Here’s a sneak peak at what you can expect, God willing, to find in my blog, now that we know in more detail the specifics of our upcoming voyage and its activities:
In a few days my parents and I will be sailing from a port in Miami, Florida on a Royal Caribbean cruise which will take us to several different cays. This will be my third ever trip to Florida, the first time being when we went to Orlando to visit Disneyworld and EPCOT Center when I was five or so, the second being when we went to Panama City in March 1992, when I was eight. I imagine that the Bahamas has both of those places beat, but time will have to tell. It’ll certainly be the first time I’ve been to the Caribbean, and only the second time (the first being the Hawaii trip that this blog will be a sequel to) that I’ll ever traveled to a territory outside of the continental U.S. mainland.
The majority of our time will, of course, be spent aboard the cruise ship, yet we will also spend eight hours in Key West, eleven in Nassau, and nine in Cococay. Then it’s back to Miami.
My parents are the ones with the camera and they might be as protective about letting me link to their pictures as they were after the Hawaii trip, but we’re trying to figure something out—maybe along the lines of e-mailing pictures (including perhaps pics from the Hawaii trip as well) to anyone who requests it and give me their e-mail address. Until we can work something out—and in case we can’t—here are some pictures of the ship we’re going to be on:
The exterior
The pool
Interior #1
Interior #2
Interior #3
The dining hall
We will be staying in a junior suite, which looks like
this.
Now, for the most part our activities on the islands are going to have to be improvised and I can’t wait to find out what interesting restaurants and tourist attractions they have in the Bahamas. But we have booked a few excursions and here are Royal Caribbean’s own video montages of them if you want footage. In Key West we are going to go on the
Old Town Trolley Tour of the island, and after that we go to the aquarium and Shipwreck Museum. (Try as I might I cannot find a video for this one, although I
know it was there before. Maybe they took it down due to being booked solid or something.) in Nassau we’ll be going on the
Nassau Sightseeing & Ardastra Gardens tour. In Cococay we’ll take a
glass bottom boat ride. Expect a full report of each and every one of these adventures. You may also expect, God willing, a full account of my encounters with all the following amenities aboard the cruise ship:
* The dining hall seen above.
* The library.
* The pool and whirlpool.
* The gym and track.
* The video arcade.
* The Johnny Rockets. It’s been so long since I’ve eaten at one of those lovable 50’s throwbacks that I’m overjoyed there’s one on the ship.
*
Possibly the theater. That one’s still up in the air.
* The shops.
* What kind of programs they have on the closed-circuit TV system, and just possibly their movie service.
Really, I do think it likely that I’ll end up just wandering the whole vessel and reporting on everything I see.
Given that internet access aboard the ship is charged by the minute it is unlikely that I’ll be able to post the blog in real time as I did in Honolulu. Probably I’ll have to transcribe my diary entries a day or two after I’m back. Expect it sometime in the first few days of April.
I consider it my duty to those who don’t have the opportunity to take such a fantastic trip as this to describe and detail it so vividly that they can see it, hear it, smell it for themselves as when they read a well written novel. I want you to be right there with me—and I request, of course, that you pray I have a safe voyage.