We needed a relaxing holiday, so we decided to go on a cruise. I did not realise how stressful "just living" in New York can be. Your brain is never able to turn "off". There is always something that is distracting, whether it is sirens at 3am in the morning or the mayhem of people when you simply want to walk down the street to buy a few groceries.
We so enjoyed our last cruise on Royal Caribbean that we decided to go with them again. We picked Oasis of the Seas, the largest cruise liner in the world. When we read about the cruise liner it sounded great but I quietly thought to myself "yeah, yeah.....all this marketing hype, how good can it really be??" Little did I know. I will get back to the ship later. The cruise route we selected sailed out of Fort Laudadale in Florida, went to St Thomas (one of the main islands that make up the US Virgin Islands) then onto St Maarten (West Indies) then finally to Nassau (the Bahamas) and on the seventh day back to Fort Lauderdale.
The flight down to Fort Lauderdale took three hours from LaGuardia airport. Because you could board the boat from midday, we decided to head down the Fort Luderdale the day before so we could get on the boat as early as possible. We booked a hotel room down near the shipping terminal which is located in the marina section of For Lauderdale because it turned out that it was really pretty.
After we had checked in, we immediately wanted to explore Fort Luderdale. The Hotel Concierge suggested that we take a water taxi into town. And I am so glad we did. It was such a great way to see the area. The houses were huge!!!
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| The water taxi we took to get in to town. |
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| Both the above and below images are some of the houses that were dotted along the marina shoreline. |
One of the stops along the water taxi route was at a pirate themed bar/restaurant so we decided to stop there and have an early dinner. It was a lot of fun.
By the time we left the pirate restaurant it was dark, but that did not stop us. We got back on the water taxi and headed to "downtown" Fort Lauderdale. It was so nice and pretty. The main drag was decked out in fairy lights. Live music and the wonderful aroma of food came wafting out the restaurants as we walked by. There were art galleries, ice-cream parlors all alive with people enjoying the lovely warm evening.
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| Downtown Fort Lauderdale. |
After we had a yummy dessert and walked the rest of the strip we decided to head back to our hotel. It was getting late and we didn't want to be tired for the start of our cruise.
The day of the cruise had finally arrived. Yes....you guessed it, all morning while I was getting ready I was humming the "Love Boat" theme. Kind of embarrassing, I know but I didn't realise how excited I was until then.
So riding down on the elevators to check out of our hotel room I was in this happy zen state thinking about the peacefulness of sitting out on our cabin's balcony watching the ocean as we sailed through the water, when, the elevators doors opened and what greeted us was the crazy mayhem of adults hyped up on coffee, energized children screaming and running around with excitement and suit cases strewn all across the lobby floor creating an obstacle course that only experienced suitcase drivers could handle! Clearly we were not the only people in the hotel that were going on a cruise today.
Finally after some successful suitcase manuvers we made to the check out desk, paid our bill and got a cab to take us to the shipping terminal. There were three cruise liners leaving Fort Lauderdale today, all I could think of was, if this is how crazy it is in one hotel lobby what is the check-in going to be like. Fortunately, each cruise vessel has their own check in terminal, but don't forget we had picked the biggest ship. So as you can imagine I was revving myself up for more crazy noise and mayhem as six thousand guests trampled each other to get on board and "hoover" down as much food as they could, from the buffet restaurant.
But to my surprise it was all very easy and effortless. Royal Carriebean how the check-in process down to a fine art. Except for one minor issue with me leaving my green card (little plastic identity card like our drivers licence) back in New York - whoops sorry Bryan for causing you stress about whether I would get back into the US at the end of the trip - we were on board the ship and "ooooo'ing" and "aaaahhh'ing" at what we were seeing.
Some basics about the ship. It holds up to 6000 guests and over 2000 staff. There are six pools, 20 restaurants, 14 guest floors, an ice rink, a park (yes a real one), a full size carousel and an outdoor high level diving platform that is used for shows a 0.6km undisturbed running track (it's on its own floor) and a prominard with lots of shops including a Coach handbag store.
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| The pool in the adult area (children under 16 could not be in this area) of the boat. |
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| Little running lakes are snaked throughout the Adult area of the boat. |
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| Looking down onto the park. Notice the balconies. These were known as "Interior Balcony Rooms". They did not have views of the ocean, instead they had views of the park instead. |
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| Looking down to the Aqua Theatre. |
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| The 9 hole miniature golf course |
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| The casino. It was big. |
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| The Comedy Room. |
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| The Jazz Club. |
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| The main Promenard |
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| The English Pub. |
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| Looking down on the main promenard. |
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| The carousel. |
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| The Boardwalk where there was the Carousel, 50's Diner, Surf Shack Restaurant and the Aqua Theatre as well other shops. |
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| The Aqua Theatre. |
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| Johnny Rocket's 50's Diner |
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| This boat has a Crows Nest where the captain of the ship can stand in. It has a glass floor. The captain can then easily steer the boat next to the dock with ease. |
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| The Park on the boat was called "Central Park". |
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| Central Park |
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| Another view of Central Park. In Central Park there were restaurants, shops, an Art Gallery, bars. |
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| Entrance to Central Park |
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| Another view of Central Park. |
On the first night the cast did "Hairspray" - it was fantastic. They had specific cast members for each of the different performance events for example, there were dancers, singers, ice-skaters, divers, acrobats. We went to a different show every night and each one was really good. We went to a comedy show and the two comedians were really funny. Another night we saw a cabaret singer and he got us up from our seats dancing. We also saw an ice-skating show that was all about the different stories of Hans Christian Andersen and one afternoon we saw a high diving aquatic acrobatic show which was a lot of fun. All in all the ship kept us constantly entertained.
The First Stop - St Thomas (US Virgin Island)
With many of the stops that you make on the cruise the goal of the locals is to get you to buy, buy, buy gemstones, watches, jewelry, clothes and other tourist crap. And yes, my goal was to make sure I got my snow globes from each of the stops.
Anyway, St Thomas was very pretty. One thing that was interesting was that even though it belonged to the US the cars drove on the left hand side of the road. And it didn't matter whether your car was a left hand drive or a right hand drive both were allowed on the road.
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| Main Square. Notice how all the windows and doors have shutters to protect them during the hurricane season. |
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| All the buildings were painted lovely bright colours. |
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| We did a tour of the island and this is a picture of Bryan from one of the lookout spots. |
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| The Disney cruise and another cruise line were also in port the day we were there. |
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| This photo was taken at one of the beaches on the island. |
Second Stop - St Maarten/St Martin
The next day we stopped at St Maarten. This tiny little island is divided into two countries, St Maarten (Dutch occupied) and St Martin (French occupied). The boat pulled into St Maarten and we boarded a tiny little speed boat to take us to the main shopping area.
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| Check out the size of our boat (left) next to a normal size cruising ship (right) |
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| We were on the speed boat heading towards the main part of town when I took this photo. |
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| One of the many pretty buildings on the island. |
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| The main shopping strip. |
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| Yes, there was a Hard Rock there and yes, we had lunch there! |
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| A Woman selling bags and hats on the boardwalk. |
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| The beach, people swimming and sun bathing and the boats in the distance. |
We didn't do a tour of the island, we decided to just spend the day checking out the different stores. We both regretted our choice.
Final Stop - Nassau (The Bahamas)
The Bahamas is still part of the British Commonwealth and they are very proud of that fact. Because we chose poorly at St Marten (not doing a tour) we decided that we would definitely do a local tour of Nassau and we stopped at several of their major sites.
