Every year, my longtime friend, Julie, and I take a two-week holiday to Europe. This year's trip was originally planned to take place in western Ireland. However, two weeks before our departure, Julie, had to have emergency surgery for a detached retina and as a result could not fly for 6-8 weeks. Her doctor said she could go on a cruise as long as she could drive to it and fortunately the travel agency we use for work, Williamsburg Travel and Kelly McKenzie, was able to find us a great deal on a 7 Day Royal Caribbean cruise to Haiti, Jamaica and Cozumel. I'm not typically one for cruises but really needed to get away and unplug so to the Islands we went.
After a quick trip to Miami for work, I headed to Atlanta so Julie and I could make the drive to Port Canaveral. We boarded the Oasis of the Seas with 6,942 of our closest friends and 2,100 crew members. It is definitely a floating city as there is just about everything you could need (or not) onboard. They have 27 bars (we'll get to that later), loads of restaurants, shopping, pools, spa, gym, movie theatre, Broadway shows, ice skating, carousel, zip lining, rock climbing and of course a Starbucks.
Knowing we both planned to have a few beverages each day, we opted for the Deluxe Beverage Package which included unlimited cocktails, coffees, bottled water and sodas for $50 a day. However, they were running a promo and for $55 a day you could get the drink package plus 1 internet connection (normally $12.95 a day). Yes, I know I said I wanted to unplug but still wanted my parents to be able to contact me and wifi phone is much more economical than international roaming charges. Though not sure having unlimited drinks and free wifi is a good idea as I'm sure there were plenty of drunken texts going off the ship over the course of the cruise...proudly none came from me.
Just before the ship leaves port, there is a required muster drill. As fate would have it, our muster point was the Champagne Bar. How completely fitting for us! After muster drill, we headed down to the spa for our acupuncture treatments followed by seaweed wraps...a little jump start to relaxation!
Kelly took care of making all our dinner and show reservations and since this arrival day, we opted for dinner only so we could relax and check out the ship. Tomorrow will more exploring of the ship as it will be a day at sea en route to Labadee, Haiti.
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