My summer cruise

Wow, when my parent’s told me they were planning to go on cruise for summer break, I was shocked! I had never been on a cruise before, so I wondered what it would be like! Then my mom told me all the details. We would be going on The Royal Caribbean Cruise fleet! Did you know that this cruise liner owns the biggest ship in the world, Oasis of the seas! Also, you should know that Royal Caribbean names their ships by putting a cool word and (of the seas) after it! We would be leaving from Seattle and going to Alaska, where we would be stopping at Juneau, Skagway, and Victoria B.C.. It would be a fun-filled week in the ocean, I couldn’t wait to get started.

              When the day came to leave, we made sure we had everything we needed for the cruise. When I locked the door, I thought how a week later we would be coming back home with all those exciting memories. So we drove to the Oakland airport left for Seattle. When we got to Seattle, we were excited to see the new places! I went in a gift shop to look for souvenirs but my dad warned us we didn’t have much time. So when we went to the front desk, we found out that there was actually a cruise desk since so many cruises leave from here.  The package deal costed $50 but they would give you a tour of the city while the boat was getting ready and they would drop off your luggage at the boat so you don’t need to worry about it. The tour was amazing! I found out that 2^nd ugliest building in the world is in Seattle (it’s shaped like a huge smashed guitar). Also, the Space needle isn’t as tall as I pictured it but still pretty tall. We even saw the Starbucks headquarters! I wish we could have stopped by and grabbed a creamy Hot Chocolate from the makers of it all. Last but not least, we saw the Seattle Seahawks (football) stadium. All of the football fans in our bus cheered. Then, we reached the cruise. When we got inside the dock building, there was huge line for the cruise check-in. We were waiting for about 1 hour in that line and it wasn’t fun watching those huge cruise ships stuffed with sweets waiting for us. Finally, when we were done with the line, we took a couple of pictures and stepped onto the cruise boat! We did it!! We were on a cruise for the first time in our lives!!!!

              So, while we were waiting for the luggage, we explored the cruise and found out that:

·       Tween Deck-For Crew Use only.

·       Deck 0-For Crew Use only.

·       Deck 1-Cabins

·       Deck 2-Cabins

·       Deck 3-Cabins

·       Deck 4- Edelwiess dining hall and Cruise lobby and the Broadway Melodies Theater and cabins!

·       Deck 5- Cabins and Edelwiess dining hall and Cruise lobby and the Broadway Melodies Theater. Many shops along the entrance to the Theater. Also, front desk and picture gallery is there also. Deck 5 is the main deck. It includes a Ben and Jerrys Ice Cream shop.

·       Deck 6- Cabins and many louges and a bar.

·       Deck 7- Library and card room with cabins.

·       Deck 8- Crown and Anchor Study and cabins.

·       Deck 9- Windjammer Café and Solarium (indoor pool and café). Also has a spa and outdoor pool. Deck 9 is the first outside deck.

·       Deck 10- Adventure Ocean kids club and Teenager arcade and movie area. Also the walk-a-mile lap area. Also includes indoor gym and Rock-Climbing wall.

·       Deck 11- Includes the Viking Crown lounge and the Captains quarters.

Did you know that there are 8 guest elevators that travel to decks 1-9, 4 elevators that travel to decks 1-10, and only two elevators that go to the Viking Crown Lounge.

              We were pretty hungry so, I wasn’t very happy when I heard the captain call us all out for the emergency testing. Basically, where we stand for 15 minutes with life-jackets at the desired station while the crew makes sure the ship is ready to leave dock. After that, we ran to the Windjammer Café and ate quickly. Then we got the cruise compass of Day 1, which is a very helpful piece of paper which tells you all the statistics of that day (temperature, ship speed, etc.). It also tells all the events going to happen that day on the ship, what time, and where. We played a game of royal bingo and rested in our room for a while. Then, we found out that there is a daily show that happens at night. It is a very good show, with famous dancers and singers and happens every night. The problem is, though, that there are too many people on the boat! So, the show for us started at 7:30 and we ate dinner at 9:00, while others eat dinner at 7:30 and watch at 9:00! So after all that, we sat down and thought about the first day on a cruise. It had a great feeling to it. The whole atmosphere was very royal, and everybody pretty much treated you as royalty. So we slept with happy thoughts!

