My Wife and I just completed our fourth pre-Christmas Sea Dream 2 cruise from December2-9 2012. As always, it was wonderful to return to Sea Dream and reconnect with our friends on the crew. While we usually sail out of St. Thomas, this cruise originated from San Juan. Susie and I got to the pier

two hours before embarkation, gave the check-in people our bags and went out to find some a good Latin lunch. Upon returning from lunch, we took seats in the terminal and watched the passengers arrive.

To our surprise, the ship wound up having 88 passengers, 50 of whom were gay males. We live in New York City and have cruised with gay friends. I should have been cooler about it. Truth is that it bothered me at first. I'm not proud of this, but I'll be honest. It occurred to me that Sea Dream should have let passengers know this was the case, simply out of courtesy. But my initial reaction did not last long. The gay guys were really a lot of fun and much more interesting than most of their hetero counterparts on the ship. We all agreed that this cruise had been one of the best we've taken on Sea Dream. I learned something, too. We made a lot of new friends who happened to be gay, and I would travel with them again in a heartbeat. They were interesting, unfailingly polite and often very funny. We had a good time. I could see from attitude and expression that not all the hetero couples were quite as thrilled, but c'est la vie. If you don't give people a chance, you'll never know whether you like them or not. Read more