Back fromt he Bahamas!

Pictures are coming soon!

I feel like I’m always on Caltrain these days. I’m writing this on Caltrian right now on my way back home. I’m staying home this weekend and going back to Stanford probably Monday morning. I think that should be fine since my classes don’t start until 10am on Monday. And unlike weekends, BART and Caltrain have very nice schedules during rush hours.

Got back from the Bahamas late last night. What a crazy trip. I can’t believe I went on a cruise. I’ve been wanting to go on a cruise since trekking around Germnay, I think. I thought it would be a lot more relaxing to have food and lodging already taken care of. These assumptions were true but I didn’t realize how different going on a cruise was compared to all the traveling I’ve done so far. People go on cruises to relax. The stops aren’t really the highlight of the trip. We were definitely overzealous on the first stop and were disappointed that there wasn’t a whole lot to explore and see. People also do excursions like swimming with dolphins, which we didn’t do. It’s so easy to spend a lot of money on these cruises. You have an onboard account and you just use your keycard to charge everything to it. Alcohol, soda, excursions, casino credit, specialty restaurants, duty free shop, etc.

I guess being away for a week is not that long. I only managed to get one important phone call during that time. No important emails. Well, I guess everyone else is on spring break as well.

It was really nice to hang out with friends who I haven’t seen in 6 months. It’s been half a year guys! Not sure when I’ll see them again since none of us know where we will be in a year or two. I feel like this Masters degree is more of a transition phase. I’m getting more into my field while buying time to figure out what I want to do.

Maybe I should write more about the trip itself.

The trip started for me last Saturday night. I took an overnight flight from San Francisco to Fort Lauderdale. The Jetblue terminal in SFO is in the international terminal. It was kind of weird to be flying domestically in the international terminal. On the way back, the plane had to taxi forever to get to the terminal since I think the landing strips for domestic and international flights are separate. Anyway, I slept for most of the trip but I was still super tired by the time I got to Florida.

Sunday was a day of waiting and meeting up with people. Even though our group is only 4 people (including me), we were all on different flights and got into different airports. Good thing we all have cell phones and managed to meet up without much of a hitch. We got a hotel on Miami Beach and was too lazy to get off to see downtown Miami. We just wandered around the neighborhood near the hotel and sat on the beach.

It started raining on Monday when we were going to the port. It started pouring when we got to the port. So the whole check-in process felt a little rushed for us even though we arrived before we could board the ship. Once we were on the ship, the eating began. Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) does Freestyle cruising which means, you can eat whenever you want. This meant that there is food available almost 24 hours a day at various buffets. So we ate a lot during this trip. Good thing my metabolism is pretty high due to running because I would just feel extremely sluggish and full the entire trip. I managed to get a few short runs in during the trip. I really need to work up the mileage again since I signed up for Bay to Breakers in May. I have a month to get back in shape… oopse.

The cruise was 4 nights long. We made 3 stops in the Bahamas: Freeport, Nassau, and Great Stirrup Cay. There wasn’t much to do in Freeport. We landed in the industrial zone and had to take a taxi 11 miles to get to the touristy area and beach. The touristy area had lots of straw market shops. These shops all sell the same stuff. We got tired of them after a while. We also got off the ship really early and there wasn’t a whole lot of other people around. We hung out at the beach for a while and went back onto the ship a little after noon. I think we were disappointed that there wasn’t very much to explore.

I think we enjoyed the time on the ship though. There were some pretty good shows. We also spent time just sitting around on the deck, in the hot tubs, and made use of the sauna and gym.