Somewhere, beyond the sea...
I'm a little slow on posting, but I went on my first cruise recently. We were invited by one of our friends, we'll call him...Arthur. He brought along his friend...Gary. The trip was a bit of a point of contention for me from the start; I'm not really a group vacation person, the cruise was real expensive, and I'm still trying to visit DiploSister in Africa. But we signed on and paid up, and as it got closer I started to get excited for the sun if nothing else.
So, luckily, I found out that I don't have lupus. The biopsy came back as folliculitis--your hair follicles get inflamed and kind of infected. Needless to say I was pretty relieved that all it would take is some antibiotics. So I was armed with my steroids and antibiotics and ready for the tropics.
Pre-Cruise
Arthur arrived at our house around midnight on Thursday, and the plan was to leave around 7am on Friday. We did pretty well--left around 7:30. And most of the day was spent in the car uneventfully. Theeen we got to the DC area. It slowed us down for like 2 hours before we made it to Virginia and our friend's house. Our friend has 4 girls, and his girlfriend (who just moved in) has 2 girls, so for once it wasn't me stuck with a bunch of guys. And I really liked it. The girls warmed up to me pretty quickly and I loved hanging out with them. We ended up staying too late for wanting to leave at like 5 in the morning, but it was pretty fun. The guys also took care of all the driving so I was able to doze in the car all day. The day again passed unremarkably (what? Is that not actually a word?). We finally made it to Cocoa Beach, Florida, in the evening and checked into the hotel. Shortly after, Gary arrived. He was fine at first.
At first. But more on that later. We went out to eat, by which time I was freaking starving. Then back to the hotel where I went to bed pretty quickly.
The next morning, we went to Waffle House (which is an abomination. Don't @ me. It's where dreams go to die.) We packed quickly and grabbed the shuttle to the port. There were obviously a ton of people in line but things went fairly quickly and very smoothly. Before long, we boarded what was essentially a floating city.
On Board
We got on the ship and looked around a bit. Holy freaking huge! We finally made our way to the top and snagged some chairs to lounge in until we could get into our rooms. We may also have discovered the pizza shop that we spent a LOT of time enjoying. We finally got to our rooms and it was really nice. Not anything huge, but we got balconies so we could go out and look at the water; Arthur and Gary were two doors down so we could lean over and talk across balconies too. We spent the day exploring and hanging out in the sun. There were all sorts of restaurants, bars, and shops (including the likes of Tiffany, Coach, and Kate Spade.
Then it was back to lounging by the pool. As I took off my tee and shorts, Gary wolf whistled and told Soldier that he's got such a hot wife, he might hit on me later, etc. I'm sure he thought he was being complimentary but...no. I think that was the point where I started to feel a bit uncomfortable around him.
The rest of the day was spent sunning, eating, drinking. It was a pretty good start.
Nassau, Bahamas
Day two was our stop at Nassau. We got up kind of early, had breakfast, and were off. We just kind of wandered around, mostly past all the tourist shops. (Small gripe about the Caribbean cruise stops vs. Juneau: most of the shops were the ones owned by cruise ships. Juneau had a lot more shops with local art and souvenirs. It was a little disappointing.) After a while of wandering through the town, we found a beach to relax at for a few minutes. Soldier and I waded into the water (too cold for me) and before long we were on our way back to the ship. We finally did find a souvenir shop to grab a couple of shot glasses but that was it.
The next day was a sailing day, which we again spent sunning, eating, and drinking. By this time I had already gotten a bit of a sunburn despite being vigilant with sunscreen. See, judgy dermatologist, this is why I wanted to do a tiny bit of tanning before the trip. I just did my best to put on even more sunscreen so it wouldn't get way worse.
That night was the first formal dining night. I was pretty excited to get all gussied up and, if I do say so myself, I slayed. Gary again felt the need to go off a little too long about how hot he thought I was. After dinner we made our way to Tiffany. I got my shinies cleaned and a couple more to add to the collection. Gary bought an expensive necklace for his girlfriend, then spent the rest of the night complaining about how much he spent. That was fun.
Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas
Arthur and Gary were supposed to be going scuba diving here, so Soldier and I planned to go to Coral World. (Think SeaWorld, but more conservationist. I do enjoy some sea creatures!) However, the day before, the boys were going to get prepped and they asked Arthur how much weight he needed. He accidentally responded that he didn't know because it'd been so long since he'd gone diving. Well, PADI *recommends* that you dive every 2 years or get re-certified, so they told Arthur he couldn't do it. It was a bummer, but they decided to find a local shop or go with us if plan b didn't pan out. The ship got into port mid-morning and, as I was watching it dock, I got really tired. So it was naptime. We couldn't find the other guys when we got up, so we figured they had rushed off to find a dive shop.
Just off the ship there was a music class playing steel drums, which I loved. I made Soldier stop for a few minutes. Then we jumped in a cab for the ride across the island. We saw a lot of shacks and dilapidated buildings just a couple of miles from the cruise docks. It's sad, but I think it's important to see that stuff; that there's a struggling community just outside the tourism area. I mean, maybe this is just a shallow thought because I didn't actually do anything with that information, but whatever.
We got to Coral World at the perfect time. Minutes after our arrival was a fish feeding (giant tarpon), then sea turtle feeding, then a sea lion demonstration, then stingray feeding, then a dolphin demonstration. After all that (and of course some observation of the animals) I'd had more than enough sun and was worried I was going to be sick or pass out, so we called it a day.
Back on the ship, the boys asked why we'd left without them. Apparently they had been banging on our door and figured we were just gone when we completely slept through it. So they mostly stayed on the ship and drank all day.
Philpsburg, St. Maarten
We started the day by walking...a lot...from the port to the beach. Finally we sat on the beach, then moved to a bar. I'd heard that there was good shopping on the French side of the island and we decided to check it out, even though it was a holiday for them. (I just tried looked it up and couldn't find what it was though). When we got to the French side, we didn't see anything that struck our fancy, so we asked the cab driver to just give us the island tour. It was pretty cool, we got to see a lot, and we made a stop to see a bunch of iguanas. After the tour we moseyed on back to the ship. I was able to get a couple of local, authentic souvenirs here so I was happy.
Days 6 and 7 were spent at sea, on our way back to Florida. Day 6 was the second formal night. For all of Gary's talk about how he only wears fancy, tailored three piece suits, he wore the same one both nights. Yes, I judged him. After dinner we went to see one of the shows. It was fine. I thought it would be more like Cirque du Soleil, but it was more about some cheesy musical numbers. But, they were talented.
Day 7 we just kind of wandered around. We were able to catch the absolute last showing of Cats. It's definitely not my favorite musical, but it was something to do. The guys were thrown off that there was no real plot, which I'd kind of forgotten about. But hey, we got to see a Broadway musical in the middle of the ocean.
And just like that, it was over. We got off the ship, picked up the rental car, and were on our way to the Kennedy Space Center. I was a little taken about about the $60 per person entrance fee, but we sucked it up. On top of the expense, each exhibit herded you through these dumb videos and every building was fucking freezing. I got REALLY grumpy. All the old space ships and stuff were interesting, but I didn't really feel like it was worth the cost, especially with the forced herding.
Our last adventure was to have dinner with a lifelong friend of Soldier and Arthur. It was actually a really nice way to end the trip.
