Holy Ship!!

click here for just the pics!

We hadn't used our passports in a long time, but the day finally came:  i decorated our luggage in the weeks beforehand, bought some Dramamine, selected one of my "lost in translation" signs, and packed up our snorkel gear.
Joel and I were off for 11 nites of rock-a-bye-baby on the Serenade of the Seas.  This was gonna be our first-ever cruise ship experience! thanks to the nudging of my parents.

They booked this trip for themselves about 2 years ago, and invited a bunch of other ppl along.  I invited others as well.  A couple ppl were booked but had to bail out, and they were dearly missed.  We ended up with a party of eleven:  my folks, joel and i, cousin and aunt, and another cousin with his whole fam, who live in Alaska, and I've hardly ever seen.  My other family I only see once a year, when we return home to MN/WI for a spell in the summer.  So it was looking SPECTACULAR to have all this adventurous time in store with them!!
My dad bought a selfie-stick just for the occasion, and he went to town with the thing! (okay, we ALL did)  Overall, it was a blast, even though the port days flew by fast.  What a strange string of travel, where you just begin to get a feel for a new place you're in, on land, and then *WHOOSH!*, back on board you go, to float through the night, and wake up in a whole new place.  

What i found so incredible about living for 12 days on a cruise ship, was the absence of a multitude of things on our part:  NO MEAL PLANNING, NO COOKING, NO CLEANING, NO CELL PHONE, NO INTERNET.  (Those last two by choice- instead of paying for access, i shut my phone OFF.  it was HEAVEN; my brain, eyeballs and (typing) thumbs thanked me for the respite).  What a luxury!  WoW.  I was able to focus 100% on staring off at the ocean, playing lots of games, and napping in the sunshine.  Or we were off excursioning.

one of my spirit animals

CRITTERS! At times even in our bedroom.  My most-memorable was in Costa Rica, the very first sloth we came across.  We were on a boat making our way up the canal.  It's arm was stretched out with claws hooked around a branch, the other arm draped over it's shoulder, head turned, and a goony, relaxed grin on it's face... i think it might had been drooling.  Good Lord.  So adorbs.  We also saw a small cayman, and both male and female Jesus Christ lizards (they run on the top of the water). After that was zip-lining through the rain forest.  With a half-hour left before ship blast off, we met Ritmo, a man selling his handmade jewelry in the market.  He's got a thing for combing the local stream and river shores, looking for attractive rocks and stones to polish and wire-wrap into jewelry.  We spent all our time chatting it up with him!  Showed him pictures of the rocks we sell from our shop, and he was blown away!  Many of them he'd never heard of before.  I got his business card so i can mail him a box with some fun new stones to play around with. 

Touching a moldy wall

The next day, after an early morning bus ride an hour away from port, passed the Panama city skyline, which surprised us all; sprawling, with many many buildings- we had no idea!  Then a couple hours later, I was touching the Panama canal!  Joel tried to lick it.  It still kinda blows my mind that we were in it.   What a marvel!  Our boat had to piggy-back behind a giant freighter through each of the locks.  It took a few hours, was hot as heck, and quite the experience. 

Day 5 greeted us with yet another impressive skyline, right from our balcony, in Cartegena, Columbia.  We saw more critters, up close and personal, through a sanctuary area, on our way to find a taxi into town.  With my rusty spanish, we found a friendly driver who dumped us just outside the giant cityscape, in a quaint area with narrow brick streets, filled with shops and restaurants.  It was so hot and humid, and we pretty much just hung out in a lounge drinking cold beers and sharing a cigar.  The artwork was fantastic.  The owner was cool beans.  It had a color-changing floor with a fountain bubbling up from underneath.  (nice touch.)  Along our walk to hail a taxi back home, we did discover that Columbia is known for it's emeralds, and saw a hunky specimen inside a jeweler's shop. 

my kinda place        >HAPPY<

By early evening the following day, Aruba took us into port.  We were docked there for the evening and part of the day tomorrow.  So we gave our dinner waiters on the ship a break and all went out together for a happy hour, FINALLY getting my feet into the ocean!!  And then dinner.  The following day we did a snorkel excursion on a Catamaran with my mom and dad, in some very choppy water, over an old shipwreck.  We saw HUGE schools of fish hanging out around the rusting rubble.  It was wild!  If that wasn't cool enough (it was, but...) when we did a little shopping later in town, i  happened upon another MAGIC RING (Toroflux) to replace the one i lost on NYE.  (Someone danced off with it and didn't bring it back!)  I've only ever seen them online, and despite missing it, i hadn't ordered another yet.  so, BOOYA--  I got my "adult slinky" back.  (OMG, it was a HIT on the dance floor one night, outside by the pool, under the stars- about 30 ppl passed it between each other!  I LOVE WATCHING faces when they first SEE at it, and wonder what it is, or what you're supposed to do with it.  HAha!!!!!  Aruba has a fantastic energy.  It was my kind of place.  (Happy) 😄 and i we experienced very little of it!  We'll have to go back sometime.  Our last stop was in Curacao, with more postcard-picture-perfect beaches, and crystal blue waters.  This place is very Dutch-y.  Like our stop in Columbia, Joel and I did not book an excursion, choosing instead to wing it on our own.  Altho we ended up spending it with my cousin and his family!  Roaming the colorful streets, just browsing the shops, and eventually eating a very island-authentic lunch.  We were back on the ship by late afternoon, then shoved off for 2 more days at sea, on our return to Florida.

