A Vacation 30 Years In the Making

Not really 30 years...but that's what we were celebrating.

Happy 30th wedding anniversary mom and dad.

It was actually about a year in the making. My parents mentioned to me last December (or possibly sometime before or after that) that they wanted to take us all on a cruise for their 30th wedding anniversary.

Looking back on that - I thought it would be great. I thought it'd be great to take a much needed break at the end of the year - and I had it all planned out. By this past March I already had the vacation scheduled.

And then things changed.

Luckily, the date of my parent's anniversary doesn't change. And their plans to go on this cruise with their family didn't change either.

I wouldn't call it the greatest vacation I've ever taken - but it was definitely an experience.

We drove to Fort Lauderdale to board the Royal Caribbean's Independence of the Seas. It was an 8 day cruise with 4 of those days being at sea. We ported in St. Maarten, St. Thomas, Puerto Rico and Labadee.

Highlights from the cruise:

-Since it was stormy in Florida when we left the waves were a bit rocky for the first 3 days at sea. It took almost the entire family a day and a half to get our sea legs. Some of us even longer. The wife was in bed for basically 2 whole days - it's like the spinning drunkenness that never ends. Nor can you get off.

Our first morning on the cruise my sister's boyfriend and I thought it would be a good idea to go lift some weights. Seeing as how I was already a bit sea sick - massive exertion of energy didn't help matters. I was running to the nearest...toilet - sink, anything I could find. Luckily I was able to hold it until I got back to my estate room.

My sister wasn't so lucky. After my feeble attempt at a workout, we decided to go grab some breakfast at what would be the running joke of the entire cruise: The all day (From 6 am to 11 pm) buffet, "Windjammer". It was basically a step up from the OCB. And for those that don't know - I am a huge fan of buffets, but only once every 2-3 months. Not 2-3 times a day...sometimes 4.

You know when you eat at a buffet and everything starts to taste the same? That happened to me by lunch time on the 2nd day of the cruise.

That breakfast though was one of the hardest things I've ever done. While I was eating I was looking at my sister across the table who looked as pale as a zombie. She wasn't eating and I knew why - anything she tried to put down would immediately come back up. And I guess even without putting anything down things did start to come back up.

We grabbed some cups for her to yak in to. I don't think many people can say they were eating a buffet breakfast while watching one of their loved ones barf in to a cup across from them. I did.

And the worst part of it was that after filling roughly 3 cups full of her nastiness, she spilled one of them on the table. It looked like there was a yoke floating around in it's slimy terribleness. Then who was right on our tail to clean up the mess? A poor Windjammer employee - probably wondering why he ever left his 3rd world country for this.

-There were other free options for food which were all decent. There was a place called Sorrento's which had pizza and they had a cafe which served small sandwiches. Every night we'd go to the formal dining area for our 3 course meals (sometimes 5 or 6 courses). I was amazed that I could order multiple appetizers, entrees and desserts. It only took a few days to stretch my stomach out (I gained 8 lbs in 9 days).

-We didn't do much on the ship for the first 2 days. It felt a bit like a floating prison but with better food and better beds (I've never been in prison before). That is, until we found the activities list. Every day there were sports tournaments (volleyball, dodgeball, ping pong, basketball, golf) a belly flop contest, trivia was held every 5 hours, there was a ship wide scavenger hunt. And unfortunately for us we didn't really start getting involved in those activities until around day 4. If I had to do it all over again I'd start with the activities immediately.

-The first port that we stopped in was St. Maarten. Everyone was so happy that the boat had stopped that all we wanted to do was lay on the beach. St. Maarten is interesting because the island is split with a French side and a Dutch side. We were taxied to the Orient beach on the French side which included a nudist colony. Unfortunately just like other nudist resorts, 95% of the people that were in the buff probably should not have been. One woman I saw laying down on the beach, I couldn't tell where her breasts stopped and the next of 4 fat rolls began. I saw a Peter Griffin too - a guy with such a fat belly that it hung down over his manhood. He obviously didn't need swimming trunks either.

-The next port we stopped at was St. Thomas. Downtown was just a mess of jewelry stores. I don't think I've ever seen that many stores that sold diamonds in one place before. The only other business I saw downtown was a hooters (obviously) and that was it. After paying an arm and a leg the day before for a taxi ride to and from the beach ($120) I haggled with a taxi in St. Thomas and got twice as long of a ride for 1/3rd the cost. I don't know why I didn't apply my haggling skills the day before.

The taxi drove us from downtown to Megan's Bay lookout (My description doesn't do it justice) and then to Coki beach. No nudity this time, but one of the best beaches I've ever been to.

-The next 2 ports we stopped in were Puerto Rico and Labadee. We walked all of old San Juan Puerto Rico and got ourselves some headaches for lunch at Senor Frogs. Labadee was basically a port made specifically for the cruise lines. It was a beach that Royal Caribbean had purchased from the Haitians and you could tell. Everything was man made and it all felt very fake. In my opinion it was an unfortunate way to end the port stops, but then again we had some of the best cruise provided food (BBQ on the beach) the entire week there.

Overall we all had a good time on the cruise. I'm not sure if I would do it again any time soon, and if I did I'd probably find a cruise with a lot less days at sea (we spent almost half the cruise at sea). Most importantly I got in a lot of quality time with my family which is definitely what I needed. Last year I didn't miss my family as much as I do this year. I blame it on the weather down here (almost as cold as it is in Seattle) and also already being familiar with a lot of things in Charleston.

While we were on the cruise my mom kept mentioning how they had gone to all of these islands 20 years ago. I kept thinking how crazy it would be for us to return in another 20 years. We just might.