This morning we made landfall in St. Martin in the Caribbean. It was nice to see some land after six days at sea. Unfortunately, as we will explain in this post, the sight of land this morning was the best part of today, followed by our departure this afternoon.
We set an alarm for 6:20 AM so that we could get ready and eat our room service ordered breakfast before we needed to leave the cabin at 7:45 AM. We are taking an included ship’s excursion on a bus around the island of St. Martin.
I actually got up early, and after showering, headed to the Living Room Bar for a coffee and a blueberry muffin. The coffee there is freshly made by the cup and is better than the room service coffee. It was a quick trip, I did not linger and was unable to work on yesterday’s blog post, there was not enough time.
Stephanie slept in just a bit more. By the time I was finished with my coffee downstairs, and got back to the cabin, she was up and getting ready.
Room service arrived promptly at 7:00 AM, and it was mostly for Stephanie. I had ordered another blueberry muffin just in case I was still hungry after my early coffee and muffin. Room Service delivery is quirky. We had left our do not disturb sign on the door last night, as usual, and instead of ringing the doorbell, they called on the telephone to tell us they were outside. Just weird, how is it less of a disturbance to ring the doorbell for something we ordered than to call on the phone….just saying.
We ate the room service breakfast and were ready to go by 7:30 AM, we just needed to wait a bit before we left the ship so that we would not be too early. We wanted to try and get on one of the last buses so it would maybe be less crowded. Unfortunately, even though we were actually a little behind schedule for our meeting time out on the pier, we still were assigned to Bus No. 1.
The tour bus left promptly at 8:00 AM for the tour, which was scheduled to last 2.5 hours according to all of the information we had read when we initially booked this tour several weeks ago, and then again, when we saw the excursion schedule in the Viking Daily. It was odd that the last time slot for this same excursion in the Viking Daily was listed with a duration of 3.5 hours, which would have put them 30 minutes later than the “all aboard” time.
The tour was just average, it was slow driving around the island, and there was still a lot of damage from Hurricane Katrina several years ago over on the French Side. It looked terrible compared to the last time I had gone over to that side of St. Martin, probably close to 20 years ago. And, the traffic was horrible. Stephanie and I have been to St. Martin several times, but have never rented a car to drive to the French Side and visit the beaches there. After today, we both agreed, it was not worth spending a day trying to do this again on our own.
Lookout Stop – French Side
The bus tour stopped at a lookout on the French Side, and the views were average at best. Then we drove slowly through traffic to the city of Margot. We did make a lot of stops to look at Iguanas, they are very abundant here, and some of the orange variety are very large.
It got a little old stopping so many times to see more of them, OK, once you see some Iguanas, we don’t need to spend a lot of the tour time stopping to see more.
Lookout Stop – French Side
We finally arrived in Margot, the capital of the French side. We were on a mission to purchase some “feminine product” items for Stephanie, so we first tried a Pharmacy and that was unsuccessful, and then a small independent grocery where we had success.
The tour was schedule to be in Margot for 45 minutes, and we all loaded back onto the bus promptly at 10:15 AM. It seemed to me that we needed to drive quite a long way in the next 15 minutes for the tour to end in the 2.5 hour timeframe that was stated in the information we had seen. Well, apparently the scheduled duration was just not accurate, it took us 15 minutes just to get out of the bus parking lot in Margot with all of the traffic.
Iguanas Everywhere
We headed back toward Phillipsburg, the port city, but it took us close to another hour to get there. We stopped at a scenic overlook, but it was getting very cloudy and without sunshine, it was net even worth getting off the bus. Another tour bus came by from a Viking tour, but they did not even stop, they just drove through the scenic overlook parking area and left.
Chuck & Stephanie In Margot
Then, we got stuck in a lot of traffic, and the tour was obviously not going to be 2.5 hours long. We had specifically signed up for the early tour so we would have what we thought was going to be about 1.5 hours to go to a store in Phillipsburg. We wanted to purchase some Blanton’s Gold Whiskey which we can’t buy in the USA, even though it is made by the Buffalo Trace Distillery in the USA. We needed to be back onboard the ship by 12:00 noon.
