Travels

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Carribean Cruise of 2002

Between May 26 and June 2 of 2002, I went on a 7-day Royal Carribean cruise to the Carribean Sea with three friends. The ship I traveled on was the Voyager of the Seas, the largest cruise ship in the world at that time. The Travel Channel has been showing a special on the Voyager at the time of this writing (26 June), if you want to try to catch that. The cruise was a wonderful experience, and since I have been asked so much about it, I decided to create this web page to relay my experience and show off some pictures.

Itinerary

I will try to point out the highlights of my cruise day-by-day, but for me, the purpose of the cruise was to relax. I was more fascinated by the boat, the sea, and the scenery than I was the planned activities. Very few of my pictures have people in them.

Getting There

The cruise was a new experience, but I got some bonus experience because I've never flown in an airplane before. I rode around in a helicopter years ago in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, but taking off in a jet is a much different experience.

When I got to the airport at 5am in Louisville, I didn't think to get all metallic objects off me or at least make them easy to get to. I put my keys and cell phone in the little basket before walking through the metal detector thinking I would get a few tries at it (there were no lines so I wasn't holding up anyone). I set off the metal detector, so they immediately asked me to step aside and proceeded to "wand" me with the metal detecting wand-thingy. I had a foil-lined pack of gum, breath spray, a watch, and a belt buckle. I probably wouldn't have set off the detector if I pulled out the breath spray.

After the wanding, I gathered my stuff in my carry-on (I had to remove the laptop from before sending it through the X-ray), and we moved on. Half-way down the moving sidewalk, I realized I left the tray with my keys and cell-phone, so I got back on the opposite-moving sidewalk to go grab the rest of my stuff.

The feeling of a plane taking off is quite an experience. Once it taxis to the runway, it makes a complete stop. Then, they fire up the engines and release the brakes. You are pushed back into your seat due to inertia. The amount of power those engines were generating, the accelaration we experienced, and the speed were pretty remarkable. I grinned. :)

We had to switch planes in Atlanta, which was pretty hectic. We had to get from one side of the airport to the other in 40 minutes. The plane starts boarding 30 minutes beforehand, so we were the final few who boarded. As this plane took off, I grinned again. :)

Once we arrived at Miami, we waited for our bus to pick us up and take us to the boat. Seeing the boat for the first time was fairly impressive for everyone on the bus.

Relevant pictures:

Sun: Miami, Florida

The boat started boarding around noon on Sunday and was supposed to sail off at 5pm; however, there was a problem with the engines, so the captain announced his apologies and gave us an estimate of the repair time.

Meanwhile, all passengers were required to participate in a muster drill, which is required by law. Once we heard the general emergency signal (7 short beeps followed by one long beep), we had to grab our lifevests from our staterooms and meet at a designated area. Once there we had to wait in the heat and the crowd while instructions were announced over the loudspeakers in several different languages. Everyone was getting a bit impatient.

There was a dinner on this night that I didn't attend because it was formal attire only. I didn't have a suit with me, and I didn't feel like renting one. I ended up going to another restaurant on-board.

The repairs to the engines took longer than expected and we didn't get out of port until about 1am on Monday. A lot of people were already asleep by then. I was still awake, and after feeling the vibrations of the ship, I was able to get up to the top deck to see Miami relatively moving away from us.

We were treated with a great view of a nearly a full moon reflecting off the water. I would like to have taken some pictures of it, but taking good night photos really isn't possible without a tripod because of the longer shutter speed needed, and rocking boat would have made a tripod useless.

Relevant pictures:

Mon: At Sea

Being on deck was not very enjoyable on this day. Since we were making up for lost time, the ship was moving at a fast pace, which meant there was a constant wind blowing over the deck. The weather on the sea can be fairly windy anyway because, I imagine, there are no objects to block the wind. Good for sailboats, but bad for leisurely strolling on deck.

I did attend dinner because it was casual dress. The service was great, the food was great, and the desert I had was phenominal. I forget what it was called, but it was a layered cake with chocolate and expresso, and it was actually juicy. We also drank some good wine that heightened the dining experience.

Tue: Labadee, Hispaniola

Labadee turned out to be my favorite port-of-call. I wasn't all that prepared to enjoy it to the fullest. I went on shore with my camera and wasn't dressed for swimming. I also didn't think to bring sunscreen with me and had to borrow some from one of my friends.

