Click for Album

Well, I promised to post slideshows and videos and it begins here. It just isn’t practical to upload big files while on the cruise. It takes quite a long time. When on Royal Caribbean the rate for Wi-Fi is $0.55 per minute or $0.47 if you buy a bundle in advance. The connection is quite slow so I opted for just posting pictures from onboard. Now, I’ll start putting together the albums, slideshows, and videos to give a more complete portrayal of our cruise.

Our first port was Aruba. Click on the picture above for a slideshow, the caption for the album, or the picture below for a video.

The cruise is over (picture me frowning with a clown tear on my cheek).  But the vacation continued.  We disembarked early to board a tour bus.  We were driven up Biscayne Boulevard a part of Route 1 then over to our first stop at Miami Beach.  The portion of beach at which we disembarked is in the Art Deco District.  This may well be the most attractive row of hotels in the United States (unless one calls The Royal Hawaiian and Ala Moana a ‘row’).  There is a green park with a clean public restroom facility across the street.  After that there is a grassy dune followed by the wide expanse of white sand that forms Miami Beach.  If I can’t live on an island, this would be the next best thing.  However, I don’t have or want the wardrobe to live here.  This is one styling strip even at the breakfast hour.  If one sits in Starbucks and watches commuters go to work on Manhattan and wonders what do these Manhattanites wear on vacation, Miami is where one goes to find out.  If you are a fitness buff who spends more on plastic surgery than most of us spend on cars, Miami Beach is where you go.   For you Californians, this is a place that makes Balboa Island seem Bohemian.

We then drove down through Coconut Grove and Coral Cables.  Not exactly Beverly Hills, but Florida’s answer to California’s Orange County.  Yet, it was uniquely and attractively Floridian.  I loved the white coral walls and coral stone outcroppings in the yards.  That is my kind of rock garden.  I could easily see myself on a condo balcony sipping Cuban coffee near Miami Beach or hanging by the pool in my Coconut Grove home.  But it seems pure fantasy to imagine living on one of the many canals with a yacht in my backyard.  Think little Naples near Long Beach with wider canals and Florida architecture.

My impressions of Miami were severely made over by this vacation.  It is without doubt a destination city.  As a small wave surfer, enthusiastic snorkeler, wannabe architect, and shameless people watcher, Miami offers the kind of sophisticated but casual international community that has great appeal.  It has been elevated in my estimation to the status of one of America’s great cities.  I can’t yet address the availability of shopping and shows, but maybe my brother will weigh in on that in the comments.  But with Mount Sinai, Miami International, and Port of Miami it would appear that Miami would be an excellent place to retire if one were looking for an east coast of the continental U.S. location.

Just a word about the tour itself.  Our guide was a highly educated and informative interpreter of Miami.  We heard about a smattering of entertainers, most notably Jackie Gleason, one architect, a hand full of moguls, and fifty to one hundred people associated with boxing.  Out of three hours we probably spent a third of that time hearing about cut up faces and people being killed in the boxing ring.  Not content with talking about boxers and their associates who had been to Miami we also heard about fights in each of the countries of the tourists on the bus.  If you’re not a boxing fan, you may prefer to plan your own tour with Google maps and a rental car.  As an added bonus our driver spoke on his cell phone while negotiating our bus through Miami’s rush hour traffic!  Wayne, I think you should have met us and given us the tour before dropping us off at the airport.

Miami Vice?  Miami, NICE.

Who was the star of the cruise?  Maybe Sabrina the female soloist or Ryan the male soloist?  Dazzling performers, both of them.  Perhaps it was Tamara or one of the other Royal Caribbean Singers and Dancers?  It might be Louie, the man who made me awesome omelets every morning. 

No, the answer must be the ship herself, Jewel of the  Seas.  With about 2400 passengers, she is the perfect scale affording a balance between intimacy and ease of onboard navigation with being big enough to provide great onboard entertainment. 

Our waiter was new in his position and he is still working out some kinks.  The cuisine was a bit uneven ranging from poorly prepared sirloin to exquisitely prepared steak oscar (steak with a Béarnaise sauce and crab meat on top).  The Windjammer continued to impress with a great breakfast and King of the Skillet, Louie.  The service in the main dining room is better than a typical American steak house.  But ‘burghers should not expect service rivaling Mt. Washington restaurants.  After a friendly chat while Louie fixed my first omelet, I never had to order my omelet again.  He started it while I was standing in line.  On the last day he was assigned a different station.  He left that station and went to the omelet station so that he could make my omelet.  If only I could afford a personal chef, Louie you would be first in line.

