My personal first encounter with a cruise ship was seeing it at sea while we were waiting on our pilot to take us into St. George, Bermuda. Wow, what an impressive sail in and out of that port every time we went there. Of course I was working (getting paid to go to Bermuda no less) so we did not as a crew get to run to all the tourist spots while in port. Of course Bermuda, with such beautiful sights along the shore and super clear water sitting on the rain and looking at the nearby scenery was pretty impressive on its own.
Back to that first cruise ship though, it was one of the original Royal Caribbean Cruise Line ships running to Bermuda on week-long cruises. It looked so big compared to the 192' ship I was on, which was of reasonable size. In fact as I have seen intra islands cargo ships that are that same size if not smaller often while in the Caribbean. Off in the Persian Gulf (Arabian Sea) I have seen even smaller ships ply the waters. So it was in the dark of the pre-dawn morning when I first saw a cruise ship all lit up, there was no missing it. It was a beautiful ship and looked so huge...of course now it would look oh so small!
Almost four years ago now, my wife was about to start a new job and said let’s take a cruise to celebrate the new job. Ok I said let’s look into it. Having worked as an outside rep at a travel agency several years before I did some research and found some good deals. As at that time I was not associated with any agency we called upon someone we knew did good work and got assigned a really nice inside cabin on RCCL's Explorer of the Seas for my first cruise. Excitement built as we waited to go get on the ship and enjoy a cruise.
As we neared our departure date we made plans, packed, checked that we had everything (and money can buy what you forget) and headed off to Miami. We flew over there early the day ahead using FF miles on American which worked out nicely. In fact we lucked out and had first class seats in both directions making for an even nicer trip. Arriving in Miami we headed grabbed our rental car and then headed for the hotel to drop out stuff off. We then set out to explore the area and get some great Cuban food! Yummy!!!
After a short night of sleep (when heading out for the first cruise, it is hard to get a good night sleep ahead). It was then time to get up and eat breakfast. Then earlier than my wife wanted, we headed to the pier, dropped off our luggage and then headed to drop the rental car back to Hertz's downtown location. It was a zoo in the Hertz office, but after a short time we were on our way to the cruise terminal once again. Check in was a snap and off we went to get our pictures taken and get aboard the ship.
Wow, what a huge and very nice ship we just boarded. It was an impressive ship and during the week we only scratched the surface of all things we could see and do aboard Explorer. We had a great time and said to each other we need to do this again. About six months later we tried a 3 night getaway on RCCL's Majesty of the Seas and from there started cruising on a fairly regular basis.
The past 12 months have been the busiest we have spent at sea, with six sailings for almost six full weeks on cruise ships since last Thanksgiving. We have come to enjoy cruising because it is relaxing, offers so much to do when we want to be active, takes us to different ports, and give us a chance to meet other people who will be around the cruise for the full week as well. More on some of these specific reasons we love cruising so much in future blog posts.
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