As you know, we’ve cruised a few times, and covered it here, and though we’ve cruised the now-somewhat-beleaguered Carnival Cruise Lines, we had no issues during our short trip. In fact, we really enjoyed our time on board the Imagination, and liked the Carnival experience more than the Royal Caribbean in some ways. (Given there’s so much discussion on differences between the two, we may have to do a comparison sometime.)
However, given Carnival’s recent issues with their ships and the fact that we’re hoping to do a Carnival cruise shortly …

Having already talked about what the services and activities can be like aboard one of the cruise ships, I thought I should talk a little about what the rest of your life onboard might look like while you’re cruising.
While you might get to know some of the other cruisers enjoying the voyage with you, it’s more likely that the majority of your encounters are going to be with the staff and crew. Having been on a couple of cruises at this point, its become clear that the majority of employees …

Because not all ports of call are for everyone – even I was having ruin fatigue at some points of our trip – not to mention there’s always going to be the day or two at sea while the ship’s transitioning between ports, cruise lines make sure that the days are packed full of activities – even if you’re more than likely going to be spending the day at the pools.
You can always count on the main theatre having a movie on during the day – which Nicole and I …

Interview: Cruise Director Simeon Baker, Royal Caribbean from Nicole Winchester on Vimeo.
During our stay aboard the Vision of the Seas in November, Cruise Director Simeon Baker was nice enough to take time out of his schedule to sit down with us, and tell us about his job as a cruise director.
The video’s about twenty minutes long, and covers what his typical work day is like, as well as how he ended up working for Royal Caribbean, and how he balances the time commitment with the rest of his life. If …

Originally launched in 1998 as one of the last of its class of mid-sized ships offering big-ship touches, the Vision of the Seas thirteen years later has held up quite well.

While those who have enjoyed cruises on one of Royal Caribbean’s larger models will note the lack of alternative restaurants, or the sometimes overwhelming number of diversions available on the bigger classes of ships, the smaller size instead makes for a more intimate experience, allowing you to get to know the ship and her crew better – who …

Yesterday, we enjoyed a relatively slow day at sea after a whirlwind tour of ruins at Ephesus and in Athens.  We say ‘relatively’ because we spent part of our day running around the ship for Augusto’s FlipCam Scavenger Hunt in which Nic did stupid things on camera for points.  Don’t worry – we have the video, thanks to Augusto!
We also did a little napping and a little dancing and a little drinking, and may possibly be convinced into a dancing competition due to an offhand comment made to the Cruise …

As we type, we are sailing along, maybe 100 miles off the coast of Turkey, having left Istanbul about two hours ago.  We only had the morning on our last day in the city, but we were able to pack in a few things we missed in our first couple days, and pet a few cats along the way.

We also shot the most famous cat in all of Turkey – perhaps in the world!  This cat has met various foreign heads of state including President Obama, been on CNN and …