The first week of September, I took off for a Caribbean cruise, and in the process missed the first week of my senior year of high school. To be completely honest, I really enjoyed missing school, but I didn't enjoy the majority of the trip enough to skip it.
A lot of my friends go on cruises and just rave about how wonderful they are, so it is safe to say that I had high expectations. I had also done a lot of research on the boat I would be on, and it seemed magical. When the day finally arrived, and I boarded the boat, I found that my expectations where far too high.
Let's get one thing straight, the boat was beautiful, and I have been on boats before, so I know that I do not get sea sick. Let's get another thing straight, the opulence described by the cruise website was far from what the boat did have to offer. Everything online sounded so grand, so it was super disappointing to find that nothing was how I imagined it.
Another thing that fell far from expectations was the food. EVERYONE who I have ever talked to just loves the food on cruises, but I found that the only place that the food was good was the main dinning room. There was not a lot to do on the boat, besides eating, which is the only plausible reason I can come up with for why people ate anywhere else.
I tried to spend sea days at the pool; the problem with that is the fact that I'm fair skinned and I burn very fast. Two days in the sun and I was fried, so I also spent a lot of time in my room watching countless reruns of Married with Children, Mom, and Mike and Molly. A lot of the programs that they had running were 18+, and I couldn't even sneak in because they had to scan your identification card. When I did attempt to leave the room, things were ruined for me. For example, I went to watch a movie, and the staff canceled the showing because a group of forty-year-old men threw tantrums like toddlers until they turned on the football game; might I add that that specific game was being shown in every single bar I passed on the way back to my room, and when I returned I found it was also being shown on tv. I have to say, time on the boat was very boring and the sea days seemed to endlessly drag on.
On day four, we docked in St. Maarten, and I could not have been happier to get off of the stupid boat. St. Maarten was a huge shopping destination for jewelry, something my mom and I were not shopping for, so we walked around the town and for the most part avoided the jewelry stores. There were also some very beautiful beaches, but again I was already burnt from being on the boat, so we didn't spend time there. All of the locals were very nice, and extremely welcoming as the tourism helps boost their small economy. After walking about 4 miles around the island, my mom and I decided to head back to the boat because 3 days in the sun prior to docking really took a toll on us both. I will say, St. Maarten was absolutely gorgeous and we definitely did not have enough time on the island.
The next place we went, on day five, was San Juan, Puerto Rico. Now, San Juan was very pretty, but I could have easily skipped being here and spent another day in St. Maarten. Puerto Rico was another shopping destination, but that's all it really was. The day prior I did have a little bit of a recovery from the sun, so I wouldn't have minded going swimming, but we were not there long enough to get a cab to take us to some far off beach. So again, my mom and I walked around the town for a while, and then returned to the boat early, where I did nothing all day again. I will say, Puerto Rico has some of the prettiest buildings I have ever seen.
Our final destination was Haiti. I could not believe how beautiful all of the beaches are there. Now, when I say that I mean the beaches were pretty, their, "coral gardens" were not. I was able to go snorkeling in Haiti, and I thought that was so exciting because I had heard how gorgeous it was there, and we were able to be in open water and not in a man made aquarium. It was super disappointing to find out that all of their coral, as well as the marine life, was a brownish gray. The rest of the day however, was not disappointing at all. It was so hot that day and no one wanted to get out of the aqua water. If I could, I would have not left Haiti at all. If anything, that was the only instance where time went by too fast; I cannot wait to return there one day.
I do want to say that though I didn't have a wonderful time on the boat, I am very thankful that I was able to have an experience of going on a cruise. To sum up how I felt about the whole trip, I guess I would say that I had a wonderful time on the islands, and a terrible time on the boat. I learned something new about myself: cruises are not my thing, but traveling definitely is.
