Celebrity Cruises

Are you planning a pretty extraordinary vacation? Say to celebrate a extraordinary event like retirement or an anniversary? If you are, then you really must add a cruise to your shortlist of vacations to research more.

A cruise is a very extraordinary type of vacation, because you get to visit a number of locations and even several different countries over the length of your vacation.

It is a very relaxing sort of vacation because you have nothing to do except enjoy yourself between destinations. You do not even have to pack and unpack between destinations because your hotel takes you to your port of call not a bus or a car. Usually, the cruise liner has already docked when you wake up for breakfast.

After breakfast, you can opt to go ashore or not, as you please. Usually, the ship will have a few sight-seeing tours you can pick from or you can go it alone. You are told what time to be back on board, say 19:00 hours and whilst you go down to dinner, the liner will weigh anchor and head for the next port of call.

This routine will be repeated each day, but at another port, although you do get a 'day at sea' on some cruises. This is not a bad thing as it allows you to spend all day relaxing and enjoying the motion of the ocean. Most cruise ships have lots to do during these days at sea.

Almost all liners will have a cinema and special interest lectures or lessons, some of which are led by guest celebrities. For example, you may be interested in learning about wine. Well, there is normally a wine appreciation class on board or you might like to learn some of the history of the next port of call, especially if it has connections to an ancient civilization.

Food figures large on cruises. On my last cruise, we had: breakfast, elevenses, luncheon, high tea, dinner and a midnight feast. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were comparable to five course meals, but really you could simply consume as much as you wanted. In between the meals, there was room (or cabin) service.

Food was included in the cost of our cruise, but you had to pay for alcoholic drinks, although they are free too on all inclusive cruises. Luckily, cruise liners also have gyms, swimming pools and deck sports to help you strive to keep the pounds off. I was disastrous at that and I gained two pounds for every week of the voyage, which I am told is around average.

After dinner, there is normally a cabaret, a piano bar and a night club going on somewhere and if you can stay awake, you can normally get to all three events to find out which one suits you the best that evening. For me it was cabaret, night club and last drink in the piano bar before going to my cabin.

The sheet was always turned down with a sheaf of papers on my pillow explaining about the next port and the excursions on hand, which could be booked any time of the day or night over the cabin phone. I would go again tomorrow.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on numerous subjects, but is currently involved with cruises to St Croix. If you are interested in St Croix Vacation Rentals in the US Virgin Islands, please click through to our website.