I love to travel.

Travel, froggy style, involves a small suitcase, train tickets, cheap guesthouses, little local restaurants, hiking, discovering what's down that alley, or what people eat for breakfast. I can have a tremendous amount of fun in a department store--in Manchester or Singapore or Bangkok or Utrecht or Cairo--and look at pots and spoons and hairbrushes and socks, and imagine what it might be like to live there. I want to see what the kids eat and what kind of shoes the grandmothers wear. I always wish I knew someone, I wish I could see in people's houses and have dinner with them (and of course return the favor when they're in my home town). I like nature and wildlife and national parks. I love the odd nooks and crannies of a country, where I can feel like I've discovered something. If we're home, it's a road trip where I find the weirdest ways to get from A to B, and usually end up in a flea market or a small-town library book sale.

Which is all the more weird that I found myself on a cruise ship after the new year.

Grandmother and Grandfather Froggy (my in-laws) took us and all the rest of their family--kids, spouses, and grandkids, on a cruise to celebrate their 50th anniversary.  It was lovely, a truly generous gift, and a great opportunity to connect with family, to get all the cousins together, and to sit down and relax on vacation. I've never actually done that.

We boarded the ship in New York.

I've never seen a cruise ship before. The pictures don't give any sense of how big they are.

Holy crap. It's huge. Like a massive fanciful white wedding cake parked in the middle of the city, next to the gray wharves and office towers and parking garages. 

We chugged out of New York harbor, under the Statue of Liberty at sunset, and headed for the high seas. We had two "sea days" to get to the Carribbean, which means two days honestly and truly at sea. I've never been out of sight of land on a boat of any kind. I've been on ferries and canoes and kayaks and a hovercraft once, but never so far out to sea.

Wow. No land. Anywhere. Maybe this boat isn't so big after all. I try not to think of the Titanic. Our cabin has a window that looks out on lifeboats. I won't think about needing them. I get used to the slow rolling motion of the ship.

Heading south in January out of New York, it's cold. Expanses of deck are adorned with signs like "Upper Sun Deck" and "Pool Deck," but all the sun loungers are stacked up and roped together to keep them from blowing away. It's raining and cold. Everyone is inside.

I like quiet. I adore quiet. I crave quiet. Quiet, on a cruise ship that has not yet hit warm climates, is in very short supply. I share a cabin with my Tadpole, age 10, who likes to talk. Every other indoor space is full of noise--music, a casino, countless restaurants, theaters, bars. Karaoke, piano bars, wine bars, champagne bars, sports bars. I don't really like drinking that much, unless it's a dinner party at someone's house, where I can relax with a glass of wine. Drinking in a bar, not so much. There's bingo, a seminar on napkin folding, a seminar on golf, a magic show. I can get a massage, a facial, I can get my portrait taken. I keep hunting for quiet until I find the ship library, packed with like-minded quiet-seeking souls like mine. Ahh. Bliss.

By the end of the second day at sea, the weather is getting warmer every hour, and the pool is starting to fill. My son discovers the curly slide. I discover I'm reluctant to show off my pasty wiggly thighs to 2000 of my closest friends. I discover that people much pastier and wigglier than I  seem to have no qualms about showing off their thighs.

The afternoon of our third day is our first port stop, in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

I think of OS's Vanessa Seijo and I wish I could send a note, but computer time is $1 per minute (and a minimum of 15 minutes), and I am with family, and we have a grand total of five hours in port. And I discover the first major drawback of cruise travel. When we dock in a town, it is immediately overwhelmed with 2000+ of my closest friends (plus 2000 more from the ship docked next to ours). San Juan is a madhouse, but I suspect it's not always that way. I wish we had more time to explore alleys and back lanes. We walk to the fort, a national historic site with a wonderful view of the ocean, with cannons and gun slits, and I try to imagine defending the island, Pirates of the Caribbean style, and I wonder if the Black Pearl is coming.

The kids are tired. We eat ice cream, and don't find a bookstore. I wish I had a guidebook. The buildings in old San Juan are lovely--narrow little streets with second floors and balconies and shutters, but the shops seem to sell either jewelry or t-shirts and plastic palm trees. The ship had seminars on how to buy diamonds and gemstones. (Um, no. I don't need a new diamond today.) (Is that what people do on cruises?) I love the little stucco houses all stuck together, painted tangerine and turquiose and red and yellow. I imagine being Hemingway here, finding a garret where I can write and drink red wine (which I of course purchased in fluent Spanish).

I wish I could poke through a department store but I think I'm in the wrong part of town.

We trudge back to the ship after sundown, where the kids love the novelty of a buffet full of macaroni and cheese, pizza, and a help-yourself soft ice cream machine. My son devours an entire plate of watermelon.

The ship chugs away into the evening, heading for St. Somewhere.

I finally put away my coat.