The Second Time Aboard

        

Posted by: travadmin on Sep 29, 2003 – 10:32 AM
pampering  By ANITA GATES
The New York Times

LET’S not say what year it was. Let’s just say that in the photograph taken on the top deck, I’m wearing a light-green-and-white-checked minidress and mod matching kerchief. My college friend Louise and I were on a Labor Day weekend cruise from Miami to Nassau and Paradise Island. It was the first time I had traveled outside the United States and the first vacation I had ever taken without a parent or chaperone.

The trip came back to me not long ago when I was looking for Caribbean cruises that I actually had time to take. There it was: the same itinerary. (True, the Bahamas aren’t technically in the Caribbean, but close enough.) It was even Labor Day weekend again, but a lot of things had changed.

Some hadn’t. Apparently I haven’t gotten any smarter over the years. When the reservations person asks if I want to “customize” my air travel, I say no. There are hourly nonstop flights from New York to Miami; what could be easier? Unfortunately the cruise line and US Airways have other ideas, sending me out at 7:30 a.m. on Friday, by way of Charlotte, N.C.

Luckily it’s a smooth flight; we arrive in Miami around noon and by 2 p.m. I’ve been transported, immigrated and checked into my cabin on Royal Caribbean’s Majesty of the Seas.

Everything seems calmer and more organized than on that earlier trip, but maybe all these years in New York have raised my tolerance for long lines and general chaos.

I have a memory (possibly exaggerated) of a shed filled with long tables of opened suitcases being rifled through by immigration officials. The name of the ship and the cruise line are lost to memory, but I do recall passengers making fun of the vessel’s advanced age. I don’t remember the ship’s exact size or the number of passengers it carried, but it was tiny by today’s standards. Our accommodations were unimpressive; there are photographs somewhere (of me, Louise and a couple of cute guys we met) in which we seem to be sitting on bunk beds.

This time my cabin is relatively luxurious. The room is pleasant and sunny, thanks to the sliding glass doors that lead to my small private balcony. I make sure to keep the balcony doors closed, lest the cabin’s air-conditioned comfort be compromised. In addition to the full-size bed dressed in red and gold, the mirrors, the makeup table-*****-desk, the TV, the unstocked minifridge (useful for bottled water) and good closets, there is a seating area, with a love seat, a comfy chair, two ottomans and a glass-top table. The bathroom has a tub with shower and more than enough counter space for an assortment of makeup and toiletries.

When I venture out, it’s quickly clear that this is a younger crowd than you’d find on many cruises. Young men roam the halls and staircases with open bottles of beer, and there are lots of children. (One toddler, who seems the essence of sweetness and light at first, speaks for her generation during the muster drill. She begins crying, rips off her life vest and stamps on it.) When a person over 60 appears, which happens very rarely, you notice.

The crowd is more racially diverse than on a lot of other cruises; I chat with a middle-aged black man in the elevator and learn that he has about 30 relatives on board for a weekend-long family reunion. Still, the ship carries some 2,300 passengers, so that can’t account completely for the mix. As we set sail, the people on Carnival’s 2,000- plus passenger ship Fascination wave goodbye.

I’m assigned to the 6 p.m. dinner seating, which is fine; it means I go “out” for dinner and still have the evening free. The Mikado dining room is typically huge and atypically low-key, with lantern-style lighting and a tasteful Japanese mural on the back wall. My dining companions are a mother and two daughters, who have left their men back in North Carolina for an all-woman weekend. I enjoy being the one with the most travel experience (tales of Budapest and Singapore, cruises in the Virgin Islands, the Greek islands and on the Nile). The shrimp scampi is fine, but the sesame-encrusted salmon the next night is better. The service is enthusiastically gracious.

The next morning we’ve arrived in Nassau, and so has the Fascination, at anchor beside us. So much for my balcony’s beautiful ocean view.

My first glimpse of Nassau on that earlier trip seems almost quaint now. There were vendors on the street, selling straw hats and bags, and a few men driving horse-drawn carriages, offering private tours.

This time we approach by way of a huge enclosed market, set up so that passengers pass stalls and stalls of merchandise to get to the street. The stores seem the same, the faded pastel buildings advertising the same liquor, watches and Havana cigars. The first time around, I bought my boyfriend a hookah and a bottle of 151-proof rum. This time I skip the shops and board a ferry for the harbor cruise to Paradise Island.