I have to say, the crew on the ship will have a lasting impression on me.  With the exception of one night in Aruba, every evening of our trip, the eleven of us enjoyed a fancy 3 course dinner together.  We'd meet at the same time, at the same table, with the same head waiter and his assistant. Two nights were formal and we got all
dolled-up.  It was a unique experience seeing our 2 wait staff each night- we really got to know and appreciate them both.  Niraj was head waiter and Tirachi his assisted.  They were both from the same country, and it was a place that none of us had ever heard of.  In fact, hanging out on the ship and chatting it up the with staff overall, proved to be nothing short of a geography lesson!  Oh my goodness, for the countries i'd never heard of, or knew their exact location.  Oi! 😮  One night Niraj took out his phone to show us pictures of where he grew up, on the island of Mauritius.  It's just east of Madagascar.  His photos were jaw-dropping: the clear blue waters, palm trees, and other things that looked a lot like Aruba, only even more pristine.  Niraj had the travel bug, and experience in the hospitality industry, so he scored this job and was getting to visit so many new places around the world.  The crew works long hours, and often do not have time off the ship to enjoy where they go, but he seemed happy and appreciative of his experience.  I'm not sure how Tirachi ended up with this gig, but she was adorable, a bit soft-spoken, and we enjoyed seeing her open up to us through our many little chats and jokes, which they were great sports about (we got a little rowdy at times! HAHA).  It was a pretty short amount of time overall that we had with them, but with seeing them consistently, we all sure bonded.  Our last dinner was kind of sad!  They posed with us for a picture to remember them by.

We'll always remember the man who tended our stateroom twice a day, too.  His name was Inyoman.  He's from Malaysia.  His had some broken English, but conversed with us well.  After a day went by, he told me i could call him "Yoman" for short.  Almost every single day, he'd be somewhere in the long hallway, no matter how far down, he would see us, wave and greet us by name.  I enjoyed waving and shouting back "Yo, mon!!"  HAHA.  Not only that, multiple times he made sure to let me know the sign on our door made him laugh and smile whenever he walked by it.  (He got the joke.  YaY!!)

The ship holds 2,490 guests and 891 crew.  My parents say it was not at guest capacity on this voyage.  I had nothing to compare the sheer size of the ship to, but this thing seemed pretty big- YET, it was small enough for our party to scatter off, and within a couple hours we'd all usually run back into each other.  My folks have been on larger ships and claim that doesn't usually happen.  So it was BIG! but cozy.  (Perfect!)
Looking back, I'm also SO glad that our first two days were at sea.  (Excursion days were very hustle and bustle.)  This gave us time to really unwind, go exploring and get to know the ship.  There were so many different things to do and nooks to hang out in: a cinema, lending library (i nerded out till 3am one night on a book all about chicks who surf), fitness center, spa, casino, lounges, bars, 2 pools, hot tubs, shopping center, night club (the Vortex !) the theater (stand up comedy!), formal dining room, and all-day buffet, with it's crazy-cool dessert bar.  I went to town on that thing (who DOESN'T!?).   So fun!  There was also a self-serve ice cream machine that my mum and aunt were ALL ABOUT!  They looked forward to making their own creamy creations every single day.  They had more dang fun with that thing 😂  There were oodles of games; ping pong, shuffleboard, mini golf, scavenger hunts, pickle ball, and a rock climbing wall, which Joel did for his first time.  He was at it for a while.  It wore him out!  He said it was a lot of fun.  I went to my first HUSH party, and boy, that was a HOOOOOOOT-- one of the funnest times i've ever had!!  If you ever hear about one and consider going, i highly recommend you do  😄 

Me watching Joel watching a movie at the pool

One day the boat was rocking CRAZY intense.  I kept holding the hand rails when available as we walked around.  That afternoon we thought to go for a swim, and to our amazement, the pool we chose was closed, and we witnessed multiple waves of water jumping up and sloshing out of the pool, splattering across the floor.  The perimeter was roped off while staff were continually, and somewhat frantically trying to keep up with squeegee-ing the water back in.  It was a funny thing to see!  Another similarly rocky day they kept the main pool open and i went for a swim in it.  What a strange sensation making it through the wonky waves.  It made me giggle.  So did the thought that I was out on the ocean, and i was swimming in a pool.  I wasn't IN the ocean, but it was right there below me!  Instead I was floating IN a pool.  ON the ocean.
{{{{{Ooooooh, Deep thoughts}}}}}

Also, AH!!  SO MUCH (cool) ART!!  Truly unique sculptures, blown glass, photographs, textiles, and paintings, permanently installed all over the place.  Not only that, on the morning of our first full day at sea, there was an hour-long art history seminar going on.  It proved quite interesting! and i learned some new things.  The following day was the first of multiple, LIVE art auctions.  I went to my first art auction!  They were fun, and pretty interesting. I'm glad i got to experience that.  At one point there was bidding on ceramic plates made by Pablo Picasso.  I thought that was really neato.

So after 2 last days at sea, we woke up just before 7am, as the ship was just docking into port back at the mainland.  Everyone was shuffled off and through customs around noonish, then we had most of the day to enjoy with 6 of us still.  (the Cousin family had to take off right away.)  We had lunch only a walk away from the hotel that my folks were staying at, tried some fun new drinks, and to top it all off, Life rainbow-ed us just before Joel and I hopped a ride to the airport.  My mom and dad were spending the night here, then going to Miami the following day to board another ship for a week.  TALK ABOUT TIMING- that next morning they announced that all cruises were cancelled until further notice.  How AMAZING that Joel and I booked this a year and a half ago, and we got to safely enjoy our entire trip.
W😮WY

 What else...?  Some details i'm just leaving out.
We never needed the dramamine (even tho that ship really got a-rockin' at times!)
That sensation while laying in bed at night is something i really miss.
Looking out across the sky every day, with it's far views, and sunsets, were phenomenal.

We'll definitely do it again.
Haven't booked another yet, but let us know if you wanna come with next time 😊
    ROCK-A-BYE-BABY! 

     Tally-Ho, amigos!  👋