Time Goes By

ABOARD THE S.S. CARIBBEAN PRINCESS, CARIBBEAN SEA – Top 10 things we’ve learned from a week of cruising around the Caribbean:
- Even if you order two appetizers, a soup, a salad, an entrée and dessert for dinner, there’s always room for soft serve ice cream later.
- Being waited on hand and foot doesn’t get old, in fact it will be a hard thing to give up.
- It’s possible to live for a week without cell phones or Google. It’s also possible, but harder, to live without a daily English language newspaper.
- The Titanic wouldn’t be a big ship by today’s standards. With 3,600 passengers and 1,200 crew members, this 952-foot-long ship, which displaces almost 16,000 tons would have dwarfed the ill-fated Cunard liner.
- The natives “get” the hospitality thing, except for some overly aggressive salespeople in Grenanda, everyone we came in contact with was unfailingly polite and helpful.
- Many tropical fish are far less scared of us than we are of them. Off a beach in Bonaire, we swam right through the middle of numerous schools of fish that didn’t seem to take any notice of the presence of large white-bodied mammals swimming among them.
- There isn’t an SPF high enough to really protect delicate Irish skin from the tropical sun.
- From a male’s perspective, the shrinking of bathing suits that women wear is not always a good thing.
- Dancers in a show on the ship can still do intricate flips, splits and other moves even when the deck below them is rocking. You just get used to it, they told us.
- If we’re interested in mending fences with our Caribbean neighbors, Dominica seems like the biggest challenge. It’s part of an anti-U.S. trading group that also includes Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia and the local newspaper touted a recent aid package from China.
- Bonus: philosophical lesson – not matter how hard you try, you can’t make time stand still.