After a year of planning my mother’s cruise trip finally happened.
We took a short 4-day cruise to Nassau, Bahamas on the Carnival Liberty from Port Canaveral, Florida. It was freezing cold in Fredericton when we left for the airport on our early morning flight to Toronto. After a four hour layover, we boarded our flight to Orlando. The plane was filled with vacationers.
Weather in Orlando was great! We met my brother and his family there. The following day, we drove to Port Canaveral and boarded Carnival Liberty. It is a big ship but not as big as the mega ships of Royal Caribbean Lines . There are easily 3,000 passengers in it.
We had an interior cabin in the lower deck. The cabin was great. We didn’t feel the rocking motion of the ship. We were also close to the elevators which was a good thing.
We had a great time eating our first meal in the ship before it left the cruise terminal. Mama has to experience the muster drill when the ship started sailing. We parked ourselves on the open deck as Carnival Liberty sailed away from Port Canaveral. Mama started getting nostalgic about sailing from Dumaguete during her college days.
We had all our suppers at the Main Dining Restaurant served by great Filipino waiters. Mama was impressed with how comfortable our cabin. It was a far cry from the cabin she had travelling from Manila to Dumaguete.
We arrived in Nassau the following day. There were three huge ships (RCL’s Symphony OTS, Disney Dream, and MSC Seaside) already parked near the cruise terminal. Later that morning, the 5th ship Norwegian Bliss came in between the Symphony OTS and MSC Seaside. Each of those ships can easily carry 4,000 passengers. So that morning in Nassau, there were over 20,000 people added to the city’s population.
We had lunch at a Filipino restaurant not far from the cruise terminal. The temperatures at that time was upper 20s C with humidity over 30C.
Every evening after dinner, we went to the theater to watch the evening variety show – a lot of singing, some acrobat, and magic act. We also had evening tea/snack at the buffet. I brought breakfast to our cabin except the morning we arrived back in Port Canaveral.
During our sea day, I brought mama to the upper deck where she had a lounger chair and relax. We also watched live band play music on the main atrium. Except for the casino and the pools, I think mama experienced most of what the cruise ship had to offer.
It was a short cruise trip but a good starter trip. We stayed overnight in Orlando before flying back. On our layover in Montreal,