We enjoyed our own balcony, but equally enjoyed the Solarium and “our” table at dead center astern the ship.  The sound of sea slap against the hull is very similar to the soothing sound of waves at the beach.  Watching the varied hues of the water as the Jewel’s twin screws pull in air and push us forward is like watching flames in a fireplace.  Very peace inducing.

On past cruises we tended to hang out in the Centrum and watch folks dance.  The music was subpar on this cruise so we didn’t spend much time doing that.  Last night, we asked them to play “Perhaps, Perhaps” so we could rumba.  That seemed to get them going on a Latin theme.  Frankly, the Trio sounded much better singing Latin dance music than their usual Anglo repertoire.  You’d have had a good laugh watching me have a go at the cha-cha.

Leevan did well at keeping our room neat and produced the requisite Royal Caribbean towel art.  His greatest service was always having an upbeat attitude and a friendly smile.

Like the Royal Caribbean excursions, we have not previously taken advantage of the onboard entertainment to any great degree.  This cruise was different.  I have wanted to attend a Tango show since talking with two patrons of our California cafe who put on Tango shows.  Tango Buenos Aires (Day 2) was a great show.  I’m pretty sure they used those Disney mechanical people, though.  If a human kicked their leg that high their body would split in two.  And a human knee does not allow one to spin one’s lower leg around like a string from one’s fingers.  Someone named the androids Dario and Sabrina.  A great way to end a day at sea.

The next show was City of Dreams (Day 8).  the Royal Caribbean Singers & Dancers performed well.  I was especially impressed by the technical work of the lights, sound, and stage sets.  The orchestration of the technical side was quite elaborate for such a small facility.  As disappointing as Puerto Limon had been, the show certainly made up for it and more.

After a great day at sea we watched The Legends of Motown and More – performed by the Horizon trio (Day 9).  These guys were good singers, but excelled in the choreography of their dancing and shtick.  The place was packed with laughing, clapping, and singing along fans.

West End to Broadway – a Contemporary Tribute to Musical Theater (Day 10) was the show after our day in Grand Cayman.  Don’t worry Mom.  I didn’t sing out loud.  (Maybe softly, but not loud.)  The second male lead singer, Dan, was back from a wedding.  He looked a bit like Michael Buble and sang a bit like him as well.  Talent plus Broadway show tunes.  How can one go wrong with that, eh?

On our last full day, we took a two hour backstage tour which helped us understand the hard work involved in making all of the quick costume changes.  The musicians and technicians also only get a couple of hours to practice with the special talents brought on board to perform.  The musicians have to be very good at sight reading music.  They don’t even have a chance to play any entire song all the way through before they are performing it on stage.  The guy who played keyboard must have been a genius because he certainly had some challenging bits to play even if he had all the rehearsal time in the world.

We then had dinner at Portofino instead of Main Dining.  We had made such good friends with the folks at our table that we decided to have a special night together at Portofino.  The service and entre were very good.  The antipasti were much appreciated.  The milk and white chocolate covered strawberries on a platter with Italian candies were over the top.  The star was the young Italian waiter who required little coaxing to sing along with the Bocelli tunes played over the restaurant PA.  Very cute.  Ladies were swooning.

Congratulations, Captain Stig Nilsen.  Not only do you sound like a cool guy based on your Q&A but you run a great ship.  A Jewel indeed.

Grand Cayman is awesome.  Their little shopping area is safe and free of beggars or aggressive, in-your-face vendors.  The town lacks the architectural and city planning charm of some of the islands we have visited but once one leaves town one sees all that is missing in town.

This has been our cruise to experiment with Royal Caribbean’s excursions instead of kicking around on our own.  The Seven Mle Beach with Transportation excursion was a rip.  For $5 per person, one can ride a taxi to the beach ($4-$6 depending on how far up the beach).  This avoids the long lines waiting to board tour buses and puts you on your own schedule.  The tour operators were lazy, rude, and not to be bothered with pesky tourists.  Better off catching your own cab and buying your own drink in my opinion.  But we had not gone to Seven Mile Beach the last time we were here and we thoroughly enjoyed the beach.

