1. Bring sunscreen. Lots of it. Because the markup in tourist traps is something like 10,000%. Okay, okay — 400%, but still…it’s sunscreen!!
2. Sea turtles can swim up to 25 miles per hour.
3. In colonial days, Bermudans ate their entire sea turtle population as soup. They ended up trying to repopulate the island by getting eggs from Costa Rica. When the resulting turtles reached sexual maturity — 40 years later — they turned out to all be male, because Bermuda’s subtropical waters aren’t warm enough to produce female sea turtles. Oops.
4. Weigh your luggage before going to the airport. ‘Nuff said.
5. After visiting a beach in Bermuda and getting back on the glass-bottomed boat to return to the ship, make sure your driver’s license and cruise ID are still in your possession and not somehow dropped on the beach, thus requiring your husband to prepare for a fast run back to the beach while you — the one who actually lost said IDs — enjoy a free rum swizzle on the boat. Also, be thankful for kind fellow cruisers who found the IDs and returned them without the husband getting sweaty and frustrated, thereby allowing him to actually enjoy his rum swizzle as well.
6. Have we mentioned sunscreen?
7. Due to her classical soprano training, Geitra can hold an extremely high scream across the final 500-foot rope traverse during a canopy tour. She’ll still have breath to continue the scream upon completing the traverse.
8. When visiting Old San Juan, there’s not much point in getting showers and dressing nicely for dinner when you’re going to walk 15 blocks uphill to dinner in 80-degree heat. In the rain.
9. Linen clothing, light as it may be, is surprisingly warm. This is directly related to the previous lesson.
10. Another note about dinner in Old San Juan — when reading the cruise line-provided map, there’s a difference between an uppercase “A” (marking the restaurant we wanted to go to) and a lowercase “a” (marking, apparently, a museum). As a result, Neil didn’t exactly get us guided to the birthplace of the piña colada where hoped to eat, but we did still find a nice place dinner — and it was out of the rain.
11. One of the most popular souvenir themes in San Juan is the “topless woman” theme — it’s on towels, T-shirts, everything! And no, Neil didn’t  buy any of these…
12. The passage of time is loosely recognized on Caribbean islands…as exemplified by our Grand Turk tour guide, who figured it might be a good idea to get us all on his bus for the trip back to the ship around the time that we were supposed be on board the ship. Luckily, the ship won’t leave you behind if a tour you organized through the ship isn’t back yet — but if you’re late on your own, they’ll bail!
13. Sunscreen. Sunscreen. And sunscreen.

Grand Turk is the capital of Turks and Caicos Islands. Despite that, the island’s population more than doubled when our ship — which has about 4,500 people on board — docked. The island is about seven miles long and one-and-a-half miles wide, and it’s very, very flat. It’s also beautiful — this and Bermuda were our favorite stops on the cruise.

Unfortunately, our stop started off a bit roughly when we discovered that the ship’s shore excursion team had accidentally issued too many tickets for our “Mini-Boat Adventure” excursion…it turns out that they issued “first departure” tickets to everyone who scheduled this excursion, including the “second departure” group. Emotions ran a little high until the ship’s excursion team was able to figure out what was going on, which took about an hour. In the end, though, we were able to do what we wanted to do — so all’s well that ends well.

While we waited for our excursion, we bought some more souvenirs, restocked our sunscreen (now that was expensive), and grabbed some lunch at the giant Margaritaville restaurant complex. While the concept of having a bar just a few inches above a swimming pool is great, it would be a good idea for the restaurant to focus on some of the basics — like, oh, say…food and service? The cheeseburgers may be in paradise, but we weren’t.

All was forgotten when we got to our excursion, though…the mini-boats were great!! The boats were a fiberglass shell with inflatable sidewalls, powered by an outboard motor. The seating was an island in the middle that two people straddled like a motorcycle, with a steering wheel and throttle for control. After our safety briefing, off we went — racing across the waves along the coast of Grand Turk, heading away from shore to a nice spot for snorkeling. All ten boats stopped and were lashed together by our guides, and most of the people on the tour took the opportunity to snorkel and enjoy the sea life — fish, crabs, lobster, and sharks. Then it was back to the boats for another 10-minute trip farther down the shore, where we beached the boats and spent about 20 minutes enjoying a private beach. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, so we got back in the boats again and headed back to the ship…including hanging out aft of the ship for a photo opportunity before heading to shore to wrap up.

Of course, due to a somewhat late arrival into port, our tour was the last one to wrap up and head back to the ship. Nearly all of the shops near the port had closed, but Geitra made a quick dash to one shop to pick up a piece of jewelry she had found right before our excursion left. So while Neil kept a wary eye on the last member of the ship’s crew on the dock, Geitra bought one last souvenir from a woman who re-opened her store to make the sale. As a result, we were the last people to leave the port and head back to the ship — but luckily, the captain hadn’t pulled away yet so we saved ourselves the embarrassment of our fellow passengers on the previous day.

