The cruise – Bahamas

Put quite simply, cruises are fun. Very fun. We left Jacksonville on the M.S Celebration with high hopes and fanciful dreams of fun and adventure on the high seas.

The high seas turned out to be a little higher than we expected, and Dave instantly fell victim to sea sickness. While Dave took sea sickness tablets and slept, Corey and I soberly stumbled our way to the dining room. We met our servers, Kenneth and Raymund, as well as our Southern dining companions. Judging by their disapproving glances (we were drinking Foster’s from 750ml cans and wearing thongs and singlets), it seemed impossible to think that we would all be great friends by the end of the week.

The next week was spent drinking Foster’s and hanging out with our new found friends Jason, Andre, Ali and Shayna. We taught them as much as we could about Australian culture, and by the end of the week, they still couldn’t copy our accents.

We managed to sleep through a lot of our day at Key West, FL, but that was the ship’s fault for arriving at 7am; ridiculous. From our couple of hours on shore, it didn’t appear that we missed all that much.

Our day moored at Nassau, Bahamas was another matter entirely. The water was as clear as any I have ever seen before, and the day was packed with adventure. We hired some mopeds and proceeded to explore the island. This was when we found Cabbage Beach, or as I like to call it, ‘that awesome beach with the really nice water’. While leaving the beach, Unlucky Dave gave us a lesson in falling off a moped. So with some smiles, blood and anger, we all headed to the Atlantis resort.

Atlantis was impressive, as was its’ aquarium lobby. After some time and effort, we managed to get out of Atlantis and head towards the more touristy beach. Though more crowded, the water was just as nice as Cabbage Beach. More importantly, we hired jetskis. Jetskiing was amazingly good fun. I was a jetski ninja and enjoyed every minute of it.

Back on the cruise ship, we continued to eat and drink to excess. Most of the food was quite delicious, and there was heaps of variety. They had a $3/6 limit Hold’em table which I took advantage of to pay for a good deal of my drinks. I learned one of life’s important lessons; cruise ship passengers aren’t good at poker. Unfortunately, I also learned that limit Hold’em is pretty boring, so I didn’t really play all that much.

In summary, I can highly recommend the cruising lifestyle. It was a fun filled week and very cheap. Oh, there was also heaps of fun and adventure on the high seas.