I Love to Cruise

I'm talking about cruise ships of the seas of course. My BF and I went on our first cruise with Atlantis Events in January 2006. Pics here. For many years, he tried to convince me to go, but I was always apprehensive about the whole thing. At the time, he was thinking of straight cruises and I had an unrelenting fear of being stuck in a mall for a whole week with all of these straight people with nowhere to retreat. Not my idea of a fun time.

When I finally did some more research on gay cruises, I just replaced my 'mall' fears with new ones. Now I was afraid of being surrounded by perfect body adonises making me feel way too inadequate and uncomfortable. (side note). Finally I decided that even no-one acknowledged our existence, I would have fun because I was with my BF and we always have fun together.

So we flew to Miami and boarded the ship. Of course it was much more expensive than straight cruises, but it would prove to be well worth the cost. The ship had about 3,200 beautiful gay boys, who proved to me much more friendly than I expected. A funny thing happens on these cruises... After the first couple of days, everyone seems to relax just a little bit. People tend to shed their attitudes as well as the other social barriers that we create to isolate ourselves. The result is that it becomes a very accepting, supportive and most of all, fun experience. Up until recently, I thought this feeling of acceptance and camaraderie was unique to the cruising experience, but have also been lucky enough to discover it in nude gatherings.

Well, needless to say, the BF and I had a blast. We met a lot of people from a surprising variety of walks of life. We danced at night until sunrise. We watched shows that were entertaining and funny. We sang in sing-alongs. We basked in the sun of perfect weather and visited beautiful beaches. We swam with dolphins and petted sting rays. We watched whales and went 4-wheeling in the back woods of Mexico. As much fun as the shore excursions were, we had the most fun just being trapped in the mall. Go figure.

Since our first cruise, we've been on 2 others. One on the same cruise with Atlantis Events the following year and the other with RSVP Vacations. RSVP was great too, but we definitely liked the Atlantis Events cruises better.

We can't wait for the next cruise and are trying to decide whether to take the one next January or wait for the Solstice cruise in March '09. We love the January cruise, but unfortunately, it'll be on the same ship with the exact same destinations we've been to before. The normally vary the destinations every other year, but since we missed this year, we didn't get to experience their newest destinations. If you are on the fence and considering taking such a cruise, I'd highly recommend it. For anyone wishing to find some pictures, I linked to some here. They are not mine, but seem to be a collection that people took from a couple of different Atlantis cruises.

Nude Note: Since a central theme of this blog is nudism, I will say that on all of the cruises I've taken, there was a small deck set-aside for nude tanning. As my second, very brief, experience with public nudity, I dis-robed for a brief period. Also, we anchored at St. Maarten and had a chance to visit the nude Orient Beach. The beach was beautiful, calm and utopic. I wore a mesh thong with holds about 1 inch square. It didn't hide anything, so why I didn't take it off is a mystery even to me. I guess these were steps I took on my way to my own corporal self-acceptance.

BTW: If you go on the Atlantis Events website looking for the specific cruises that I mentioned, you will not see them yet. They are definitely scheduled, but not yet for sale.