My husband and I opted for a two-night stay in Grand Bahama so we could truly relax. It gave us 2 ½ days of playtime at the resort's pools and beach. The $690 it cost for our family of four covered the cruise, hotel stay and most harbor fees.

We spent our days poolside at the Sheraton Grand Bahama Our Lucaya Resort, where a winding slide kept the girls entertained for hours. The Sheraton, joined by walkways to the more upscale Westin, is part of a complex that includes restaurants, bars, shops, a children's center and several pools. Kayak rentals and a trampoline in the ocean drew us to the resort's white-sand beach, where a conch shack called Billy Joe's offered the freshest, tastiest cracked conch we've ever had. When we grew tired of sun soaking, we strolled across the street to poke around Port Lucaya's marketplace.

The resort's restaurants were pricey and predictable. Our best meal came the night we took the advice of a hotel worker manning a beach volleyball game and grabbed a cab to Simply Native, a no-frills locals restaurant with heaping plates of ribs and dirty rice with conch -- and prices no higher than the $10 entrees on the children's menus back at the resort.

QUITE A CROWD

Expensive dining aside, the trip's relative affordability appeals to a large variety of travelers, something that really became apparent on our return trip two days later. Ever wonder where the middle class is in South Florida, which seems to exist only for the very rich and very poor? We came together aboard this ship in all our glorious shapes and colors on that late Sunday afternoon.

There was the group of Muslim girls, some wearing black veils, listening to the Jamaican calypso singer. There were white grandmas in straw hats and sundresses clapping with middle-aged, suburban black couples as they cheered for contestants in the men's ''knobby knees'' contest. Guys in black T-shirts with Converse on their feet and mohawks on their heads bobbed with young backpackers in Birkenstocks to Bob Marley tunes on the loudspeaker. Middle-aged women with tube tops and tattoos mixed at the bar with balding men in socks and sandals, a few of them in wheelchairs.

Oh yes, and there were a handful of families like us.

The crazy-quilt quality of the crowd made for a strange mix of entertainment, ranging from bingo to beer-chugging contests. One minute my kids were competing with other children in a hula hoop challenge, the next a singer seeking audience participation was screaming, ``Let's hear it for the sex maniacs!''

Three hours after boarding the ship to return to Florida, the top deck lounge started to feel like a Key West bar past midnight. We ducked below to the Starlight Showroom, where a jazz-and-blues singer and a magician kept the crowd subdued until we docked. We arrived at our Coconut Grove home close to midnight. As they faded off to sleep, my kids start to tick off all the trip details they planned to tell their friends in the morning. They were sunburned and slightly cranky, but they now considered themselves cruise authorities.

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