Eastern Cruise Category

We spent a relaxing night at the hotel and awoke refreshed and ready to head south to begin the cruise. We ate breakfast in the buffet at the hotel, and, as is typical, it was only fair. They had both hot and cold items, but nothing is really ever that warm.

After breakfast, we went back to the room to repack our small carry-on bag, loaded up the rest of our suitcases onto the cart and checked out of the hotel around 8:45 AM. After getting some gas for the rental car and making a stop at WalMart for a couple of items, we headed south on I-95. We had about 1.5 hours more to drive to get to the port in Ft. Lauderdale, and unfortunately, the last hour is always congested as we pass through some of the larger cities, and deal with some remaining morning commuter traffic.  Today was no different.

We planned on stopping at the Harbor Place shopping area near the port in Ft. Lauderdale to scout it out.   We will be going there between the two cruises for some supplies. It is less than a mile walk from the cruise terminal, and there is a Publix and a Total Wine Store there.

After going to a couple of stores in the shopping center just to look for some of the items we know we want to purchase between the cruises, we drove through the security gate at the port,  and headed to the port Terminal to drop off our checked luggage.   Stephanie was going to handle all of the carry on luggage while I drove to the Ft. Lauderdale Airport to drop off the rental car, and returned on the free shuttle bus. There was not much traffic at the port terminal yet, so the drop off went very quickly. I drove to the airport and dropped off the rental car, and headed outside to catch the shuttle back to the port. Unfortunately, it took a little over 30 minutes for the shuttle to arrive, and then it stopped first at the Carnival Cruise terminal before heading over to the Princess Cruises terminal. By this time, the traffic had gotten really bad heading into the terminal to drop off passengers for our cruise, and I waited on the bus for another 30 minutes while we crept through the backed up traffic.  There is a lot of traffic when there are 3,500 passengers arriving.

Stephanie had been waiting in line anticipating that I would not be gone for an hour dropping off the rental car. It took so long for me to get back that she had to get out of the line because she had gotten up to the entry point and I was still missing. Luckily we had been keeping each other informed of our progress via texting. By the time I arrived back at the terminal, the line had actually disappeared, the first wave of waiting passengers had already gotten though, so we proceeded into the terminal and through security in about 10 minutes. After checking in we were placed in an Elite Status holding area, where we were told we would be in the first group of passengers to board.

They had anticipated we would board before 1:00 PM, but due to having to process the entire crew through Immigration, and a subsequent Coast Guard inspection, boarding was delayed until about 3:00 PM. These additional inspections were required because the Royal Princess ship had just returned to the USA this morning from her European cruise schedule. Needless to say, there were a lot of tired, hungry and generally unhappy cruisers as a result of the additional wait time.

Luckily, we were in the first group to board, and when we arrived at our cabin, our luggage had actually already arrived, which was nice.

We headed to the buffet for some lunch, and since hardly any other passengers had boarded yet, it was pleasantly empty.

Afterward, we went back to the cabin and unpacked. Of course, due to the delays in boarding, our departure time from Ft. Lauderdale was also delayed from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM.

We had to go through the safety and evacuation drill in our designated muster area, but once that was completed, we were free to finally relax and have a couple of adult refreshments.

The sail away was uneventful, and as we headed out to sea, the sun was setting behind some inland rain clouds.

As is usual for our first night on board, we were not going to eat in the dining room, opting instead to eat in the Alfredo’s Pizzeria that is one of the separate restaurants on this ship. The food was quite good, they had several specialty pizzas that were made fresh for each order.

We headed back to the cabin, we were quite tired from all of the travel over the past two days, and the  stressful check in this afternoon.

Today was our first of two consecutive sea days as we head south to our first stop in Antigua on Thursday.

We slept in a little bit after our hectic Travel and Embarkation day yesterday. After eating our normal buffet breakfast, we applied sunscreen and headed out to the pool deck to relax in the beautiful Caribbean sunshine. We had no issues getting open pool deck lounge chairs, which can sometimes be an issue on Caribbean cruises. It appears the mix of younger and older passengers is more on the older side, so spending time outside in the heat and sunshine is not what the older crowd enjoys.

We went to the buffet for lunch before heading over to one of the pool bars for some refreshments. It was a very pleasant afternoon, with just enough breeze from the ships movement to help moderate the heat.