              Day 2 and Day 3 were pretty much the same, we had breakfast at the windjammer café in the morning, and then walked about 1-2 miles. I bought a Royal Caribbean Walk-a-mile shirt to support the Make-a-wish foundation. After that, we start our daily adventures, my brother Shuban has a lot of fun in Adventure Ocean because it’s like preschool! They play fun games all day while we get to have our fun and not worry about him. Meanwhile, I spent some of my time at WII tournaments. They’re really small so don’t think it’s some kind of huge tournament or something. I did win 2 gold medals, and 1 bronze medal. The rules are pretty simple, in every tournament the man selects some challenge from WII sports or WII sports Resort and everybody plays it once. That is one round, so they do that two more times and add up everybody’s score and the people with the three highest scores get gold, silver, and bronze. There were 5 tournaments and I couldn’t go to two so I won in every single tournament I went in! It was actually pretty easy.

              Day 4 we reached Skagway and on that day we planned to do a train ride! What is cool is that you can pay for all of your excursions, or trips, beforehand on the cruise and they arrange everything so on the day you reach there they many buses that will take you to the thing you chose. Since we chose a train ride, instead of a bus, the train was actually there because there were train tracks built all along the cruise dock! So we learned many things from our train-ride like there used to be a very old town a very long time ago and there was a villain in that town so the Sheriff and the villain had a face-off, the villain died instantly but the Sheriff died later off. So we saw the grave of the Sheriff covered in flowers and the grave of the villain next to the Sheriff with a stone wall surrounding the grave like he is in jail in the afterlife!! We passed through two tunnels and actually passed into Canada for 5 minutes! For 5 minutes we were Canadians!

              On day 5, we reached Juneau, the capital of Alaska. We chose to see a glacier and go whale watching. So we got on a bus and that took us to a glacier called Mendenhall glacier. There was a lake in between us and the glacier so we couldn’t see it that well but we had fun hiking to it and climbing rocks. After that we went to the bus and it took us the docks but before that our bus driver was driving past a hill and she said,” You will be so amazed at what you will see next!” The hill passed and we saw a Wal-Mart! Also, we drove past a Burger King and she told us that the Burger King was the first fast-food store here so on the grand-opening day, there was a huge line and they ran out of supplies that they thought would last for a week so they had to call in an emergency chopper filled with supplies. The same thing happened the next day! At the whale-watching boat, they were serving free Hot-chocolate! Yay! So, when we got out on the water, the captain gave us each binoculars and we looked for whales. We actually spotted quite a lot. There was one pair of whales that was really great to look at but the rule of conservation and animal rights say that you cannot be near the same group of whales for 30 minutes so we moved away. The funny thing is, when we got back on the boat, it took us around the back of the glacier and we got much better pictures than before and it was much better!

              On day 6, we went to Victoria, British Columbia and instead of excursions we just took a tour of the city. We saw many shops and many places. We ate Italian ice-cream and then started shopping there. I got a keychain saying I love Canada and then we raced back to the ship. Even though, we didn’t do much, we still had a lot of fun looking at the beautiful city.

              On day 7, finally the end came near. Even though we had a lot of fun with games and events on the ship, everybody on the cruise knew that the paradise was going to end soon. To get us home in one day, the captain had ordered the ship to go very fast so it was great to see the ocean. Now, as it turned night, the captain stopped the exhausted ship and pulled into Seattle. After a good’s night rest, everybody was ready so after an hour of getting ready to leave we finally got off the boat and thought we have now completed a cruise. All I can say is it’s an experience everybody  should have because it was a great experience! To this day, I am glad that I chose to go on an exciting cruise!