The First Cruise
Sovereign Of The Seas
July 20th – July 27th, 1991
It was sometime around our 21st anniversary that we begin planning this cruise. I still remember the location of the travel agency we used and the nice lady that worked with us. We had so much fun planning it and looking forward to it. It was an exciting two months for us.
A few days before we were to leave, we got a call from the lady, that we had used to book our cruise and she told us they were bumping us up the 7th, floor, which was still an inside room but it was on the walk-around deck and we had a porthole that we could lookout. So even before we got started things were already looking up. It turned out to be a much better room and a much better location. We did learn one thing from the experience from now on we would always get a room with a balcony.
That Friday on the 19th, I was working and both Connie and I had spent the last few weeks looking forward to this cruise. That afternoon around two or three the account manager from our Lamar Life account in Jackson Mississippi called and asked me to postpone our cruise. He would pay for any money I lost and pay for another cruise. I told him no. Connie was so looking forward to this and she deserved it so much for all that she had done for me. There was no way I was going to postpone it. I had been around long enough to know there were always going to be things come up no matter when you planned your vacation. He was a little upset with me, but he eventually got over it.
That evening, Connie and I took our sheltie “Sugar” over to Michelle’s as she was going to keep her for the week we would be gone. I knew it would be hard for Connie to leave “Sugar” as she loved every sheltie we had so much and took wonderful care of them. As I thought we stayed at Michelle’s longer than I wanted because Connie was having a hard time leaving. Finally, we got out of there about ten and we had to be up the next morning at five.
We left the house around six and got to the EDS parking lot around twenty minutes after six. I left my car in the parking lot while we were gone. Our good friends, Tim and Norma meet us there around six-thirty and drove us to the airport. We had an eight-thirty flight to Miami. We arrived at the airport in plenty of time.
As we were waiting in the lounge area at the boarding gate, Connie decided she needed to go to the restroom. She did but to the wrong one. The restrooms as you know at the airport are quite large and Connie walked into the men’s restroom. She was quite embarrassed as all the guys standing at the urinals turn their heads to look at her. If you had seen the expression on her face, you would have been laughing as much as I did, she had that uncanny ability to make situations funnier than they were and to always make me laugh.
The flight was uneventful, and we arrived in Miami around eleven-forty-five. The nice thing was that we did not have to go get our luggage as it was going to be taken directly to the ship. So, we went directly outside and waited for the bus that was picking up people to take to the ship. Boarding was not supposed to start until two that afternoon, but we arrived at the ship around one-thirty and there was already a line and they were already letting people board the ship. By about one-forty-five, we had boarded the ship. After locating our rooms, we went to explore and found the deck where all the food was located and sit down and had ourselves a little snack.
Luckily, the drill with life-preserver took place right outside our room so all we had to do was walk outside our room to the railing. We had selected the early dining hour so dinner was at 5:30. We cleaned up and went to dinner to meet the people we would be dining with for the next week. They were eight of us at the table, I think it made have been six. Two of the other couples were from California. One of them was a young lady in her early thirties that had brought her mother along. She was treating her mother as she had never been on a cruise before. They were genuinely nice, but her mother did not speak any English. I forget where they were from, but you could tell the young lady had worked her way out of poverty, I am sure. The other couple were well off and owned either some stores, our parking garages. I just cannot recall. While Connie and I were nice to them, the other couple kept making snide remarks as you could tell they looked down on them. Connie and I would always try to say something nice to them when this happened especially to the mother which her daughter translated. Overall, it was a good experience but sometimes it was a little uncomfortable. Connie and I always found a way to diffuse the situation.
The best thing about the evening dinner that night was the waiter as he was such a delight. He asked us how everything was going, and Connie said, “I feel like a Princes” and he said so you shall be. He started calling her “Princess Connie” that night and every night at dinner after that. Needless to say, he got an exceptionally good tip at the end of the cruise. After dinner, we went to the entertainment in a large room that seated a couple of thousand people. They had an early show and a late show and since we had the early dinner, we attended the early show. I do not think we missed a one during the whole cruise and they were all good. That evening we strolled the shop and was amazed at the sun setting over the ocean. We were definitely off to a good start to our cruise and looking forward to the week ahead.