We had actually asked the bus driver while we were in Margot if he could drop us off in town in Phillipsburg before heading back to the port. He had initially told us he would go back to the port and then take us back to the town after everyone else got off. However, with all of the traffic and delays, he actually announced that he would now drop us off in town on the way to the port, which was better for us schedule wise.
We got off the bus a couple of blocks from the main shopping street, but in line with the store we wanted to purchase the Blanton’s from. We got a little confused, we did not go over enough streets to get to the one that the store was located on, and we had to backtrack a little before we finally found it. We went inside and asked about the Blanton’s Gold and they told us it was out of stock. Then they thought they might have some set aside for another order, but it was not the Gold variety. We were just out of luck. Now, we only had about 35 minutes to walk back to the ship, and to add insult to injury, it started to rain.
It was just a light rain at first, and we had brought our umbrellas because we knew rain was in the forecast for later in the afternoon. It was pretty windy, so managing the umbrellas was difficult. then it started to rain harder, and it was not enjoyable at all. It made the walk seem much longer fighting the rain and wind, as well as some large puddles.
We finally got back to the port and then out to the ship, and the rain started to let up just as we got to the ship’s gangway. Our shoes were soaked and we were pretty wet ourselves because of all of the swirling wind blowing the rain in various directions.
After The Rain IN St. Martin
Once we were back onboard, we headed to the cabin to dry off and change clothes. By this time, the sun was back out, which did not make us feel any less foul. We had done all of the walking in the rain for nothing.
After drying off and changing, we headed up to the pool bar for a beer to ease our aggravation. We ran into two other couple’s who we had told about the liquor store for the Blanton’s earlier in the cruise. They had actually gotten to the store first thing this morning, but the store was already out of stock on the Blanton’s even then. It would not have helped our aggravation had we heard that they had been successful and had bought the last remaining stock after we had told then where to go to purchase it.
We had one beer at the pool bar and then headed to the World Cafe for lunch. It was a Caribbean Buffet and was actually quite good. We then just sat outside enjoying a glass of wine as we sailed away from St. Martin.
We headed back to the cabin and sat down to read our disembarkation instructions for Ft. Lauderdale, which had been delivered earlier in the day. The instructions were very confusing. In the end, we were being told we needed to be in the Atrium by 7:15 AM for disembarking into the terminal, collecting our baggage, going through customs and immigration and then getting our transfer to the Ft. Lauderdale airport for our 1:15 pm flight. That was just not acceptable.
We had originally paid extra to choose our flights through Viking Air, and had originally been given flights by Viking Air that departed around 11:30 AM. These had been cancelled by Viking because we were told those flights were “too early” and the ship would not be in port soon enough to allow sufficient time to get to the airport and make those flights. We had argued the fact that the ship was due in port at 7:00 AM, but were unsuccessful in getting them to let us keep the original 11:30 AM flights.
Now, we have to leave the ship at 7:15 AM, and we could have easily made the earlier flight. I went to Guest Services and explained my situation, but was basically told in a very polite way that it was not possible to change anything. There is certainly a disconnect in communication between the departments of Viking. It was basically useless for me to come to Guest Services to try to get off the ship later, but I was thanked and asked if there was anything else they could do for me today. Funny, they had not done anything in the first place, how could they do more.
We headed back to the cabin for me to write this post for today, I am still seething about the flights, the early disembarkation, as well as the incorrect duration for the excursion today. That put the last nail in the Viking Cruise coffin, we made the decision that we will not cruise Viking again after all of the troubles we are having. Viking Cruises are nice, but there are way too many issues for us to feel that the much higher price for these cruises is justified.
I think that if you are a sheep, do not want to do anything on your own, be told what and when to do things, and are happy to pay to be a sheep, Viking is the cruise line for you. We are still able to be independent and want the flexibility of doing things on our own. The two tours we did after leaving Barcelona were basically useless long bus rides.
