Royal Caribbean Archives - Circles in the SandCircles in the Sand

Perhaps the biggest surprise came when checking in at the cruise terminal. “Oh, there’s Davin from school,” said Son1, as though it was completely normal to come across a school friend some 8,000 miles away from home. They gave each other a dab. Davin’s mother and I, both clutching our suitcases and bags, thought the boys were joking until it became obvious our sons really did know each other – and we really did live just two streets away from each other, in the same compound.

Small world.

Tourist trap: Not my favourite area of the boat, but the kids LOVED it!

The next revelation was that, although there were some 2,600 passengers on board, which did, at times, suggest no let up from tourism hell, you could actually lose almost everyone by finding a quiet corner of the ship from which to read, or just watch the ocean. At night, the moon sparkled on its dark, wrinkly surface, and without any bright city lights, the stargazing was amazing – like being cocooned (make that dwarfed) in your own enormous, outdoor planetarium.

I also loved having a porthole in our little room, from which (we were just above sea level) the docile white-tipped waves looked like carpets unfurling, splashing the side of the boat playfully. On the last evening, another cruise ship floated past on the horizon, its lights a necklace of glitter.

Of course, the kids had their ‘moments’, especially as they had to go cold turkey from wifi. “What? Seriously, NO wifi? Son2 whined, his eyes widening, pulling a tortured face like he’d eaten a lemon. [Whispers:] Actually there was wifi, but it was an extra and expensive.

The Atlantis Bahamas – I always forget that Dubai wasn’t the first with this

Both DH and I lapped the ship numerous times looking for them when they went awol (my mind working overtime wondering if one of them had pushed the other overboard), and then, the worst ‘moment’, Son2 vanished while we were snorkelling off CocoCay Island (Royal Caribbean’s private island – perhaps not the Bahamian paradise advertised with some 2,000 cruise-goers all over it – yes, some did stay put on the boat! – but a wonderful stop nevertheless).

Put it this way, the island’s lifeguards are now on first name terms with my eight year old, who’d simply had enough and decided to swim half a kilometre back to shore all by himself. They found him on the beach, perfectly fine, his mask and snorkel jettisoned in the sand. I’m still recovering from that one.

All in all, I loved the cruise. It didn’t turn into a nausea-riddled, hermetically sealed cruise passenger pen; no-one went overboard; exploring Nassau was fab; and the 70s disco was lots of fun. While DH wasn’t looking, I even visited the ‘Next Cruise’ on-board sales stand and pocketed a few leaflets advertising longer floating jollies into Alaska, and to Mexico via Cuba. I’ve got a year to persuade him …

As an airline family it never occurred to me that a cruise might be for us – I had visions that a cruise would involve being stuck on a boat awash with a novovirus outbreak and quarantined to a tiny island somewhere until the home port let us back in.

Boarding the floating hotel (Majesty of the Seas)

I was also guilty of assuming that, if the ship didn’t turn into a giant mobile sick bag, then all our fellow passengers would conform to the silver-haired, buffet-savaging stereotype, be cruise bores, or, worse, be the kind of people who don’t even bother to get off the ship when it calls at new destinations. I imagined being stuck at dinner with the latter, and then belched out with a thousand other passengers to traipse after an umbrella-wielding tour guide also owned by the cruise line.

For these reasons, I’d always given cruises a wide berth (excuse the pun!) –until last week, when I realised what I’ve been missing.

Yes, I’m now officially a cruiser – and have new friends: the American lady and her son who we shared our dinner table with each night, and who weren’t cruise bores at all but had funky tattoos (the mom not the boy), funny stories, hair tips (she was a hairdresser who’d worked in Beverly Hills) and (relevant for my sons) also had extensive knowledge of dabbing, YouTube and Pokemon cards.

It turns out the US cruise market is HUGE, as popular with college kids as retired folk, and – as our short introduction to cruising proved – is really an excuse for a three-day-long party.

Of course, it helps when you bump into the Bahamas, the sun is shining non-stop, the sea is as smooth as an ironing board and the waters and big skies of the Caribbean are the kind of cerulean blue you find in tubes of oil paint – an intense colour boiled down to its very essence.

Adjusting to the sandy summer skies of the desert is proving quite the challenge for this newbie cruiser!