On Sunday, since there were no regular scheduled seating hours for breakfast or lunch, so we went to the main dining room. For the rest of the week, we sometimes went to the main dining room, and sometimes we went to the food deck. The food was definitely better in the dining room. That day was a day at sea, so, we just spent exploring the ship and learning our way around. It was amazing how big it was.
We found the ship an exciting place to be, as there was so much activity going on and we did not know yet what all we wanted to do or participate in. They had a basketball court on the ship and I so long to be able to play basketball again even though I was never a particularly good player.
Monday, we started participating in a walking group. They would walk so many times around the deck and if you did it so many times you got a free t-shirt. Connie and I were determined to get those t-shirts and we did. The t-shirts were a bright yellow and had the wording “Ship-Shape” in blue on them. We had gotten up early for a breakfast in the dining rooms, as we wanted to join the group that was walking as they were starting earlier than normal because a lot of the passengers and crew were taking the tenders over to a private island “Labadee” owned by “Royal Caribbean” on the north side of Haiti. After the big rush to get to the island Connie and I boarded a tender around ten and it was not very crowded as most of the people had left earlier. I will have to say “Royal Caribbean” did a great job, as they had so many activities going on that there was plenty to do in the water or out of the water. The hamburgers and hotdogs, they made were out of this world good. Connie and I decide to leave early because we wanted to beat the crowd back and clean up before dinner. So, we caught a tender back around two-forty-five. Again, what a wonderful day, we were having so much fun and we were so excited about everything. It was like Christmas in July.
After “Princess Connie” and I had dinner we attend the show they put on that night but after such a long day we turn in early around nine that night.
Tuesday, I got up early since we had turned in earlier the previous evening. It was wonderful being out in the ocean air and watching the sun come up, I had never experienced anything like that before. What a reminder of God’s wonders. After we walked around the deck that morning, we changed clothes and got ready for our arrival in San Juan Puerto Rico at noon. By ten-thirty we could already see the island and as got closer we saw a fort guarding the harbor. We learned that it was a fort that was started in 1539 to guard the city of San Juan. It was called “Castillo San Felipe El Morro”, the closer we got the more interesting it became especially with all the history the cruise ship was providing about the fort. Even though we arrived in San Juan a little before noon, Connie and I had lunch and left the ship around one so we could avoid the rush of everyone getting off. We were going to be in San Juan until eight that evening. After wandering around the town for a little bit near the port Connie and I ventured a little further in. Around two-thirty Connie decided she needed some feminine product from a drug store. I am not sure where we were, but it was not too crowded, so I stop and ask a guy where the nearest drug store was. Was that a mistake. He spoke broken English, and he thought I wanted drugs, he said yes, I can get you drugs. I said no, a drug store, he said I can many types of drugs again in broken English, Thank goodness another guy was coming by that spoke both English and Spanish so he explained to the guy that we wanted a pharmacy. The first guys seemed disappointed, but we got directions to the pharmacy. After Connie got what she needed, it was around four, so we decided to head back to the ship which took us about a half-hour. Since a lot of people were staying in San Juan to much later the dinner table was not crowded that night, and neither was the theater. Connie and I were just thankful that the first guy was not an undercover cop are we would have been in jail instead of continuing our cruise. We had some good laughs about that over the years, but you would have to have been there to realize how funny it really was.
We left San Juan that night around 8 pm, but even after we left the theater walking around the deck and seeing the lights of San Juan was an amazing sight.
Wednesday morning, I got up early again. It was a little after five. I know because on the video, I shot the clock is at five-thirty-five and I said, I need to get Connie up around six, so she could see our arrival to the island of St. Thomas. We were almost there as we were to arrive in St. Thomas before eight and then the ship would allow disembarkation to the island around eight. Connie and I had a leisurely breakfast around eight and then about nine after the crowd had disembarked, we left the ship to explore the island.
