Travel Blogging

At sea, headed south off the coast of Cuba: The Oasis of the Seas is one of the world's largest cruise ships. She carries over six thousand passengers, plus crew as well as a merry-go-round, a zip line, a wave rider, a park-like garden, and a bar on hydraulics that goes up and down three decks. She also carries a full production of the musical Cats, which we saw on Easter Sunday evening. The ship we're on more closely resembles a Vegas casino than a typical cruise liner, and is the size of a small city. 

This one week cruise makes three stops: Nassau in the Bahamas, Charlotte Amalie on Saint Thomas in the U.S. Virgins, and St. Martin, an island that is part French and part Dutch - truly it is divided. The stops aren't what you take this cruise for, the ship itself is the experience. There is so much to see and do, appealing to such varied tastes, that a week in the early spring warm sunshine aboard this vessel is just about perfect. 

The drawback to one week cruises is there are many more children aboard, as well as working families who can take a week off. This group of pax are quite heterogeneous in age, race, and cohort. On the longer cruises we prefer, the pax tend to be more homogeneous - somewhat affluent retirees. We are too late for spring break's drunken college students, they mostly did a week in mid-March and are best avoided when inebriated. 

On a planet with vastly more water surface than land surface - our Earth - I can envision a future in which ship-cities carrying permanent colonies of residents cruise the world's oceans, following the sun and going into port only for supplies. Land is best used to grow food, a process which will occupy the efforts of fewer persons percentage wise in each generation.

Note: This post written on Sunday, a week ago, posted today when Internet became available. Ship borne Internet is slow and often unreliable. I purchase it on long cruises, in spite of its manifest drawbacks, but saw no need on a one week cruise.