Since I don’t travel full-time, I figured that instead of doing a monthly recap, I would recap each of my trips following the full posts. These recaps will contain highs, lows, logistics, funny anecdotes, pictures, etc. that I likely didn’t include in the full posts.

Without further ado, my Caribbean cruise on Carnival!

Countries: 3 – United States, the Cayman Islands (UK), and Mexico
Year: 2015
Number of Days: 6 (this number does not reflect the entire time I was based at my dad’s in Florida)
Favorite Port: Cozumel
Favorite Excursion: In all honesty, I liked each of them for very differen reasons, so it’s incredibly hard to choose. I plead the fifth!
Type of Trip: Relaxation/Family/Friends
Money Spent: This trip was pretty pricey. Our flight was $376 each, but we flew out of Montreal and therefore had a $30 ish bus trip to the airport from here. Our excursions totaled about $200, and our cruise was roughly $425 each. A pricey trip, but well worth it!

Highs:

• The excursions. From parasailing in Key West to swimming with sting rays in Grand Cayman to trying out an underwater oxygen bar in Cozumel, we had high expectations for each of these excursions, but our expectations were blown completely out of the water. Choosing a favorite is not an easy task.
• The food. I didn’t know what to expect, but I was not disappointed. We ate once in the steak house (I had ravioli which was delicious!), and Brit and I ate once at the on-board burger place (Guy’s Burger Joint) and once at the on-board pizza place (Pizza Pirate). We were enamored of all three choices! Even so, the buffet food was pretty good, and the dinner in the regular dining room was excellent. My favorite aspect of the dining room dinner was checking out their ‘special’ item. I tried ox tongue and frog’s legs for the first time in my life!
• Our cruise director. Wee Jimmy (seriously) made sure our stay aboard the ship was filled with laughter and activities. I can still hear his morning announcements beginning with, “Gooooood morning, good morning, good morrrrrniiiiing.”

Lows:

• My camera dying while on the excursion in Grand Cayman. Luckily, it kicked out right at the end of it as opposed to the beginning, but I was still devastated by this turn of events.
• The night club. We were pretty underwhelmed by it, but since it wasn’t the main reason we were on the cruise, it didn’t really bring us down. The major frustration began right off the bat, though, with our Canadian drivers licenses being thoroughly stared at and studied for roughly 10 minutes.
• We planned our Cozumel excursion for late morning, but I wish we had done it earlier so we could have also fit in a last-minute zip lining adventure. Next time, I suppose!

Funny Moments:

• The paintings on the ship were quite humorous at times – see above, and we got a kick out of joking about them.
• It took us a little bit to get the layout of the ship, resulting in numerous adventures, particularly when we discovered the hard way that there were several decks that did not connect all the way through.

Overall Experience:

Cruising is definitely for me. I can understand how people don’t enjoy it – it can be quite pricey if you aren’t careful – but I think it’s something everyone should at least try it once. For me, I can’t wait to get out on the water again!