FAMILY CRUISE WITH SYLVIE & CO.

While they were home at Christmas, Sylvie and Ghislain told us about a cruise they were planning to take over March break. The dates fit perfectly with our planned Florida sojourn so, with a few taps on the mouse pad, we were booked to go with them for a seven-day cruise out of Port Canaveral on the MS Norwegian Epic.

After a short drive from Charlottetown and overnight stay in Saint John, we hit the road, hoping to make it to Saint Augustine, FL, in two days. On our first day going south, we try to make it to Harrisburg, PA, around suppertime. Traffic was light the whole way, and we got there with no issues. The next day should have taken us 13 hours, but we suffered through two major traffic jams, and it ended up taking us 16.5 hours; we arrived exhausted at the Southern Oaks Inn at 10:00.

I’d been wanting to visit Saint Augustine for some time but seemed always in too big a rush to do so. I would have liked to visit the World Golf Hall of Fame there, but it moved to North Carolina a few years ago. The historic significance of the place was a draw as well, since the city was the first to be established in what is today the United States of America. The Spanish settled there in 1565 and built Fort San Carlos. While many Florida cities claim to have a historic district, none is as impressive as Saint Augustine’s.

We took the hotel shuttle into the historic district and spent the better part of the day there, just wandering around and taking in the sights. The place is every bit as interesting as Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia. The pedestrian street, Saint George, is filled with quality boutiques and nice places to eat, and the seawall near the fort makes for a very interesting stroll. We visited many of the historic buildings, including the beautiful Cathedral, lavishly decorated in Spanish colours and themes. Late that afternoon, we drove across the Lion Bridge to Anastasia Island and walked the extensive beach there.

We met up with Sylvie, Ghislain, Samuel, Natalie, and Avery at the Port Canaveral Cruise Terminal and boarded the ship just before noon. It was fun wandering around the 4,500-passenger ship and taking in the festive atmosphere. Caribbean cruises are very different from the laid-back ones we’ve done with Holland America. Guests are here for a very different reason, mostly to drink, gamble, eat their faces off, and just have fun! The vibe takes some getting used to, but spending time with family made it very special indeed.

Norwegian is the fifth line we’ve cruised with. In addition to Holland America, we’ve been on Princess, AMA. and Hurtigruten (now called HX). It’s hard to compare the five because we were travelling for different reasons. Holland appeals to an older crowd interested in learning and visiting, Princess offers a similar experience and appeals to a similar demographic, while HX is all about expeditions and nature experiences. Our AMA experience was a river cruise. On Norwegian, we found our inside cabin to be quite small compared to what we’ve had on other lines, but the food was good, and there’s lots for young and old alike to do on board.

After a day at sea, the ship docked at Taino Bay, Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic; it was our first visit to the country known mostly to Canadians as an all-inclusive vacation destination. The DR shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, a “basket case” country ruled by ruthless gangs, with no functioning government, where people continue to barely survive in crushing poverty. The shops near the cruise dock appeal to the traveller who wants to spend a bit of money and relax. Elva and I ran the gauntlet of boutiques and attractions and made our way to the center of the city of 25,000 or so residents. While the DR is a poor country, what we saw did not make it seem that way. People were friendly, the place was clean, and the main square was lovely. As always, we were glad not to have taken a guided tour. On the way back to the ship, we ran across the rest of our party, enjoying themselves on the Lazy River attraction.

The next morning, we docked in Saint Thomas, US Virgin Islands. We’d been to nearby Saint John a few years back on a Holland America trans-Atlantic cruise; Saint Thomas is a bigger island that has more to offer. Residents of this US territory are mostly descended from freed slaves who worked the plantations during the colonial period. People who live here are US citizens, are represented in Congress, but they don’t have the right to vote for the President and are not represented in the Senate.

We walked from the dock to the main town, Charlotte Amalie, along a beautiful belvedere which gave us a view across the harbour of the two ships in port that day. The young crowd did a SCUBA excursion that afternoon and came back to the ship with harrowing tales of their underwater adventures. I’m not sure they’ll be trying the sport again anytime soon. And we learned a new word from Natalie: “swass”, an apt conjunction that refers to excessive perspiration in the nether regions, a phenomenon I was to experience every day in the hot and humid Caribbean climate.

After a short sail, we docked early the next morning in Road Town, capital of Tortola, the largest of the British Virgin Islands. After picking up a map of the town, we strolled along the waterfront promenade and followed Main Street in the direction of the botanical gardens. Along the way, we stopped at the pretty Anglican Church to see what it looked like inside. An Ash Wednesday service was taking place, and the lady at the door invited us in. The church was packed to the rafters with elementary school children, all of them in uniform, waiting their turn to have ashes placed on their foreheads. The organ played lively gospel tunes, and the place was abuzz. We were probably the only two passengers of the 9,000 or so in port that day who had the privilege of witnessing such a rich local event.

The botanical gardens certainly weren’t the most impressive we’ve seen but they did provide a quiet respite in a busy town. We had a nice chat with three people from the P&O ship in port that day. The older gentleman had been to Prince Edward Island and was quite knowledgeable about the history of Island shipbuilding. He was from County Devon in southwest England, near the port of Appledore, where many men left in the nineteenth century to work in shipyards on our Island. The first two paragraphs of my book, It Happened in Green Valley, talk about two men who met on the Appledore dock, both of them reading a notice inviting people to emigrate and work in James Yeo’s shipyard in Port Hill. Small world!

After a last day at sea, we dropped anchor off Great Stirrup Cay, a private island in the Bahamas owned and operated by Norwegian. The theme for the day was sun, swim, and lie on the beach. It was a nice way to finish our seven-day family cruise, an experience we hope to repeat some day before we get too old and decrepit and the grandkids get sick of hanging around with us. We said our goodbyes at the Port Canaveral cruise terminal. Sylvie and family drove to Orlando to spend the day at Disneyworld while awaiting their flight to Toronto while we headed to Siesta Key to spend a few hours with friends, Sandy and Bob Mayer, before driving south to Ft. Myers.