldn’t go to the Grand Turk on Friday like we were supposed to. We were hoping they’d have more sales and raffles to make up for it, but they didn’t.
We explored the ship in greater depth instead. Tom exercised on the treadmills in the gym, and we found that the view from the back of the ship was way cool. The waves in the wake of the ship’s path were really cool to see and it sounded like we were by a giant waterfall. we were in line at the bistro, which always changes its menu, and she was telling me what was what, since I didn’t know what half the stuff was. The second time, she and a couple guys were having their picture taken and she waved me over to join in.
I had the most fun in Puerto Rico which I fell right in love with! It had an ugly dock where I could see a bunch of clear jellyfish hanging around and the cab drivers were crazy driving so fast through the narrow streets, most of which had no traffic lights, but shopping there was a blast. I dug how most of the signs were in Spanish. There were vendors by the ship, and one gave us samples of Puerto Rican rum which we both wouldn’t touch after I tried a tiny sip that was so gross I spit it right out