The locals were gathered in two shopping areas: an "open-air" market (as we called it) and a more structured store. The open-air market had numerous cubby holes for each seller, but they all had similar items. You couldn't walk a meter without someone trying to get your attention to buy something. We quickly got out of there.

The most interesting place in Labadee was Dragon Rock. It was a small peninsula-like area composed of rock with a path on it. The area was shaped like a dragonhead. There was a lookout at the end of the path, where I was surprised to find another reason to call the place Dragon Rock. The rocks there had natural holes all through them, and when the sea waves pushed up through the holes, you heard the hissing sound of air rushing out the tops of the holes. It sounded like a dragon.

Relevant pictures:

Wed: Ocho Rios, Jamaica

I hated Jamaica or at least my experience there. It turns out that the thing to do in Jamaica is the planned excursions, like snorkeling or hiking up a waterfall. Since I didn't want to do anything planned (and I am uncomfortable in water), I opted to walk around with my stateroommate, Scott.

Everything bad about capitalism was concentrated at this port. The locals were lined up to greet us with whatever they could sell. Most of the offers we received from the locals were for taxi services around the city. We were probably asked ten times. We just wanted to walk to see the sights. Since Scott was in the lead, he got most of the offers. Scott got offers to braid his hair. We also got an offer for marijuana, mushrooms, and prostitutes. We turned down all offers.

Needless to say, I was not comfortable walking around the town and once Scott bought a few things from an open-air market (and after being asked by the lady to put his Social Security Number on the back of his traveler's check, which he refused to do), we headed back to the boat. I was too concerned to take out my digital camera to take pictures. Though we frequently passed police officers who were there keeping an eye on things, I had thoughts that I might break some obscure law of theirs and get hauled off to jail. As I got closer to the boat, these irrational thoughts disappeared.

Relevant pictures:

Thu: George Town, Grand Cayman

This port was a relief from the last. I believe Grand Cayman is a British protectorate, so it didn't seem too far from home. They had well-maintained streets and cars. It was interesting to see driving on the left side of the road and the mixture of left and right driver side cars. I had to be extra careful when crossing the streets for a couple of reasons: 1) the streets were quite confusing by not being well marked and having few traffic lights and 2) the cars were driving on the opposite side I expected, which added to the first confusion.

I was disappointed by other tourists who kept attempting to cross the street in front of cars who had a green light. One car eventually had to make a complete stop at a green light to let people get out of his way. There were no walk signals, but that's no excuse.

I bought a couple souvenirs while I was there. I also got lost while walking around because I was avoiding crossing the confusing intersections, so I took too many turns for me to remember how to get back. I was smart enough to have a map with me, so I whipped that out and got back on track.

There were a couple other cruise ships that arrived in Grand Caymans nearly at the same time we did. They also left around the same time we did and were headed in the same direction, so we had two cruise ships shadowing us on the journey to Cozumel.

Relevant pictures:

Fri: Cozumel, Mexico

Cozumel was fairly nice. I was tempted to buy a few souvenirs but ended up not doing so. What little of the town I saw seemed fairly well-kept. There were official taxis there, so there were no overbearing locals trying to get us to ride with them.

Before I even left my ship, I got to see the Rhapsody of the Seas, a smaller (they're all smaller) Royal Carribean ship, dock next to us. I was on the 11th deck in a restaurant and was able to look down into their swimming pools. I felt like sticking my tongue out at the Rhapsody's passengers. I found out later that we supposedly could tour the Rhapsody with our ship's passcard; I would have done so if I had known that sooner.

Relevant pictures:

Sat: At Sea

On the trip back, we were moving at a leisurely pace back to Miami. The wind was light, and we got to see one of the best sunsets of the trip.

Relevant pictures:

Sun: Getting Back

We had to get up early and out of our staterooms by 8am. By that time, we were docked at Miami and crews were busy restocking the ship. We had breakfast and waited for our color to be called. By color, I mean we had luggage tags of a certain color given to us the night before that determined when we left the ship. While waiting, we got to see a airplane capable of water landing land in the bay near the ship.

We got to the airport around noon, and the plane trips back were fairly unremarkable. The layover in Atlanta wasn't bad because we had an hour for the short walk to our departing gate. We had time to eat. On the trip into Louisville, the weather started getting rough, and as we were coming in for the landing, we got bumped around a bit.

Relevant pictures:

More Pictures

Cabin pictures:

Boat pictures:

Seascapes:

Services and dinners:

Overall Thoughts

Content updated: 02 Jul 2004

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