The beach is pretty much just for sunbathing and snorkeling.  The coral comes almost to water’s edge.  Because of Grand Cayman’s famous (to snorkelers, infamous to sailors) reef the waves are small and currents are minimal.  This makes for excellent diving, or in our case snorkeling, conditions.  There isn’t a lot of work in just bobbing around on the surface with your face pointed down.

I even did some diving with my snorkel because one doesn’t have to worry about wave slap when one comes up to clear one’s snorkel.  It is no fun to blow water out of one’s snorkel only to suck more in when one is going for some air.

We saw a decent variety of fish – pencil fish, yellow tangs, blue tangs, all sorts of tangs, barracuda, sting rays, and on and on.  There was also quite a variety of coral.  The way the sunlight refracted onto the coral through the water’s surface was a show in itself.

Moral of the story?  Grand Cayman, yes.   Excursion, NO!

    There had been rain this morning and many of the sidewalks were flooded.  It was just as well that it rained when it did.  We couldn’t dock the ship anyway.  The longshoremen went on strike with the ship ahead of us tied only at the stern.  The dock authorities had everything ironed out one way or another in about one half hour.

There are many beautiful towns in Costa Rica.   Sadly, the only ones of which I am aware are on the Pacific side.  Puerto Limon has a dodgy feel to it only a few blocks from the pier.  A ten year old gangster followed us along jabbering at us.  When my patience wore thin, I finally told him to leave us alone.  His reply?  “I leave alone.  One dollar.”

The little market was pleasant.  The people were friendly for the most part.  Like most tourist places I’ve visited most of the items were not even locally made.  We did buy a few small items.  We’re suckers for art created by the person selling the art and we bought more painted tiles.  They were well done, sold by the artist, and we liked the artist.

By the time we walked through Vargas Park to the seawall and then over to the cathedral (pathetically modern after seeing San Pedro Claver in Cartagena) we were over heated.  So we packed it in and headed back to the ship where we found a spot to read by the Solarium pool.  Like Cartagena, if I’m on a cruise stopping here I won’t bother getting off.

I was weighing the pros and cons of different cameras for our monkey excursion right up until we left.  I finally decided that the zoom on the Sony was worth it and took it along.  We rode in an air-conditioned bus to the Gamboa Nature Preserve where we were transferred to a little a runabout that held about twenty tourists.

We set off in our little boat for the “high speed” trip up the Panama Canal.  High speed was about 14 knots and we enjoyed the wind at our backs going out.  I enjoyed thinking about how my grandfather had come through this very canal during his service in the U.S. Navy back when the completed canal must have still been a bit of a novelty.

Imagine my chagrin, having brought the big camera, at finding that the battery had fallen out and been left in the bag we had left on the bus.  Fortunately, I did have my point and shoot.  We poked into a few little coves looking for crocodiles but never did find one.

I was very frustrated because our boat sighted a howler monkey but I was never able to pick it out of the foliage.

After scooting down the Panama Canal, we did eventually reach Monkey Island in Gatun Lake.  That is when the Capuchins started putting on a show for us.  Another tour came up and their guide fed the monkeys so they were all over his boat.  We got to watch them for quite a while.  One of them even jumped down on our boat and stole a little disposable poncho in a pouch that was bright yellow.

Another one peeked down over the front of the canopy to see whether any of us had food to offer.  I absolutely love the picture I got of the little peeper.  Maybe it’s the rush of excitement, but I think we finally have experienced a tour we enjoyed even more than the Chicago Architectural Tour – and that is saying something.

My impressions of Panama were entirely favorable.  I would love to come back here and explore.  They seem to have some of the poverty of Columbia but one gets the sense that the majority of people fare well.   Everyone we met seemed relaxed and happy.

Today we are in Cartagena.  We opted for the “Panoramic Cartagena by Horse Drawn Carriage” tour.  Our bus driver Lee was a very pleasant and informative guide.  The bus air conditioning worked much better than on the bus we had in Aruba.  Cartagena is a major city with over 9 million people so the feel was quite different from Aruba.