Glitch time. At the Paradise Island ferry terminal, our guide apologizes because the shuttle taking us to the Atlantis resort won’t be here for eight minutes. I duck into the ladies’ room and when I return, my tour group has gone. The 20-year-old me would have panicked (I know because I feel a twinge of that), but I can spot a gaggle of taxi drivers waiting for fares anywhere. I approach the men, hop into a taxi and am soon on my way to the Atlantis, where I figure I’ll reconnect. Just as we’re approaching the hotel, one of those sudden five-minute tropical rainstorms hits and I watch the people from my group caught on the street, running and holding newspapers over their heads. I’m safe and sound inside the taxi, which delivers me to one of the resort’s front doors – conveniently a porte cochère.

The Atlantis was definitely not there on my first trip. Only since the 1990’s has this gargantuan resort dominated Paradise Island, which, as the guide reminds us, was known as Hog Island until the A&P heir Huntington Hartford bought it in the 1960’s and turned it into an upscale destination. The tour of the grounds passes the Maya temple waterslides and a lagoon-pool the size of Delaware. The guide points out the $25,000-a-day supersuite on a high floor.

The real attraction of Paradise Island has always been its almost impossibly clear blue water and white-sand beaches, which is where I spend most of the day. (Other passengers sign up for glass-bottom boats, snorkeling, diving, the pirates-and-dungeons tour, or close encounters with dolphins or stingrays.)

A beachside bar opens, offering drinks and snacks, but it accepts no cash. It’s been a long time since I put $12 on a credit card. After four hours, including a passable lunch at one of the hotel’s outdoor fast-food counters, I tear myself away because I want to see the resort’s faux archaeological dig of items from the lost continent of Atlantis. During the tour, a young woman asks the guide exactly where in the ocean these things were found. This prompts me to ask the guide how often she encounters people who seem to think these objects and the excavation are real. “Just about every day,” she answers.

The best part of the tour is the underground aquarium, even if you’re not remotely a fish person. It’s exciting to see small sharks, barracudas and piranhas up close, and aesthetically satisfying to see the stylish all-one-category windows (particularly the lionfish and the undulating jellyfish).

It’s Saturday night already and I haven’t really explored the ship. That first trip was in the days before cruise ships were referred to as floating hotels. As far as I can remember, there was a dining room, a bar and a small library with free postcards. The Majesty of the Seas has the usual number of amenities: pool, casino, lounges and bars, shops (open only in the evenings), combination pizzeria and sports bar, small gym, spa and theater. The theater is the site of the captain’s cocktail party, a fairly staid affair despite all the free champagne and Bahama Mamas.

Cruise lines didn’t have their own private islands the first time I made this trip. Sunday takes us to one, Coco Cay, a fabricated village with little houses in Caribbean colors – hot pink, blue, mustard and purple. Most of the buildings house bars, giving visitors a choice of drinking at On the Rocks, Coconut Willie’s, Stir It Up, Bahama Mama’s and the Wacky Seagull. There is a straw market and one restaurant (an open-air barbecue buffet), where I love the little touch of authenticity – a single chicken wandering among the picnic tables.

Again, passengers have a choice of activities: snorkeling, scuba diving, sea kayaking, Waverunners and the Aqua Park, with water trampolines and a giant floating sand castle. I sign up for the floating beach mat, a popular choice. If your idea of a private island includes seclusion, this is the wrong place. The beach is covered with hundreds of blue beach lounges arranged theater style, and for those who can’t tear themselves away from the sun, a nice man comes around selling Coco Locos in colorful plastic glasses. The water is nice by the standards of any other part of the world, but a little cloudy compared with Paradise Island.

It’s Sunday night already, so I check out the after-dinner entertainment. There are acrobats and a bad juggler with good comic patter; the most entertaining person onstage is the cruise director, who announces the top 10 stupid questions that passengers ask (e.g., “Does the crew sleep on the ship?”).

Back in Miami the immigration and transfer process is so efficient that I’m at the airport 3 hours and 20 minutes before my flight. I enjoy the airline counters’ self-check-in, the greatest invention since the A.T.M., which it resembles. After a failed effort to find an Internet hookup that will let me connect with my employer’s system, I sit down with newspapers, coffee and a cinnamon bun at Au Bon Pain. I turn on the cellphone, check messages and admire my tan, obtained despite SPF 30 sunblock. Travel may be more high-tech today and cruises may operate on a far grander scale than they used to, but in the end it’s all about the beach.

Royal Caribbean International’s Majesty of the Seas sails from Miami to Nassau on Fridays year-round. It calls at Nassau and Coco Cay. Prices start at $269 a person, double occupancy, without air fare, for the three-day cruise. A four-day cruise, which calls at Nassau, Coco Cay and Key West, sails on Mondays year-round. Prices start at $279 a person. Information: (800) 327-6700 or www.royalcaribbean.com.

ANITA GATES reviews film, television and the theater for The New York Times.