Friday, March 02, 2007

Fun at the 2007 BC Oracle cruise!

Every year we do an "Oracle" database cruise, and this year we went on a 7 day eastern Caribbean cruise with stops in the Virgin Islands, Bahamas and Netherlands Antilles, great stops for computer geeks.

We were lucky and got upgraded to a roomy suite with lots of free space, twice the size of the regular rooms with a huge double balcony:



It even has a large bath, a treat after going on cruises where the bathrooms are cramped:



We always invite our expert’s wives, and this is Christina Karam, raised as an Air Force brat, just like me!



We had several big tables dedicated to our group and the waiters were very good, pandering to our every need. That’s important with a group of overweight computer geeks:



Here is Steve having fun with his daughter at dinner.



When we got to Charlotte Amalie, we docked right next to Larry Ellison's Yacht, the Rising Sun.
Here are my notes on the mega yachts:



We go to Charlotte Amalie quite often (we have clients there), but it was fun to play "tourist" and see USVI from a tourist perspective. The day that we came, there were six ships and over 20,000 tourists in port:



In Nassau, we took the tour of "Atlantis", the mega resort with amazing underwater fish:



The hotel was quite gaudy, and half empty, not surprising since there rates are quite expensive by Nassau standards.



Here you can see the aquariums, beneath the lobby area:



The whole theme of Atlantis is to reproduce a fictional culture, cheesy, in-keeping with the central theme of the hotel:





The aquarium at Atlantis is worth seeing, but we were not impressed with the hotel itself. There are much nicer resorts for a better price:



We sailed on the Carnival Glory, a OK ship, but without the customary luxury of Crystal Celebrity or Cunard. It as like blue-collar cruising, bet hey, it was inexpensive:



Col. John Garmany and Connie came and had a great time, her first cruise:



Steve even brought the kids, who had a fantastic time at "Camp Carnival":



However, the food was bad overall, and next year we are upgrading to Royal Caribbean of NCL, and maybe to a more extensive cruise:



The Caribbean ports are a madhouse with six ships in port. It's like a small city of dumb fat American poor folks all descending all at once:



We were able to share lots of great technical information, but the "lounges" looked like houses of ill repute, a red light district special:



We went at the season peak, but we were not prepared for the huge numbers of ships, following each other between islands:



This is the port at St. Maarten, a nice island, nut overcrowded on port day:







Next year we decided to do two Oracle cruises, one in the Mediterranean and another in the Caribbean.



Here is the full collection of our Oracle 2007 cruise pics.