In looking back on it, I cannot believe how much walking we did, as we stayed on the island until after four. It has been a long time since I was able to spend so much time on my feet walking. Now we were not walking the whole time as we stopped for coffee, had lunch, and stopped for ice cream in the afternoon. There were so many stores and so many things being sold in the town that we found it unbelievable. We spent a lot of time looking at the jewelry stores. At their diamond and then their gold jewelry. While it may have been a much more reasonable price than you could get in the US, we were still not willing to spend that much money on jewelry.
Finally, around three we knew that we would have to be going back to the ship soon, so we decided to stop in one of the stores we had seen earlier. The reason we picked this store was because of its name, “Sparky” not spelled exactly like my nickname but close. We had been in their earlier, so after looking around a bit we bought two beautiful watches, one for the young man “Daryl” that mowed our grass and one for “Michelle”, who was keeping “Sugar” for the week. The watches were $49.95 each and they were genuinely nice, and Connie also bought a mud pack for $16.95. They asked us if we wanted the watches wrapped and Connie said yes, so they show us more things to buy, while they wrapped the watches. We headed back to the ship, as we wanted to beat the crowd plus the ship was supposed to pull out of port at five. We got back about four-fifteen but unfortunately, we did not beat the crowd. Around four-thirty, we were back in our room and Connie wanted to look at the watches. That when we discovered they had taken us. Connie said I want to look at the watches to make sure they did not switch them. I do not know why we did not think of that earlier. Anyway, she opened the box containing Michelle’s watch and it was the exact watch we bought. When she opened the box containing the watch for Daryl, we were shocked, they had not switched watches, as there was no watch in there just a flat stone. It was too late for us to do anything about it.
After dinner and before the show began in the theater, we did report it to the person on the ship and they had said they would add that shop to their list that they warned passengers about. They had told us that morning before we left the ship of certain stores we should avoid.
Connie and I chose a cruise that would have several days at sea. We thought it would be good to just have some time to relax. When we looked at cruises for the future, we were always more interested in the ones that spent more time at sea, than one that stopped somewhere each day.
We had spent all day Sunday, at sea and now we had both Thursday and Friday on the ship with no stopping. Connie and I enjoy the quiet time to just relax.
On Thursday night, they had a midnight buffet. Even though Connie and I had gone to bed earlier, we set the alarm for 11:30 and went to the midnight buffet. We probably spent an hour and a half there as it was so enjoyable and amazing to see all the things that they had done especially with the chocolate.
On Friday we earned out “Royal Caribbean” “Ship-Shape” t-shirts for participating in the walking program. I think we wore them till they were completely unwearable.
It was time to go home, on Friday afternoon we put tips in envelopes for all those that had served us during the cruise. Needless to say, our waiter who kept calling Connie, “Princes Connie” got a genuinely nice tip. We were up early Saturday morning, to watch our ship pull into the harbor. We got there about seven with disembarkation to start at eight. Connie and I went down for one last breakfast and left the ship around eight-thirty. Since we had never cruised before we were in for a big shock at disembarkation. It was easy getting to the cruise as we checked our bags in at the airport and then they showed up in our rooms on the ship later that day. Disembarkation was just the opposite as it was utter chaos. We were given a number where our bag would be, and we were then on our own. All the luggage was in a big area and anyone it seemed could just pick it up. Now here we were trying to haul all this luggage around and get on a bus that would take us to the airport. I can remember how hard it was getting all that luggage to the airport, but we made it. So before ten we were at the airport and had checked our luggage for a four-thirty flight back to Dallas.
Since we had time on our hand, we rented a car from Budget and spent five hours just driving around Miami and seeing the sight. I do not remember where we stopped for lunch, but I do remember us stopping at a drug store, sorry I meant pharmacy. We got back to the airport and the plane was on time. Since Dallas was an hour behind, Miami, we got home and went straight to Michelle’s to get Sugar.
I will never forget, how much fun we had and what a wonderful time it was for the two of us.
Thanks for all the beautiful memories you left me with Connie.