We didn’t get any towel animals on this cruise, just our blanket folded into a clamshell design. The leis on the lampshade are souvenirs from the poolside island party.

Our vantage of the Caribbean from bed wasn’t half bad. This might have made a decent photo if it hadn’t been for the door.

Our cabin stewardess kept our cabin nice and neat for us. She cleaned our room twice daily. At night she rolled our covers back and put chocolates on our pillows. It’s so hard to come back to the real world after sailing on a cruise ship!

The Coral Princess did not feature a grand atrium. An atrium it has but it ain’t grand. It’s about four stories high. Even the least-well-adorned ship we’ve sailed aboard, the Norwegian Sun, had an atrium spanning at least fourteen decks. This stands in stark contrast to Royal Caribbean’s Voyager of the Seas. From Voyager’s glass elevators, some of which were located in a very large atrium, you could see nearly to the other end of the ship. Voyager’s atrium was magnificent. Becky wants to offer you soon-to-be first-time cruisers out there a little tip: don’t sail aboard a Voyager-class ship first. Everything else pales in comparison. I’ll add that Royal Caribbean’s Radiance of the Seas was just as elegant and luxurious as Voyager, but just wasn’t as grand.

This photo is a straight-up vantage from the atrium floor. At the top right of the photo is a coral sculpture. If I’d never been on a cruise before, I’d have thought this was an elegant atrium. And I guess it has its own elegance, but the other five ships we’ve sailed on have all offered much, much more magnificent atriums.