The Wide Wild World

Thinking of Cruising?

My husband wanted to experience a really really big boat for his birthday so he chose a cruise ship called “Oasis of the Seas,” with roughly 5,000 passengers and 2100 crew.

If you are lucky, there comes a time in life when “the government” makes you have RMDs (Required Minimum Distributions)—and you have to take some of your “retirement money” and spend it or at least put it somewhere. Our financial advisor encouraged traveling while we could.

So husband wanted to try out the big boat. (It truly didn’t sway much at all, but we were, again, lucky, I know.) Gorgeous deep blue and lovely swashes of green waters on every side, clipping along at 20-21 knots or so. Seemingly an “endless” ocean after we launched from a port in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

After sailing solid for two long days, we made day stops on three very small “oasis” island countries: St. Kitts, St. Maarten, St. Thomas (all pretty close to places like Puerto Rico), and all offering excursions (for extra $ of course).

And ending with Coco Cay’s “Perfect Day” with free food on a very small island (no extra $ involved unless you went snorkeling or something).

Overall, we enjoyed three sumptuous meals a day, at our leisure, no extra tip or money required. (Well, there was the initial cruise amount which included free meals.) No making beds, no cleaning bathrooms, the “stateroom attendant” took care of that, each day, with those cute wound up “towel” animals made out of extra towels. It was sweet. Sleeping in. Reading books. Playing on phones. Watching TV news. Going to shows onboard. A fantastic hour of women and men flying from amazing heights into water and then watching the water disappear… !

Listening to karaoke contests. Singing with a guy, Andy, who focused on songs everyone knew from the 60s and 70s: “When you’re weary, feeling small … I’m on your side… bridge over troubled water” etc.”

Husband had almost daily exercise on a huge roomful of bikes and other exercise equipment, and I enjoyed rounding the huge ship’s long track 4-5 times.

The busy busy staff cleared plates from our tables before we could object, and waiters dashed to and from the numerous ship kitchens (guessing at least 4-6 of those?). They also managed to engage in conversation with us: finding out who we were, where we were from, the dot to dot games we played while waiting on dishes brought to us, remembering their own games from childhood, always inquiring if the food was tasty. Husband says he had the best New York strip steak he’d ever ever had, so that was a nice win.

The attendants were from so many countries including Europe, Asia, India, Africa, Romania, Philippines, many South American countries, even Canada and a few U.S. I was particularly excited when at breakfast one morning I noticed a mother and son (in his 20s) next to us were chatting in an interesting language, Catalan. That is now the main language used in Catalonia, an area where Barcelona, Spain is, and where I lived for almost a year as a college student. It took me back to the fun times we had with Catalan friends.

I especially admired the room “servants,” if you will, doing the “dirty work” for us. Scrubbing toilets, washing down showers, hanging up fresh towels as needed, making sure we had toilet paper. Then, one day, the bag I reserved for our dirty clothes (that I thought I had placed near the bottom of some space near drawers) had disappeared. I was a little embarrassed. The attendants weren’t supposed to take clothing of course, but I asked the attendant if he had taken my bag of dirty clothes and put them somewhere. (They were able to send clothes to a laundry on ship for you if you wanted to pay for that, but I had planned to wash our underwear etc. in the very small sink.) He was likely from one area of Nigeria and I know he was terribly embarrassed to be approached about any issue, let alone dirty clothes. Two days later, I took time to hunt in our closet for the missing clothing and to my chagrin found that I had put the dirty clothes bag inside a piece of our luggage, so no one would mess with them. I was only too happy to apologize to Igede for MY mistake. And we lived happily every after with that attendant.

A word of caution about the yummy meals, especially breakfast: by the end of the week, on the morning of disembarking, we noticed the wonderful waffles we had enjoyed were quite stiff and hard to chew, like they had been warmed over to serve to us. I mean really hard to chew. I will forgive them for the wonderful foods we enjoyed the other days.

Disembarking is a zoo, of course, and we were happy to finally land in the correct bus taking us and our luggage back to the airport. I won’t mention the terrible stiff winds we experienced flying to Dulles Airport near Washington D.C. We were so happy and thankful to be safely home and greet Britney who took care of dog Velvet and cat Pumpkin (who wondered where on earth we had disappeared to).

The world God created and still maintains is just amazing, and the endless oceans (making up 71 percent of our world) was a joy to experience. May we continue to take care of our corners of the world.