Puerto Rico was where it started, but it felt like the whole Caribbean belonged to us for that week.
At the time, it was the newest and biggest Carnival ship afloat, which made it feel less like a cruise and more like a floating city built for people in love.
Laura and I were newly married, newly tan, and completely incapable of saying no to one more drink, one more excursion, or one more little souvenir shop.
Saint Thomas.
Aruba.
Antigua.
Guadeloupe.
Caracas.
Every stop was postcard beautiful.
In Saint Thomas, we climbed into one of those open-air shuttle tours driven by a local guy whose real name we tried and failed to pronounce.
He laughed, slapped the steering wheel, and said everybody just called him Dunkin’ Donuts.
That became our favorite name of the whole trip.
Dunkin’ drove that shuttle through the hills like he was qualifying at Monaco.
Hairpin turns.
Narrow roads.
Cliffs that dropped into green valleys below.
Mansions on one side, tiny weathered homes on the other.
Every sharp turn made the whole shuttle lean just enough to make us think, well, this might be how the honeymoon ends.
But somehow that only made it better.
By night, the ship turned into its own little world.
The food was ridiculous.
The desserts somehow kept getting better.
And by some stroke of honeymoon luck, our assigned dinner table was a ten-top filled with four other newlywed couples.
Every night felt like a reunion of people who had only known each other for 48 hours but acted like old friends.
By the final day, we had no ports left.
Just open water.
Blue sky.
A full day to enjoy the last hours before returning to Puerto Rico.
The morning started with a volleyball tournament on the top deck.
At the time I was deep into sand volleyball, so naturally I had to play.
Our team won.
That victory, in hindsight, may have been the beginning of Laura’s suffering.
Afterward we grabbed two lounge chairs by the pool, ordered a couple farewell cocktails, and decided to soak in the last stretch of Caribbean sun.
About half an hour in, I’d had enough.
I wrapped myself like an Egyptian mummy in a sun blanket, pulled on my wide-brimmed Panama hat, slid my sunglasses down, and disappeared into full-body shade.
Laura, meanwhile, stayed in her pink bikini and kept working on what she assumed would be the perfect honeymoon tan.
At some point I drifted off.
I think she did too.
When we finally got up to head back to the cabin and clean up for the flight home, we looked at each other in our swimsuits and immediately knew something had gone very wrong.
I was fine.
Laura looked like she had been forged in a blast furnace.
Her shoulders were bright red.
Her arms were worse.
And when she gently pulled her bikini top strap aside, the contrast revealed a perfectly untouched lily-white line underneath.
That was the moment the whole cruise shifted from romantic memory to family legend.
The shower somehow made it look even worse.
By the time we boarded the plane home, every seatbelt, every movement, every attempt to lean back had become its own special kind of misery.
Eight hours in coach with a Caribbean sunburn might be the least romantic ending to a honeymoon ever invented.
And yet that’s the part we still laugh about.
Not the ship.
Not the islands.
Not Dunkin’ Donuts driving like a maniac through Saint Thomas.
What survived was the image of Laura standing in that cabin mirror, half amused and half horrified, staring at the sharp white line of a bikini strap and realizing the Caribbean had decided to send us home with one final souvenir.
If this resonated with you, you’re not alone.
