Our Trans-Atlantic Cruise

For two weeks we sailed on a trans-Atlantic cruise with Royal Caribbean. We started in Panama and sailed to Curacao, Barbados, the Canary Islands and finally finished in Palma De Mallorca, Spain. Over the two weeks we did a lot of neat activities, art class, dancing, rock climbing.  I really liked this cruise because there were not alot of people so you could do more activities. The crew was really friendly and would always help us if we needed anything or just say hello in passing. And, the ship was in great condition and looked brand new, because it was refurbished a few years ago.

Our ship, The Grandeur of the Seas

We met professional dancers, lawyers, world trippers (like us), artists and tons other people. At first it was kind of strange seeing a lot of white people speaking English after eight months of traveling the world and hardly seeing anyone that looked like us or spoke our language.

Our dance instructors, Don and Aida. They rocked!

Everyone was really great and friendly and you got to know a lot of people. The crew was fantastic. The Captain would walk around and would interact with us and other people, our waiters were really nice and would intertain us with jokes. There were also activity directors that were really cool and made the cruise fun.

Our wait staff bringing us serving us our nighly mocktails.

The ship was built 14 years ago, but it seams like it was built only five years ago. The state rooms were really nice, just the right size, and none of the rooms were under the water line. The only thing that dates it ,are the elevators signs that light up indicating the floor you are on, the pictures are taken from the 90's and look like something out of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Other than that it was in great condition.

Over our 14 days we participated in so many activities that it felt almost like a summer camp. Right after breakfast we went to art class. Mr. Sherlock made it really fun and easy to understand. I never liked painting before but he taught me a lot and made it fun. Then we would hang out at the pool deck until 2:30 when dance class started. I learned tons of ballroom dances like waltz, samba, tango, rumba, meringue, foxtrot, bolero and two more that I cant remember the names of and I found out that I was very good at it too. At 3:30, after dance class, I would go rock climbing. It was awesome! There were nine levels and I made it to level six by the end of the cruise. I also went bouldering. After climbing I went to either bingorama or a world trivia game. I took second place overall in that game.


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My art class.

Mr. Sherlock our awesome art teacher

My favorite place out of all of our port of calls was Tenerife, Canary Islands. The whole island is one gigantic volcano that is the second largest mountain in Europe after Mont Blanc!! (only because the Canary Islands are part of Spain) Tenerife has still held on to its colonial heritage in a lot of places and the some of buildings have been converted into handy-craft markets.

Overall the cruise was fantastic! I would rate it a 9/10. The reason that I didn't rate it 10/10 is because the pool was small and there were only five teenagers on board, and they did interact too much in the teen room. (other than that it was Awesome!). The dinner menu was very good and most of the theater shows were great. If I had a chance to go trans-Atlantic on the same ship again I defiantly would. Some people might think that huge ships with 2000 people on it would be fun but I think less people is better because you get to know people. In that perspective it was way more fun than the Disney Cruise and it was a highlight of our trip.