After one week of being a cruise ship tourist, I definitely know that I prefer to be a backpacker (not an astonishing fact, I guess ^^) and also on my own, or just the two of us. This is all just toooo much permanent input for me. You cannot escape the whole showbiz on the ship (unless you stay in your cabin the whole day) and it feels so mega strange to be treated like a cruise ship tourist on land that I sometimes would like to be invisible. Usually nice locals turn into sales monsters when they see the cruise tourists. And then people return on the cruise ship and think this is how locals are in these countries … No real contact at all. Very sad for both part.
For me this whole cruise ship trip feels like being in a very weird movie world, most stuff is not real, just a lot of fakes – and some like this and enjoy it. I can just wonder at it all… The food and night sky, the lovely breeze, the great open waters of endless sea and all that friendly staff are still very nice and I can appreciate it, but honestly: one week would have been enough for me 😉
Fortunately we are cruising to some nice Carribean Islands now and we hope to get off the cruise ship tourists tracks there … somehow, somewhere.
Free WiFi at last, so here some pics and updates 😀
Our pros and cons of the cruise trip so far (definitely more pros than cons!)
pros: We both love the moment when the ship leaves the port and we cruise to open waters again, feels like going on a big adventure (they also play great music for this special moment); great food on board: esp. Sonnenblumenkerne-Vollkornbrot!!! Salami, Bierschinken, Camembert, Obazda, plenty of fruit and salad … all very very yammy!; Buffets in all restaurants, great for mixing and trying new food; Faye loves: white wine for free Andy loves: beer for free (during service hours) or for extra charge even: Büble Bier!; good beds; being on a cruise ship is somehow sexy; watching people is like watching a strange movie all the time; great water pressure in shower; nice quiet zone areas to relax; very friendly service staff; no moskitos!!!; as we didn’t book any Aida trips, we can explore all we want on our own or not at all; no money needed, you just pay with your boarding card; no imigration control when you visit a country (you have to fill in a manifesto beforehand); watching the stars at night on a nice windy outer deck is just amazing 😀
Cons: We eat too much (even if we try not to); Toooo many people (but we knew that before, so no real con ;); we feel even more freaky and weird than before between all those people; going on land with the others of the cruise ship (white and privileged people) means: every local wants to have your money, just sucks, but we can also understand it; some services (eg water, coffee) you sometimes have to pay extra on other times not, strange Aida policy; being woken up by the anchoring noises in the morning (esp. at 5 in the morning, when the ship anchors and the horn just blows you right out of your dreams, not funny!); very small pool; very expensive wifi (100 MB 20€, 2 GB 99€, internet flat for 2 weeks 239€); We have to get used to the very special German ‘kindness’ again ;); The prices of the Aida land trips are inappropriatly high (esp. for budget tourists like us)
If you go on your own, like we did here in Cartagena, you pay instead of 40€ pP only 5€ 🙂
Yesterday we embarked on the Aidaluna and from the beginning everything went very easy. Not much fussing about anything, no waiting time at all. Our first visit to the restaurants was like Christmas for us, so many delicious things that we did not eat for about 5 months now… the people at our table must have considered us crazy how we took every piece of dark bread, prezel, ice cream or cake into our mouths and made loud “Oh my God!” comments.
To leave the port at 9 pm felt for me like I am in a scene of the Titanic movie (no waving crowds unfortunately ^^), that’s why I had to play the Titanic “ship leaves port” soundtrack on spotify … as some might have thought this a strange things to do, they left their place near us, so we even had more space 😛
Then we got welcome drinks for free, which we enjoyed of as much of as possible, followed by disco dancing. Just the greatest fun ever for me, dancing barefoot, a lot of space, the stars above and great music of the 80s.
The most surprising thing until now: it doesn”t feel that crowded as we thought it would. You can always find a place to watch the stars and feel like on your own. Amazing!
And best: as we booked the cheapest cabin class (interior), we were supposed to have no window at all. Lucky guys we are, we got the last cabin in the row and now even have a window, we don’t see the ocean, but have light from outside and it feels so different. Sooo happy for that!
And I even could sleep very well. No sea sickness by now.
Yep, everything much better than we expected!!!! 😀
Pictures will follow and Andy will make his own post later.
That’s how it feels for me on our last day on firm ground.
Don’t they tell you: If you want to keep growing in life, you have to get beyond your comfort zone, risk what you may fear most sometimes.
So, after we quit our jobs and sold nearly everything we had in December 2018, visited countries, where we sometimes didn’t understand one word and had to cope with completely different cultures, now it’s going to be one of the really tough parts: going on a cruise ship with about 2400 GERMANS !!! 😛
As Andy already mentioned in a former post, 3 days before we booked the cruise I said to him: “If I am ever willing to go with you on such a cruise ship, you have to shoot me, as I am definitely obsessed by an alien monster and no longer myself!” (Andy always fancied the idea of doing such a cruise ship tour some day …)
The idea of spending my nights on floating grounds didn’t attract me at all as I get sea sick very easily. The idea of having thousands of people around me, just horrified me and that these people even all speak a language we will understand is the most frightening thing of all! Hey, we are not used to this any longer 😛
Yes, the question arises: then why the hell did you book this cruise????
The honest answer is: MONEY
The special offer we got was too tempting and it is just the cheapest possibility to get to the islands we didn’t see yet, the cheapest accomodation (we booked the ‘Leonardo DiCaprio’ wood class) with breakfast, lunch and dinner included (even beer and wine!)… and also the idea of enjoying German food again just overwhelmed us!