After dinner, we headed to one of the lounges for the “Who Wants To Be A Rock Star” event — basically, an opportunity to front the ship’s house rock band, Wavelength, for a song of two. Neil had just enough alcohol to think that doing a cover of the Guns ‘N’ Roses classic “Sweet Child ‘O Mine” was a good idea — probably the first time in history the song has been sung by someone in a button-down shirt and loafers. But he managed not to embarrass himself — or more importantly, Geitra — too badly despite the band performing the song about a half-octave lower than Neil’s voice was ready for. We’ll see if he decides to do another round on the last night of the cruise.

Grand Turk was a wonderful end to the shore excursions for this cruise — and the boat adventure was a high point. From here, we’ve got two days of nothing but relaxation to focus on while we’re at sea, heading back to the New York port.

The first thing you notice about San Juan — especially in contrast with Bermuda — is that the port is actually close to the city. Of course, there are some drawbacks to that approach, including much more pressure from various tour hawkers and street vendors. We ran that gauntlet to find ourselves right on the outskirts of Old San Juan in the middle of the hottest morning we’ve encountered yet on this trip.

We had a few hours to kill before our scheduled shore excursion, so we wandered through some of Old San Juan to do some exploring and souvenir shopping. The area certainly gives you a taste of the “old style” Spanish town with the architectural features and narrow stone streets. Some of the buildings were in really good condition, while some were really run down. Nonetheless, we found a few nice trinkets to bring home and managed to avoid the high-pressure jewelry stores and the like. We found a nice restaurant for lunch, and then headed back to the ship to meet up with our tour group for the excursion.

We had elected to go on the “San Juan Canopy Adventure” excursion, so we boarded a bus to head to one of the Puerto Rican rainforests. We had to switch from a large bus to a smaller bus in order to head up into the hills, where we were dropped off at the starting point for Canopy Tours. After signing the typical “any injury is not our fault, it’s yours” liability waiver, we were suited up with some rappelling gear and took a short hike up into the hills. From there, started back down to the base camp in stages — but instead of walking, we slid down various rope traverses between platforms that had been built up between the trees. Each person had two pulley mechanisms on the harnesses that were attached to the ropes with carabineers; we would then sit down in the harness and kick away from the platform, sliding a down the ropes for a few hundred feet to the next platform. We had a great time, doing our best jungle yells as we slid from tree to tree through the forest — about 10 traverses in all.

After that, we headed back to the ship to get cleaned up and then headed back to Old San Juan for dinner. Sadly, between it being Sunday and the ship departing port at 11 PM, we didn’t have time to find a place to put our pre-cruise Latin dancing lessons to the test. We did get to do some party dancing, though, at the tropical-themed “sail away” party on the ship that night — followed by a wonderful tropical fruit buffet and conga line.

Friday morning — the sun is out, and we’ve docked in Bermuda. The seas were a little rough, and we apparently almost passed Bermuda by until the last minute, when the captain made the decision that things were calm enough to dock. We arrived at the West End of Bermuda in the Royal Naval Dockyard around 8:30 in the morning, and docked alongside the farthest pier away from the main body of the islands. After departing the ship, we were off to explore.

Originally, we had scheduled two excursions in the Bahamas — a horse and carriage tour through the dockyards and then a trip on a glass-bottomed boat. The horse and carriage tour ended up being cancelled, however, so we decided to act on a tip we got during afternoon tea the day before and rented a two-person motor scooter. Yes, that’s right — Neil, driving a motor scooter in a country that drives on the left, while Geitra hangs on for dear life behind him. No problem!

After a short training run, we were off to take a 45-minute or so ride to Hamilton, the main town on the island. Yep, 45 minutes of 40- to 60-kilometer per hour speeds on curvy, hilly roads while being passed on the right by impatient Bermudans. And here we thought island life was supposed to be peaceful and tranquil and laid-back! But Neil managed to avoid killing us and we arrived in Hamilton to do a little bit of shopping.

Afterwards, we headed back to the dockyard using a different route in order to see some of the beautiful beaches on the south side of the island. We even found a nice secluded area called Warwick Long Bay in South Shore Park where we spent time walking the beach barefoot and got some of the famous pink Bermudan sand.

With that, we headed back to the dockyard to return the scooter and get ready for our next excursion — a trip on a glass-bottomed boat. We took the boat out into the waters outside the dockyard, where an old British warship had been sunk to create a sanctuary for coral (simultaneously creating a sanctuary for the Bermudan glass-bottomed boat industry). We oohed and aahed over that for while before heading to a small cove in a public park for some time on the beach and for snorkeling. All told, it was a lovely way to spend a few hours before heading back to the ship to depart for San Juan, Puerto Rico.

After we got underway and eating dinner, we decided to see the comedy show. The performer was a gentleman who goes by the moniker “Sarge,” and he was absolutely hilarious. We were in tears from laughing at least three different times during the show. At to top it off, the guy also sings — doing quite passable impressions of Lionel Richie and Harry Connick, Jr. A thoroughly enjoyable way to end our day.