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A Seven Day Eastern Caribbean Cruise on the Carnival Glory visiting the Bahamas, St. Thomas and St. Maarten

As my daughter’s college graduation approached, I asked her what she would like to do. She thought taking a cruise with the family would be a perfect way to celebrate. And it was.

Plans began months ago to take this trip. I found the sailing of the Carnival Glory to offer everything we wanted: a 7 day Eastern Caribbean itinerary, a big ship with lots of activities, and a great price. We booked the cabins in November for the June 7th sail date. Waiting for the trip to come seemed forever for some but when last week arrived, it was kind of one of those things where you just can’t believe it was here.

I flew on a red-eye from Phoenix to Orlando via a 2 hour layover in Las Vegas. It was a 4 hour flight leaving Vegas at midnight and with the time change, arrived in Orlando at 7:30 A.M. The plane was packed and I didn’t sleep at all. At least I had an aisle seat. My brother’s in-laws came the closest to missing the embarkation as their plane in Louisville was delayed a few hours as it needed a battery replaced, and that had to be flown in from Chicago to Kentucky! Laura and Al arrived at the pier just in time. I believe they were the last ones to board the ship.

We took a private van from the airport in Orlando over to Pt. Canaveral. Seeing the ship is a cool feeling. The Glory is the largest class of ship in the Carnival fleet. It is 110,000 gross tons. An aircraft carrier is about 98,000.

Embarkation went very smoothly and as we walked the gangway on the 3rd deck, I took this shot.

One of the first things you do when getting on the ship is to start to learn your way around! On a ship this size, it literally takes a few days or more to even get a sense which way to turn to get to where you want to go. It took me about 3 days to realize that at the elevators there is a ship replica and it shows where you are. The helpful part of this ship diagram is that it displays which direction the ship is going. You can’t tell which way is forward or backward! So many times I would start thinking I was going one way only to actually be going the opposite direction I needed to go.

The ship was scheduled to set sail at 4 P.M. Just before that, everyone is required to participate in the Muster Drill. Everyone is kind of self conscious about putting on the life jackets, especially the first time. If you’ve done it before, it is no big deal. I had mine on backwards at first! I should have taken a pic of Beth’s toe nail polish — it matched perfectly the color of the life jacket!

I have no doubt, if there was a real emergency, NO ONE would hesitate to get that thing on.

As the sun set at sea that first day, we were beginning what was to become the best family vacation we had ever taken.

This actually was only the second real vacation I had ever taken with my kids. It is never too late to take the time and money to do things that are important. Spending some time like this with family was/is a good thing.