And we’ve learned that it’s sometimes really interesting to do things you usually wouldn’t do as you have a fixed opinion of it. ‘Question your own thinking’ is one of my favorites. So it’s also the curiosity: Is it really what you think it is? How can I know, if I never try it?
Quite often my expectations about anything I did not really know by myself until then and just had a loose opinion from stories of other people or internet reviews turned out to be quite different from theirs when I really experienced it on my own. Therefore this will be another big step out of my comfort zone again (like walking the tree top hanging bridges or having a snake on my neck, some of my very special fears that I just defeated in the last few weeks).
And it always felt liberating to do these things, not to only imagine them in my head, but to really experience them. Funny as it is, most of the former horrible fears turned out to produce child-like feelings of excitement and were quite different from what I thought. So, maybe being on a cruise ship will be the same?
Anyway, we decided to write a special cruise ship diary, starting tomorrow with the boarding. And also make kind of a social study of it. Like investigators from outa space that observe the human race and its social behaviors, ours included of course! 🙂
As wifi is expensive on a ship, maybe the text will come first and the pics will be uploaded later when we get on a land trip and find a ‘free wifi’ restaurant.
So, cross your fingers and stay with us in our new freaky and weird adventure <3
Only 4 days left until our Cruise ship adventure starts, so we just enjoy our time here, hang loose at the courtyard or get refreshed in the pool. And right when we start to think about what we shall get for dinner, our awesome hosts Janet and Rad serve us a lovely surprise dinner with even spiced rum as aperitif and a delicious plantain strudel as dessert! Yammy yammy 🙂
That’s how we feel right now. And it is a wonderful feeling, like after a great buffet dinner when you have tried everything you wanted, some stuff just tasted gorgeous, some quite nice and some was not quite your gusto, but you did not eat too much after all and everything was well rounded and worth it.
After drifting through the world for such a long time, we decided we need some time for digestion and both long to stay at one place again, in a familiar environment. So after our cruise ship tour that starts on 23. Februar and lasts for 2 weeks (which we just declared as kind of a social study for us, but more of that sometime later), we will have a short 2 day retreat on a hill overlooking Montego Bay and then fly to Belgium on 11. March to stay with friends the first night and finally return to Karlsruhe on 12. March. We booked an apartment near Karlsruhe for 6 weeks. I even decided spontaneously to offer some massage for my former clients during our stay and really look forward to doing something nice with my hands again and meeting all the old friends who already booked their appointments (thanks to Facebook so easy to get in contact again!).
Beginning of May we will then drive to Austria where we booked an apartment till middle of July. That means 2 1/2 months of enjoying the spring and summer in the beautiful Austrian Alps. We are already looking forward to the delicious Austrian cuisine, their lovely dialect and all the amazing nature: mountains, trees, lakes and wildflower meadows 😀
And as it is not that far from Karlsruhe (compared to our actual destination ^^) we will have the possibility of having our family and friends visiting us there, which we also look so much forward to!
So, really sounds like a great upcoming spring and summer time for us, less travelling, more family and friends.
The 2 amazing weeks we spent with our son Nico and his dude Jan passed so quickly … so then it was already:
The final day at the beach
The final patties order
The final hang loose in the pool
The final cuddling in the parents bed
The final cuddling of King
And some farewell pics
But: Hopefully in a little bit more than 3 weeks we’ll see each other again and also the rest of our Ohana! So this time the good-bye went easier than 4 months ago ^^
Another amazing day enjoying to be wonderfully pampered by our hosts Janet and Rad: Delicious tuna sandwich and banana bread for lunch and great burgers for dinner. And to beat all that: driving us to a gorgeous quite secret beach near Ocho Rios. Yeah, we love our lives (and our extraordinary hosts)!
We all so much enjoy our stay here, especially getting the most delicious food cooked by Janet and Rad! But also our evening at the Sharkies restaurant, unforgetable!!! But pictures tell more than words …
As the entrance to the Beach Club here in Discovery Bay is included in our airbnb package (thanks to our generous hosts!) we used some beach chairs and umbrellas for the first time in our 14 month trip 😀 Otherwise we would never have spent money for that.
Here at the Puerto Seco Beach Club you have to pay US $20 entrance fee per person! So quite different in Jamaica than in Barbados or Guadeloupe where all beaches were free for public use. But therefore you can also have fun at the waterpark (and horrible muscle pain afterwards, poor Andy!) and dolphins to watch or swim with in a special basin (very expensive and we don’t like animals to be caged like that). But: the beach is very clean and there are nice bars, showers and a swimming pool there. Unfortunately you are not allowed to swim too far into the ocean as the baywatch guys will call you back otherwise … even if there are no harmful waves or anything like that in sight. Very strange for us, indeed!
Arriving on Jamaica has really been one of the greatest experiences we ever had with airbnb hosts. Janet and Rad are the most kind and caring hosts we had the pleasure to meet till now, they even had some bottles of different local beers and water packed in a cooler for us and some lovely local food to snack when they picked us up at Kingston Airport. From the first moment we felt like home in their company and in their gorgeous apartment. Enjoying the refreshing pool on our first morning, we knew: we wanted to stay here forever or at least as long as possible! This feels like kind of luxury XXXL. So we booked the apartment for the next three weeks till we embark on our cruise ship extravaganza.
And to make it even better our elder son and another friend will join us for the next two weeks 😀
Best sleep in this huge and comfy master bed since we sold our own bed 14 months ago! And watching TV while lying in this bed, boom baby!!!
