The wonders of world’s biggest ship – Puerto Rico to the Bahamas – Belfast News Letter

How do you graduate to become skipper of the largest passenger ship on earth? It turns out this master mariner earned his sea legs on the Bering Sea looking for cod, salmon and halibut.

Scarcely a greater contrast from those icy latitudes could be dreamt of as we pushed off from Puerto Rico that balmy tropical evening. We set a course for Nassau and began the thousand mile trip back up beyond Hispaniola and the Turks and Caicos to the Bahamas.

Having taken four days to sail down the Antilles, it meant a couple of days at sea and a chance to get a good look at the many diversions on board the Royal Caribbean flagship.

One of the highlights was inTENse, a world-class spectacle of water-based acrobatics, featuring an all-female cast and performed in the ships AquaTheater.

The show incorporated high-diving feats, slack-lining and aerial acrobatics. A visual extravaganza, it showcased the ensembles incredible strength, nerve and agility.

Another captivating offering was Voices: An Intimate Performance on a Grand Scale, a brilliantly executed a cappella musical performance in Wonders sumptuous Royal Theatre on deck 5.

While 365: The Seasons on Ice - a story of the earths changing seasons interpreted by a cast of champion ice-skaters - was performed in Studio B, which doubled as a nightclub when no shows were running.

The virtuoso performances will live long in the memory of the audiences who witnessed them on Wonders first sailing around the Caribbean and gave a real sense of what the cruise liner is trying to achieve.

Wandering fore and aft as we motored north those few days, childhood memories of Buncrana, Bundoran and Portrush were readily conjured. No doubt, nation-appropriate reminiscences of carousels and candy floss in Atlantic City, Blackpool, Biarritz, Heringsdorf and San Sebastian were resurrected for passengers from other parts of the globe as Wonder of the Seas pushes those seaside resort nostalgia buttons ably.

Yet Royal Caribbeans ambition is to take the family holiday to the next level. It sees Broadway, Las Vegas, the Tropicana, Moulin Rouge and Cirque du Soleil as its peers.

Nick Weir, senior vice president of entertainment at Royal Caribbean, gave us an insight into the companys mind-set and mission.

When people ask me which cruise liner I am looking at or worrying about I do say I have no interest in other cruise lines. Im not looking to them for guidance on whats next.

I say it with respect because the cruise industry is an industry which I love and all forms of entertainment I love and respect but if I want to take Royal to where I think it should be, which is at the top of entertainment on planet earth, I have to look at the West End. I have to look at Broadway. I have to look at Vegas, Macau, Paris.

When people are making a judgment call on where to spend their next vacation dollar I want them not to go to Paris, I want them not to go to Vegas, I want them to come to us.

On day six - we docked at Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, on the isle of New Providence. The town was named after William of Orange-Nassau in 1695. Governor Nicholas Trott paid the tribute to King Billy just a few years after the Siege of Derry and the Battle of the Boyne.

Going ashore we marvelled at the crystalline waters and found a neat city built in the British colonial style.

Outside the Bahamian Parliament on Bay Street stands a large statue of Victoria. In the 1700s the town was a famous haven for pirates including Edward Blackbeard Teach, Calico Jack and Anne Bonney. In the Nassau straw market, further west along Bay Street, you can buy wares commemorating this buccaneering tradition.

Walk a little further and you pass a grim relic - the site of the Nassau slave market where human beings were traded like cattle in the 1700s. The Pompey Slavery & Emancipation Museum commemorates the victims of the slave trade on the very spot where it used to take place. The museum was named for a slave, Pompey, who in 1830 rebelled against John Rolle, a British Lord and plantation owner. Pompey is today considered a Bahamian hero. A long, hard look around the centre would have been instructive. Unfortunately it was closed when we arrived. When next in Nassau...

Walkable and a little smaller than Belfast in population Nassau was busy with spring breakers when we docked. They gravitated to Junkanoo beach, closest to downtown and not far from the port. Strolling west towards Arawak Cay a stop at the beach bars and fish fry and jerk joints is a must if you wish to sample some of the real flavour of the Bahamas.

Before returning to the boat we stopped into Shenanigans in Bay Street to attempt the stout for research purposes and yes, the Irish truly are like sand: they get everywhere.

The proprietor Philip Gorman is of good Donegal-Glaswegian stock. His father was a native of Bundoran while his grandfather was from Moville, he told me. We chatted briefly about Foyle Ports plans to invest in a new cruise line terminal at Greencastle and agreed it would be an investment that would pay for itself . The stout was in good order Phil! I sang Sloop John B to myself - around Nassau town we did roam - as I dandered back to the ship.

On the last leg, as we sailed north to Coco Cay, Royal Caribbeans private resort in the Berry Islands, it was time to go on the music trail.

Great crack was had listening to Kevin Philip, a Perthshire-born singer-guitar player, as he entertained a raucous audience in the Cask and Clipper, the ships old style pub. We were convinced for a moment we were back on a rocky islet at the fresher end of the gulf stream rather than halfway between New Providence and Grand Bahama.

The following day, lying on my back in the pool listening to Men of Culture - a three part Jamaican, one part Bajan reggae band - playing classic roots reggae and lovers rock, I pleasantly regained my tropical bearings.

The last trip ashore was at Coco Cay - fifty-odd miles north of Nassau. Hundreds of passengers gravitated to the islets water park which features one of the largest and tallest water slides in the world, Daredevils Peak. Others travelled by boat to Big Major Cay - another island in the Bahamas - to swim with pigs!

This was one of the many excursions available to guests and was highly recommended by those who partook. Your reviewer, knowing this was his last day in paradise, instead indulged in one of lifes greatest luxuries. I spent the day swimming in the warm seas around this idyllic cay on the archipelago which is known locally as The Fish Bowl of the Bahamas.

Refreshed and relaxed after a perfect day in paradise we enjoyed an excellent last supper of snails and steak in the ships old school main dining room before taking a drink for the gangway in Boleros, where Travesia, the ships six-piece Latin house band brought the cruise to an end by banding out Tito Puente and Rubn Gonzlez numbers. On the Friday morning of day eight we regretfully disembarked at Port Everglades.

As someone who hitherto would not have considered booking a cruise my week-long sojourn on Wonder made me think again.

Nick Weir acknowledges some misapprehensions about cruising do persist but he insists Ireland and Britain are the last holdouts of the preconception that liner holidays are for wealthy retirees.

There is a stigma still. Its not global. It was there for many years but now in the States, Europe, African countries everyone gets it: this is a hip vacation. In the UK and Ireland there are still some issues but its coming. People are seeing our YouTube videos and they are seeing our demographic. We have got the perfect bell curve, especially at Royal because we are all about family.

What we have found at Royal is you can absolutely make parents happy and give them content and keep kids happy and give them content and please them equally.

In a few weeks Wonder will sail to Europe where it will ply the Mediterranean from May. Ports of call include Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Marseille, La Spezia, Rome, and Naples. Next year it will be permanently based in the Caribbean. A seven night cruise is currently retailing from 679 at https://www.royalcaribbean.com/ I wouldnt put anyone off the notion.

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The wonders of world's biggest ship - Puerto Rico to the Bahamas - Belfast News Letter