Umbrella Rules

This is something I won't put in writing many times so take note of it while you can.  Are you ready?  Prepare yourself.  Here we go.....  This week, I am glad that I am not on a Caribbean cruise.  There, it has finally happened.  I have said it.  This week and perhaps only this week I would prefer to sit in my home in Dallas and watch it rain probably part of the day Tuesday and all day Wednesday, than to be in the Caribbean watching it rain.  What brought this proclamation on, you might ask.  Well, let me tell you.

I had been sitting at my computer shivering for an hour trying to think of something to blog about today when I decided to look at weather conditions at various ports around the Caribbean and write about how much nicer it is there today than it is in Dallas and much to my surprise, almost every port I looked at is expecting multiple days of rain this week.  Granted, it won't be 50 degrees and rainy, but it will still be rainy. See, here's the thing.  I can deal with a rainy day here and there while on a cruise.  In fact sometimes it can even be a little refreshing.  But it would really suck to plan and anticipate a cruise for as much as a year, get on board, leave port and then realize that you aren't going to see any sun during your trip.  

If each of the places I had looked at were expecting the bad weather on the same day, I'd have been okay with that too.  But they are each forecasting at least two days of rain this week and it looks like it will just be going across the Caribbean and hitting each place on a different day.  I suppose this means that if you are lucky, the ship you are on will visit those ports on the days that it is not raining there.  But I am not lucky.  If I were in the Caribbean this week, there can be no doubt that each day, wherever the ship that I was on stopped, it would be raining.  

There are no rain outs in cruising.  Sure the captain might change course and try to go someplace where it is less rainy or they can even just skip a port, but honestly by the time I get on a ship, I have already planned out exactly what I am going to do in each port and I am seriously looking forward to it.  If you tell me tonight that there is bad weather in our destination that we were scheduled to visit tomorrow and we're just going to sail around in circles instead, I'm going to be disappointed.  During hurricane Sandy a lot of cruisers were up in arms and complaining on cruising websites because none of the big cruise lines canceled cruises.  I would probably be upset too if I had paid for a cruise on which I was guaranteed to be miserable.  But I prefer to cruise during the winter for just that reason.  I've only done two cruises during the height of hurricane season and they were both with nephews who had just graduated from high school and could only cruise during the summer.

While there are no guarantees that a trip you planned a year ago won't experience bad weather when you finally go, generally visiting the Caribbean during the winter is safer than in June through October.  I have experienced a couple of bad weather days both at sea and in port before, but nothing that I would consider to be extreme.  Here is a little storm that came up one day while I was in Cozumel in November....

Here is what it looked like 20 minutes later....

I've just gone through 1,000 or so other pictures looking for bad weather I have experienced while on cruises....  None of it was anymore significant than this.  However, I took the picture below on the last day of the Mediterranean cruise.....

It was one of those days when they won't let you go out on deck.  I don't like those days.  I had another day like this in the Caribbean once, but I can't find any pictures from that day right now.  Here are a few pictures from the following day in Barcelona.  It was cold, wet and kinda miserable all day.  But it didn't really slow us down too much.

There were things we still needed to see and we weren't really willing to let a little bit of weather keep us down.  The umbrella that Jenny is holding in that picture below says Barcelona all over it, that's because she bought it while we were there because she had forgotten to bring one.  I have found over the years that if any member of your traveling party forgets an umbrella, it pretty much guarantees that it will rain at some point during your vacation.  For this purpose, I try to always bring two of them now.  One for me and another for my traveling companion....  Just in case.

Here's another rule of thumb regarding rain....  If your rental car is a convertible and you are on a high traffic two lane highway with no place to pull over and the top down.... It will probably rain.  But I think the strangest thing of all regarding rain is that even in Seattle as long as all members of the traveling party bring umbrellas, it does not rain except for a few sprinkles on the first day just to let you know that you have arrived.  Go figure!

So, your take away from this is always bring an umbrella and NEVER buy one during your trip. 

Have a great day.  I'll talk to you all tomorrow.