When my husband suggested a Caribbean cruise, I thought he was kidding. It sounded so
ordinary, the kind of trip other people take while we are somewhere a bit more unusual. I have to admit, it wasn't my first choice for how to spend my spring break. However, our trip far exceeded my expectations. We had a blast.
I got a little confused with all the names for this area: the West Indies (so named by Europeans of Columbus's day to distinguish it from the East Indies), the Eastern Caribbean, the Greater Antilles (Puerto Rico), and the Lesser Antilles (the rest of the Islands we visited). Even my phone was confused. At one point I saw "Welcome to Jamaica" on my screen.
We flew to Puerto Rico and spent two days there before boarding a Royal Caribbean cruise ship that took us to the US Virgin Islands, St. Kitts, Antigua, St. Lucia, and Barbados.
One of the things that made the trip extra fun was that our traveling companions were my brother and his wife from Utah, and my sister and her husband from Montana. We met up in New York's JFK airport. There is something magical about meeting traveling companions in an airport so far from home. Maybe the magic is that we were able to find each other! Twenty years ago before we all had cellphones, it would have been a lot harder.
Bob and I were lucky enough to get an upgrade to Delta Comfort seats on both legs of our journey, and I had a window seat for the flight into San Juan. Although there were no skyscrapers to speak of, I was really surprised by how large and modern the capital city appeared from the air.
Then I saw his huge iguana walking across the runway, and I realized we weren't in California anymore:
