Cruise without bruise – Cruising isn’t for beginners, you actually need a coach and hands on training in advance not to faceplant in the cruise boat jungle of diamonds and taxfree jewelry deals, raffles of all kinds, pool karaoke/disco in daytime, crowning the worlds sexiest man (on the ship…), spa and hair appointments, attending the family party at the board walk with carousels, rides of slides and ziplines, basketballcourt, minigolf, boogieboarding, surfboarding, casino/blackjack tournaments, outdoor cinemas, outdoor entertainment, Cats-the musical in the ships royal theatre or simply a stroll through the ships own Central Park……. and not to forget to mention getting the right drink packets the first day!
The cruise went from Miami via Haiti to Falmouth (Jamaica), Cozumel (Mexico) and back to Miami. We (Erik&I..) spent the first 3 days adjusting to being cooped up together with so many people, feeling like being on a Granca trip by the pool, not being able to leave the “cruise villages” in port without paying a tremendous amount of money just to go snorkeling and so on… Well, it being the 4 of us against the world, we regrouped, and emerged stronger and mentally equipped for the rest of the cruise, booking theatre events aboard the ship, outdoor cinemas and actually STAYING ON THE SHIP when we came to port and the other 6000 people left -oh bliss! we were the only 4 people racing against each other on the supercool waterslides, no queues and best of all: quiet Caribbeanness in nice cabanas!
You need to learn how to cruise, and with us being used to make our own plan for excursions, this was a big change. Mille and Noah loved every minute of the cruise(except for the day 2 cruisemeltdown of their parents) – the thing is; you need to find your inner child and just GO for it, and then you need to leave your Scandinavian shyness at the port of embarkment and change into more of a playful and outgoing American – and you’ll have a blast! The last 5 days we had lots of fun. When we were on Bonaire, we started playing a game and the winner of each game got a “knips-bli blid” (“I snap my fingers and you instantly have to be in a good mood”) against the loser(in courtesy of two of Eriks friends and classmates from medschool, Nora and Georg). Every win/loss was written down in our Memorybook (in courtesy of Mette), for using whenever needed. Day 2 and 3 on the cruise we got some good use out of it!
We overslept on the morning we arrived back in Miami due to 1 hr time change overnight but had 15 mins to get off the ship and made it back to the safe haven of Inigos car.
Funny thing, though, as I started writing this post yesterday(feb.10th), the Norwegian newspaper VG just posted “Unngå disse cruisetabbene” (“How to avoid mistakes on a cruise”) – well, they could have saved themselves time and money, with a link here…. Or, they could have posted it 2 weeks ago, and we wouldn’t have been the cruiserookies we were…
Sirkussaeter 
So you are ready for another 14 day cruise when I am 70?…………
Just joking 2 days on Kiel cruise is one too many for me!
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