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Just because your tour meets on shore at 7:45 doesn’t mean you have to pass up Louie’s omelets and a bowl of pineapple.  But it does mean that one’s day begins early.  Joy and I were in the offshore waiting room early.  Plastic chairs gave us a place to perch while we waited for our tour to be gathered.  Soon we saw a man carrying a placard saying “Aruba Sight and Swim”.  The Pied Piper led us to his bus.  While driving us between photo ops, he provided both insightful observations about his island and corny jokes.  We learned that while Aruba was autonomous it was a protectorate of the Netherlands and therefore had a governor.  We learned why no one lives on the north side of the island (it is a park and there are no utilities).  We learned how cisterns had been replaced by piped water from the second largest desalination plant in the world for drinking water, but the cistern water was still used 3for watering gardens and the like.  He showed us an old gold mine.  The rainy season is mostly December to February.  He went on with detail after detail, but never bored.

Our first stop was the Casibari Rock Formation.  With the island being so flat, climbing these rocks makes for a great place to catch a view.  We could even see our cruise ship, but it was too far away to get a picture.  The rock is situated in a desert garden in keeping with Aruba’s arid climate.

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I didn’t need my alarm this morning. About 2:30 I realized that I had forgotten to enter my time at work to cover my vacation period. I woke up and got on the computer using my thumbdrive encryption key to access my government account. Of course it tells me that my password is wrong even though I had used that password as recently as Friday. So I have to email my boss and my timekeeper and ask them to do my forms on my behalf which is really rude on my part. But at four o’clock I’m ready to go and so is Joy.

A friend had offered us a ride but had fallen back asleep so it wasn’t till 4:30 that we left for the airport. I was kind of stressed until I was through the security checkpoints and realized that my flight was an hour later than I had been worried that it was.

Joy had not been impressed with the packing light experience of our last cruise and had decided to bring a huge suitcase weighed down to near the legal maximum. After a pleasant flight (in which we had to sit in separate rows) we arrived in Miami.

Now who’s packing light?

Miami International is a pleasant airport. They have a very cool large scale sea plane model hanging from the ceiling with propellers turning. The walk from Terminal E to baggage claim is a hike. We found baggage claim but not Joy’s bag. It wasn’t expected to arrive in Miami until after doors to the cruise ship had closed. Royal Caribbean was a peach about providing us with toiletries and complimentary formal night attire. But just before we left port at 5 pm the bag in question magically appeared in our room.

The Royal Treatment

We spent the intervening hours comforting ourselves with food and taking pictures. The view of Miami from the Jewel of the Seas is impressive. It came across as a place that would be fun to live if one had a few mill in one’s billfold. We started our cruise unable to get to our rooms because we had boarded early. We tried the Royal Caribbean bus transfer service. Bag handling was convenient but there was a lot of standing around waiting. However, it did allow us to get to the cruise terminal early. The good news was that they let us start boarding the ship at about 11:15. We waited in a room with cookies and drinks. By 11:45 we were on the ship. Boarding isn’t supposed to start until one so we beat the clock in terms of access to that portion of the ship.

I think we might have one of the worst balconies on the ship. We’re on a corner so the deck space is roughly half of a normal room’s. Our Royal Caribbean CR must have thought CR stands for Customer Rip (-;. But you know what they say about a bad balcony right? It beats no balcony at all.

Dinner was excellent. I had the fried pork medallions and Joy had the sea bass done to a lightly toasted brown. Excellent. We went to the Safari Club and listened to one of the crew members fill in for the dance band’s lead singer who was sick. I’m thinking she can stay sick because this young man was good. Sorry, but the band just isn’t as good as the Casablanca band. Still entertaining, though and we enjoyed their play list. We then walked out to the Schooner bar and listened to the Irish piano man which I enjoyed even more. But alas, much time had passed since 2:30 a.m. and it was time to sleep it all off and be ready to start again tomorrow.

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One of the sweeter things about vacation is having time to read.  However, one of the heaviest things to pack is a book.  Dead trees are heavy.  But what if you could take along as many books as you could possibly read with some in reserve just in case you’re not in the mood for the books you planned to read?  How cool would that be?  Enter the Kindle 2.  The ability to read in direct sunlight is critical and the Kindle eInk is perfect for that.  Over 40?  No problem just slide the controller to pick your font size.  Voila.  Instant large print edition.  We also have the Kindle program for the netbook and iPhone I’m taking.

So we’re packing several books – but leaving behind the dead trees.  We also got the leather cover to protect the Kindle.  As a side benefit it feels just like a “real” book when you hold it.  I’d ask Joy for her input, but she’s reading her Kindle right now.

(pictures after the break)