Cruising the Caribbean - Part 3

We carried on to St Thomas, the main island in the US Virgin Islands. This place is a shopping mecca! As we already had a big diamond in tow by this stage, we bypassed the shopping (after a brief look) and took a tour around the island. It's quite pretty, and used to be under Danish rule - the street names are all in Danish, which I found quite fascinating. The views from the top of the island were great, looking out over the other islands, and over to the British Virgin Islands as well.

The next stop was a bit of a surprise, as when we initially booked the cruise we were supposed to be going to Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic. About two months after we booked it we got notified that it would be changed to San Juan, Puerto Rico - which I was more than happy with!

Old San Juan felt more like we were in Spain or something Mediterranean. Beautiful old buildings, with their little juliet balconies, so cute! The Spanish influence is very strong.

Sailing out of San Juan was beautiful - there were two other cruise ships in port, and we were the first to leave, passing the fortresses and castles. Old San Juan was an unexpected highlight!

The next morning we both woke up feeling really bad. I spent most of the day in bed, which wasn't so bad as we had a half day stop in Turks and Caicos. The most beautiful water, but not much else to see! By evening time I had had enough and we both went to the onboard doctor - who funnily enough was an Aussie - and got diagnosed with the norovirus :o( Antibiotics and being quarantined to our cabin for the last 24 hours of the cruise were the order of the day. The last day was a day at sea, which we had to spend in our cabin, watching tv, snoozing on and off, and ordering room service!
Then it was back to reality and to the airport - where Delta had bumped us off our flight, which meant we had to run to get our connecting flight in Detroit, and when we got to Vancouver, my luggage didn't show up - apparently as it was "too late to the gate" - despite us being at the airport 4 1/2 hours before our flight left Florida! Needless to say I was not impressed. All our toiletries were in my bag - so we didn't even have toothbrushes when we got home! Luckily it turned up the next afternoon, unfortunately after the emergency toothbrush purchases.

All in all, a wonderful cruise. Andrew is a cruise convert, we had a great time (despite being sick for the last two days), had some amazing food (lobster tails, oysters, lots of amazing fish, luscious desserts and pastries, fresh fruit.... the list is endless), and got engaged!

Cruising the Caribbean - Part Deux

Next on the list was St Vincent, of St Vincent & the Grenadines. This is probably the most isolated island on our itinerary - there are no flights from here to anywhere outside the Caribbean, so there's not as much outside influence, or tourists. It's very lush, green, and a bit rough in town. Not unsafe - just very basic, and undeveloped. Being a Saturday there were lots of people milling around, local markets going on, selling fruit and vegetables, and not much else. There's none of the touristy shops that are so prolific at the other ports, it's just back to basics, Caribbean style.

That night, back on the ship, was the night that Andrew chose to propose! Of course I said yes (i had been not-so-gently suggesting it for a while!!), and had a celebratory cocktail and game of cards up on deck. Nice and laid back!

The next day in St Kitts we went ring shopping - there is really good jewellery shopping to do in the Caribbean - and found this ring, which I LOVE. St Kitts was really nice - Easter Sunday, and after we'd done our stint round all the jewellery stores, we went out into the real town and wandered the near empty streets - along with the roosters!
There was a lovely park, surrounded with colonial buildings, and these funny palm trees, that we also saw somewhere else along the trip as well.

There were two ships in port that day - the other one was a Celebrity cruiselines ship, one of their older ones that looked really rundown. Ours is the one on the left.

We had some lovely sunsets, depsite the weather not always being perfect, but sometimes the clouds add to the mood.

Cruising the Caribbean - Part 1

At the end of March we flew out to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to catch our 14 night Caribbean cruise. We'd booked it just before Christmas, so had been looking forward to it for a while - Andrew had never been on a cruise before, and I'd talked it up a lot, so I was hoping he'd enjoy it! We cruised with Princess Cruises, who I'd cruised with before. The ship, the Grand Princess, holds around 2600 passengers, and about 1200 crew. It was a great ship, despite being one of their older ones, but it was well kept and the staff were great - we quickly made ourselves at home!

The first stop was Aruba, which we came to after two days at sea. There was some interesting architecture! And the water was beautiful, we caught a cab up to the beach, which is about 10 minutes away from town. It was HOT as well - mid 30s, and we were already bright red from being burnt while at sea - with a bit of a breeze, we didn't realise the sun was so strong! Oops....

Next day it was on to another Dutch island, Curacao. The cute little coloured buildings reminded me of a place in Copenhagen called Nyhavn - very similar. Here we mainly wandered around the town and checked out the shops a bit.

After Curacao, we had another day at sea in which to enjoy the ship. Lazy breakfasts at the buffet, followed by lunch, afternoon tea, and then a 4 course dinner..... punctuated by a swim here and there, and at least one trivia quiz every day. I could get used to this life.....

We arrived in Port of Spain, Trinidad, in the morning, and this was the only place we'd organised a shore excursion through the cruiseline. I'd read that it's not really the safest place to be by yourselves, so we booked a half day tour around the city and out to the beach. Our guide was good, telling us lots of stuff, and all about carnival and the steel pan drums and stuff. Trinidadians are the colourful ones of the Caribbean - anyone remember the last cricket world cup that was held in the West Indies? The Trinidadians were the noisy ones!! The British influence was evident in a lot of the architecture - quite a contrast the the Dutch influence we'd just seen in Aruba and Curacao. We did get out to the beach as well, the weather wasn't the greatest unfortunately, but lots of palm trees by the beach!

Next day was Barbados, which I'd been looking forward to for ages - but, we didn't realise it was Good Friday, so everything was closed! We walked out to the beach, beautiful white sand and clear blue water, and strolled for a while. There were lots of people swimming, playing frisbee etc - they were just all in the other direction than this photo was taken!
We walked back through Bridgetown, the capital, where again, the British had obviously been, and found a bar that was open, so Andrew could partake in a local brew while we sat in the shade and played cards. We pretty much worked it every day so that we were back on the ship for lunch, and then we went off again if we wanted. Saving money!