Most of you know that Liz and I enjoy travelling and one of the ways we really like to travel is by cruising. Believe it or not our first cruise was just under 8 years ago. We had talked about it for longer than that but I never seemed to be able to convince Liz that she would enjoy it! That’s hard to believe now. Finally I convinced her to try a small, short, test cruise.
Carnival Cruise Lines had a ship homeported out of Charleston, South Carolina, just under a two hour drive for us. The Carnival Fantasy was the smallest and oldest ship in the fleet but offered a short 4 day trip. First day would be a day at sea, second day we would be inport Nassau, Bahamas. On the third day we would be inport Freeport, Bahamas. We would spend out last day as a sea day headed back to Charleston. In my mind this seemed like a great way for us to experience the cruising life. Yes, the ship was old and small so we would not have some of the frills and onboard amenities of a larger newer ship, but it was still a cruise ship and we would not have to travel far to do it. Also we would experience both sea days and inport days, AND if we didn’t like it we would be back in 4 days! Seemed like the ideal “test drive”.
So with all this in mind, on Feb 23rd of 2013 we left home and drove to Charleston to board the Carnival Fantasy. We had done a lot of “study” before we left. We had looked at deck plans, read reviews, chatted online with some folks on “Cruise Critic”, watched some YouTube videos of other peoples trips on Fantasy. We were “ready”!
Upon arrival we were amazed at the size of the Fantasy! Wow, it seemed so BIG from the pier. Looking back we find that funny as we have been on many different size ships now. Upon boarding we quickly scouted things out and experienced our first “muster drill” and anxiously awaited getting underway.
Below are some images of the Fantasy and Charleston harbor. The next post in this series will be our very first port call in Nassau, Bahamas. To make sure you don’t miss it, click on that “subscribe” button up above and you will get a notification email when it is posted.
