Thinking About A Cruise? Here's My Experience.

Hola Amigos! We are finally home from our vacation. It is always a bitter sweet feeling coming home. You are happy to be sleeping in your own bed again, and eating your own food, but sad to be back to reality. I liked hanging out in the sun all day; living in Seattle we just don't get a lot of that.

If you are thinking about doing a cruise in the future, here is my new found experience.

As with everything, there are pros and cons to cruising. Here is my opinion, for what it's worth. Yours may be different, so take what you will and leave the rest.

Pros: 

1. You get to see A LOT; petty much a new place to explore every day. You will get a little flavor of a lot of different cultures and get to have new experiences at every stop. It's like taking a big road trip, with someone else doing the driving.

2. You will NEVER go hungry. I guess this can be either a pro or a con depending on how much self control you have ;o)

3. You are entertained while you are traveling in between ports. We went to comedy shows, dancing, gambling in the casino, and had a nightly movie out on the open deck every night.

4.  You will get a little bit of a feel for what it is like to be rich and important. The ships are so extravagant and fancy that you feel like you are a high roller. Also, they are SO huge that you don't even really feel like you are on a ship; it is like being in a very large Vegas hotel.

Cons:

1. You are restricted to the cruises time line. If you are not back to the ship on time, you will get left. You don't have enough time to really experience any one place and just get a small flavor of each stop.

2. Believe it or not getting waited on hand and foot gets really old. Seriously, I can take care of my own dishes; just show me where to put them, and I'll put them there. I didn't like just getting up and leaving my garbage on the table.

3. After a few days of the same food, it starts to get a little old. If you go to the dining room in the evenings you can get a little more of a variety, but the "cafeteria" style food is the same every single day. Breakfast and lunch do not vary. 

4. If you get motion sickness very easily get the patch from your doctor before you leave. We all did well for the most part, but there was one night where Jess just really lost it and had to lay in the room all night. One other night Aaron was down along with her for a few hours. Don't take the chance, just get the patch. I've heard they work really well.

If you care to read on, here is a little sampling of what our cruise stops were like:

COZUMEL MEXICO

We spent the day on a jeep tour of the island seeing all of the local people and neighborhoods. Snorkeling, tours of Mayan ruins and a tequila plant and lunch on a beach were on our itinerary.

BELIZE

Belize is known for their caves, so caving is what we did. We were gone all day exploring caves, repelling and zip lining from one cave to the next and hiking through the jungle. Since we are huge hikers and adventure seekers, this was perfect for us!

HONDURUS

Jess loves horses, so our vacation wouldn't have been complete without a horseback riding tour. We got to go out for a couple hours and ride our horses down to the beach. Who could ask for more? Horses, beaches and sunshine - perfect!

COSTA MAYA MEXICO

We love history and historical sites, so we had to visit some more Mayan ruins before we left. We spent the day at the Chacchoben site and then went to a local lagoon for lunch and kayaking.

FLORIDA

Since we have never been to the East coast before we really wanted to do something before we left that we cannot do at home. Alligators! We don't have alligators at home, so we decided to do an air boat ride through the swamp to see alligators. We got to see quite a few, one of which reached about 12 feet in length. Afterward we went to the restaurant there and sampled frog legs, alligator and catfish; all new foods to us. Alligator and catfish - yummy! Frog legs? Well, lets just say now I can say I have tried them......