Remember how I went on a cruise?
Twenty miles of freedom and solitude. It was beautiful. And really hot and humid and sweaty.
No, we didn't go to the hotel. No, I don't know why.
Remember how I said I would post pictures?
Yeah. Here's the thing.
I started out this whole cruise thing intent on documenting everything about Florida and the Bahamas for posterity.
I took pictures of suitcases as we waited to board the ship.
I took pictures of Brad, shocked at the sheer size of the boat.
I handed my camera to a stranger as he walked by and asked him to take an unflattering picture of us as we stood on the deck.
(I wish I'd counted how many times I was asked or I volunteered to take pictures of people--it was a lot.)
Then--
Nothing.
I hardly took any pictures while we cruised the Caribbean.
There was one big adventure.
We rented bikes in Freeport and enjoyed the island free from other tourists and their restrictions.
We ate lunch in a beautiful botanical garden.
An enormous spider was eating her lunch right next to our table, the strands of her web so strong that I could pluck them like a harp and instead of snapping, the strands would satisfactorily vibrate my disturbance back to the center of the web.
We got coerced into paying for pictures with this guy.
We snapped a selfie of us with the Atlantis hotel in the background with a cell phone.
I took a great picture of Brad reading in our room.
And that was it.
In five days at sea.
We went snorkeling twice, saw the entire city of Nassau via taxi--including forts, the Queen's Wall, and teal, yellow and black bunting draping every building in preparation for the national independence celebration later that week. We spent an entire day on a turquoise encircled white beach where white fish and white crabs and white shelled muscles made their homes. We ate and ate and ate and ate.
You'll have to take my word for it.
I did try to take pictures of the beautiful ocean. The one day I set aside as a full photo day, I pulled my camera out of my bag, and the battery was dead. Not dead from overuse, but dead from having been inadvertently turned on in my bag dozens of times as I carried it from place to place. It's weird when you're on a cruise, because you leave the boat in the morning and you return in the afternoon. If you're planning any water activities, then you wear your swimsuit all day, and even living in AZ I never do that. Oh, and if you're planning on shooting pictures, you better bring your spare battery.
Oops.
We had a good time, but we discovered that cruising the ocean with 2763 other people may not be our favorite way to vacation. We liked the idea of going to sleep in one place and waking up in the next, but the people and the commotion and the lines and . . . the people, well, . . . not so much.
There may be another cruise in our future, but the best part of this trip wasn't the cruise. It was five days away from everyone and everything we know. It was five days away from cell phones and blogs and emails and work crises and school and kids and Facebook.
It was five days alone with my favorite person in all the world. And that made treasured memories.
You were in Florida?? That's fun! Greg and I are thinking that at some point we're here we'll have to do the whole cruise to the Bahamas thing, but we'll see.
ReplyDeleteLove cruising. We tend to travel on Holland America Lines - they have many smaller ships -1200 passengers - and are more geared to adults. My husband and I are usually some of the youngest on the ship. But it's very quiet, especially at night.
ReplyDeleteYep, the real deal is being together, alone.
ReplyDelete=)