Stephanie decided to take a nap and I was too worked up to stay in the cabin, so after I finished this post up to current time, I left her a note and headed down to the Library Bar and had a couple of beverages, and talked with the bartender there, Daniel. Daniel is from Peru and has been working on cruise ships as a bartender for about 20 years. Before Viking, he spent time with Royal Caribbean.
Stephanie sent me a text through WhatsApp a little while later. She had gotten my note, and wanted to nap a little longer, which was fine.
At around 5:00 PM, the bar and surrounding Atrium areas started to fill up with people dressed up for dinner, and my shorts and flip flops were starting to be a little out of place. Technically, I had until 6:00 PM to meet the dress code rules, but it was time to leave, we needed to get ready for our dinner at 6:30 PM anyways.
I headed back to the cabin to wake Stephanie up and for us to take showers and get dressed for dinner. Tonight we were going to dinner at 6:30 PM at the Chef’s Table with Angie and Tony.
We left the cabin and headed down to Deck 1 to meet up with them. They were sitting in the Atrium area and had met up with Shane and Julian, and the six of us were now going to eat together, which was fine. Shane and Julian had reservations there anyway, but at a little later time, and they were told they might not be able to get into the restaurant early. Angie talked with the hostess and was able to get us all a table for six, we just had to wait a bit.
About 6:45 PM, we headed into the restaurant and were seated. It was pretty interesting, the section we were seated in was mostly empty, and most of the tables were for parties of two. It never got full for the duration of our dinner. We all wondered why changing reservations times for Shane and Julian so they could join us had been so hard to do. Maybe it was a staffing issue and not a table space issue.
Tonight’s theme at the Chef’s Table was Mexican. It was different than typical Mexican food. There was some squid on a corn chip, which was pretty good. Next was some kind of chicken tamale, but instead of being wrapped in corn husks, the chicken was inside a type of flat fried or baked cornbread batter. It was tasty, but we all agreed it was dry. It was interesting to also see the difference in each serving. Mine was really thin overall, it hardly had any chicken inside of it. Stephanie’s was about twice as thick, and was not as dry, and was much better with the greater amount of chicken that was inside of it.
Dinner At The Chef’s Table Restaurant
Next, we were served a small cup with a frozen “cactus” sort of sorbet, with red chili bits on top. It was also pretty good, and very different.
The next course was the main course, it was supposedly short ribs on a mole sauce, with a side of a sweet potato puree on the plate. The ribs were also covered in a different sauce. They were good, but it was similar to the “ribs” I had the other day, it was really just meat, and both Stephanie and I agreed the meat tonight was too fatty. With all of the sauces, it was hard to separate the fat from the meat. It was likely cooked in a pressure cooker or slow cooker, not the best.
Next was dessert, and it was the best part of the meal. There were a couple of different chocolate items on the plate, and all of them were good, although very chocolaty.
Each of the different courses were served with different wines that were paired with the items served for that course. Some were whites, some were reds. The dessert was served with a port wine, which is not our favorite, it is too sweet, so we passed on that.
The meal was just OK at best, and that was the consensus of the group. But, we all had a great time at dinner together, despite the food.
The Gang At The Explorer’s Lounge
It was close to 9:00 PM, and there was a pool party getting ready to start on Deck 7 at the main pool. We headed up there to see what was happening. There were quite a few people there, and a lot of the staff were there dancing to music being played by the Viking Band. It was too loud for Stephanie, Angie, Tony and myself, so we headed to the nearby Explorer’s Lounge where it was much quieter, and we could have some conversation. Shane and Julian showed up about 15 minutes later. There were a few other people in the bar, and then Antonia, the piano player arrived and she played songs for about 45 minutes, mostly all requests from the people in the bar.
We had a lot of fun, but at midnight, it was time for us to head home, so Stephanie and I left the rest of the “crew’ in the bar and headed to our cabin.