As many of you know, my family just spent ten days on Royal Caribbean’s Anthem of the Seas on a trip to Bermuda, Dutch Saint Martin (aka, Sint Maarten), San Juan, and Haiti. You can probably imagine that the islands were pretty much as you’d expect. They’re all islandy and stuff, and you do islandy stuff when you’re on them. So for this post, I thought I’d show you some of the stranger things from the cruise. You up for that? Good, because that’s what I’m writing about.
Now, Anthem has the North Star, and observation globe thing on the top of the ship that you get into, and the arm takes you to a height of 320 feet above sea level. Slowly. Very slowly. I mention this, because of the warning sign that might lead you to believe that this gondola is going to be swing around the ship like a hula hoop or something, rising to full height and dropping to the sea in a matter of seconds. It does not.
But, here are two fairly absurd rules for riding North Star. “Must be capable of following instructions to be seated in the event of technical difficulties.” You know that’s there for a reason, right? Somebody was probably not capable and failed to mention that to the operator. The other rule is, “Have the ability to continuously grasp the handrail with at least one extremity in the event of sudden movement.” Umm, extremity? I, for one, intend to use a hand, which is attached to an arm. After that, I don’t have any other extremities capable of grasping a handrail.
Later in the trip, I was in the pool, surrounded by legal statements and rules. The first funny rule was, “Watch out for changes in depth.” The deep end of the pool was 5’3” and the shallow end of the pool was 5’0”. But I really had to laugh at the bottom of the sign which stated that the maximum occupancy of the probably 20-foot by 30-foot pool is 22 people. Now, that alone is not that funny, except that we had just come from the elevator which states that the maximum occupancy of the 7×7-foot elevator is 26 people—26 very friendly and trusting people. I don’t think we ever managed to fit more than around 15 in there and even at that, I could tell that the guy next to me had three quarters, two nickels, two dimes, and four pennies in his pocket.
Speaking of elevators, each one had a wacky photo in the back. There was the Lemur with a Martini, Zebra in a Zebra-Striped Swimsuit, and…this. I choose to believe this is an homage to those of us from Baltimore, and the title of this one is probably, “You Ain’t Nothin’ but a Hon-Dog,” or maybe, “You Ain’t Nothin’ but a Dog, Hon.”
This one’s a bit trickier but imagine that you’re standing on the dock on the Dutch side of the island of Sint Maarten. It’s the end of the day, and there’s a (I think Nissan Frontier) pickup truck on the beach pulling Jet-Skis out of the water. Would you also notice the “SHEEHY” license plate frame? Sheehy is a string of dealerships mostly in Maryland. Whaaaat?
Sint Maarten was a fun stop. Oh sure, we did plenty of diamond shopping. We looked at the Crown of Light diamonds, the Tanzanite necklaces, the Ammonite jewelry, Tropical Topaz, and all that stuff. You hear this SO much on the ship that you HAVE to shop for these things. Well, you have to look at these things and pick up the free charms from the store. What the ship’s personnel don’t tell you is how to do other stuff on shore. For instance, should we go with “Shade” or “Lenny” to rent our beach chairs? We went with Lenny, because he gave us two beach chairs, two umbrellas, bathroom facilities at the bar behind us, and Wi-Fi services (Which we did not take him up on, by the way) for twenty bucks. That same bar also had six beers for $10.00 (This would have been $50.00 onboard), and frozen Rum Punches for $5.00 each ($12.00 onboard). We enjoyed our brief stay in Sint Maarten very much, thank you.
Michael Crowl - Author 