Carribean Cruise

You might have already seen pictures of my vacation in the carribean on my Instagramfeed. But what most of you probably didn’t know yet is that I spent my holidays on a different Island every day although I have spent 2 days befor the cruise started in Martinique. So together with my parents and sadly without my older sister, we boarded the ship for our one week Carribean cruise on January the 2nd in Martinique at the port. It was really exciting because my family has never done a cruise before, everything was new for us.

So if you want to know more about the different Islands and what to expect on a cruise than just continue to read this post.

Let me start by telling you to which Islands we went. As I have already mentioned we entered the ship in Martinique. Our cruise went  towards the north and west of the Carribean which were the Islands Guadeloupe, St. Maarten, the British Virgin Islands, the Dominician Republic, St. Kitts & Nevis and Antigua – Berbuda. In total it was a 7 day cruise. Here is a map of our route:

The ship normally always took of in the evening and drove to the different Islands over night. This might all sound great, sleeping in a fancy cabin while the ship is moving, waking up to the view of a new Island, chilling at the upper deck while texting your friends and as far as your imagination can go finding the perfect guy and looking at the stars together while having the most surreal date. This is pretty much what I expected but of course those expectations were far away from reality. So the expectation about the fancy cabin was acceptable and like I expected.  Our cabin had a balcony and everything was really clean. I thought this was quite a great start for our cruise but when the time came to sleep, I suddenly didn’t feel that chill anymore. I thought everything should be smooth and quite because the sound of the ocean is relaxing and comforting but instead I tried to sleep to the sound of loud footsteps and the vibrating ship which felt like turbulences of a airplane. As you can obviously now imagine the first night wasn’t as easy as I had expected it to, I always woke up because the ship was sort of shaking and I have never experienced something like this before, of course on an airplane but not for such a long period of time. Another thing you might expect is free Wifi like at any other hotel or place but unfortunately that is not the case. It was not just the issue that we had to pay for the wifi but also that it was super expensive. So one week without wifi, that’s kind of hard for someone at the age of 16 because to be honest we all can’t really live without it. I know that you might now think that I am a girl that can’t live without her phone and wifi. You’re completely right and I don’t mind being honest about it. Also before I forget to say this all the things I have experienced might be completely different on other ships and I don’t want to do bad publicity for a cruise because I just want to make aware of things that you might not expect. It’s not like I haven’t been enjoying a lot of things, in fact most of the things turned out to be really good at the end. All the landscape I have seen and the culture just made me happy because the atmosphere was just so great. Also I got to meet a lot of different people from the ship and also the islandexcursions from which I gained a lot more knowledge. One vacation that thought me a lot again.

Now that I have pretty much told you about the cruise, I want to share a litte information about the Carribean Islands I have been to. So let me just start by talking about Martinique, one of the bigger Islands in the north. Martinique is a french Island and therefore part of the European Union which is kind of crazy considering how far away it actually is from Europe. Also one convenient thing is that if you have a European phoneprovider it works there without a doubt. Furthermore you shouldn’t expect luxurious hotels there because they don’t have that much money on the Island although they get a lot through the export of fruits like Bananas and also the production of Rhum.

Guadeloupe and Martinique have pretty much the same landscape, some very dry and also a lot of tropical spots.
Before I forget to say the most important thing of all and what pretty much turns out to be the question asked the most about the Carribean: Is the water really as pretty turquiose as it appears on pictures? Yes, it is and it is even more beautiful than on pictures or on TV. The Islands with the most beautiful turquiose water were in my opinion Guadeloupe, St. Maarten and The British Virgin Islands.

By the way if you didn’t already know where the famous airport with the planes flying low over a beach is, I can officialy tell you that it is on the Island St. Maarten. The Island of St. Maarten has a french and dutch part, the french pronounciation of for the Island is ‘St.Martin’. Also one thing that suprised me and really made me think of how the people can live there is that the whole Island doesn’t have any own things like oil or fruits. They pratically have to get everything imported from other countries or Islands. Something that stayed in my mind as well, is that the people as our tourguide, shoutout to the best tourguide, Rrrr..Rafael said is that the only thing they earn money with is tourism. So this is pretty much all about St.Maarten and actually also the most sadest part about how they make money.

Also the other Islands that only get their money through tourism are St. Kitts & Nevis (or Saint Christopher), Antigua-Berbuda and the British Virgin Islands.

Unlike that the Dominician Republic is a big Island and has enough to export. It is also a very historic Island because of the discovery that Christopher Columbus did.

One thing all the Islands have in common is that they were all colonies of either the french, british or dutch. Some of them like St. Kitts & Nevis or Antigua Berbuda have gained their independance still keeping the language though.

These are pretty much the most important and interesting things in my opinion. If you have any questions about the cruise or something else, don’t hesitate to ask me in the comments! Also if you have any requests let me know.

Yours truly,

Vivi xx