Later in the afternoon, we went back to one of the bars near the main pool, the Seaview Bar. There is a glass walkway that projects out from the ship far enough to be over the water below. It is on deck 17 so you are quite a ways up from the water.

It is interesting to watch how many people are not willing to walk on the glass due to the effect of the height. The bartenders at this bar are great, they are always trying to put on a show in some way or another, and are very friendly and fun.

We met a few other couples, and three of them are on their honeymoons, and are much younger than us. We also met a couple from Naples, FL who were older.

We ended up going to the dining room for dinner and it was a pleasant experience, the wait staff were good and we had a nice table.

After dinner, we had a nightcap and then headed back to the cabin.

Today was the second of our two consecutive sea days before our first port of call. We did sleep in this morning, not waking up until about 9:00 AM. With the inside cabin, we don’t get any indicator of the time of day since it is always dark.

After getting ready, we once again headed to the buffet for breakfast. Afterward, we applied sunscreen and headed to the pool deck to relax in the sunshine.

It was a nice morning weather wise, but after lunch, it started to get cloudy, and they made an announcement that we were heading into some heavy rain, and for people out on the open decks to seek some shelter.

We ran into several light rain storms, and then one that was more like a downpour, and that definitely chased everyone inside or at least to covered areas by the pool. We saw some of the other couples from yesterday at the Seaview Bar, so we joined them for some drinks.

Before some of the larger rain showers arrived, the bar tenders at the Seaview Bar put on quite a show juggling bottles and shakers, and one of them poured 15 martinis at one time from a set of stacked cups that held the drinks and as he laid them over sideways, they poured into the martini glasses he had placed on the bar.  They called it “flaring”

We snacked on some fresh pizza and then it was time to head back to our room to get ready for the first formal night. It was the Captain’s reception, and also the champagne fountain.

Stephanie gave me some monogrammed cuff links for my tux, an early anniversary present.  We ran into the older couple from Naples, and they introduced us to some other friends that they had met on previous cruises.

We had looked at the dinner menu earlier in the day and had not seen anything on it to convince us to go to the dining room, so we actually ate at the special pizzeria located in the atrium area, and it was quite good, and the service staff are very friendly.

After dinner, we had a couple of drinks at the Bellini’s Bar in the Atrium.  We did not want to stay out too late because we visit our first port tomorrow, the city of St. John’s in Antigua, so we headed back to the cabin. Tomorrow we need to get going fairly early in the morning since we are doing our own shore excursion.

Today was our first port stop on the island of Antigua. We awoke to plenty of sunshine today, and the forecast was for clear skies and about 84 degrees.

Our plan for today is to take one of the local city buses to an area called Nelson’s Dockyard, which was used by the British as a port and repair facility for their ships in the 1700’s. The buildings have been somewhat restored, and are currently being used as shops, restaurants and small hotels. There is also a museum, and a short hike to what is left of the fort that protected the entrance to the harbor.

We ate breakfast in the buffet, and were ready to get off of the ship shortly after we docked at 8:00 AM. We gathered up our backpacks and headed for the short walk to the local bus station. The town area of the port city was not very attractive, the buildings were old and some of the older wooden houses and structures were actually falling apart.

The bus station was straightforward, and we found Bus #17 at the terminal. It was a smaller vehicle, which could only hold about 20 passengers. We paid our fare of $4.00 US and boarded. Once the bus was full we headed out. It was about a 30 minute ride to the Dockyard.

We paid our entrance fee of $8.00 US per person, and entered the restored dockyard area. This is not the main season for tourism here, so several of the shops were not open, which we had been made aware of when we did research. It was still interesting, there were information signs outside of each building which told what purpose it had been used for during the period it was in operation.

There was supposed to be a water taxi that would transport you to the other side of the harbor where you could try and take a taxi to an area called Shirley Heights, which is a viewing area high above the harbor. However, the water taxi was not in operation, I guess since this is not the real tourist season yet.

We did find the trail heading out to the fort at the harbor entrance, and walked the out trail to get some great views of the coastline.

There was actually another trail to hike that lead along the coast over to another beach area, but it was pretty steep, and there were lots of some type of really thorny bushes everywhere.

Many of the older branches had fallen off and there were dried thorny limbs spread over places on the trail that would even stick onto the soles of our Keen Sandals. We opted not to take that trail and risk slipping and getting spiked. There were lots of small stones and pebbles that made the trail very slippery, like walking on marbles.

We headed back into the dockyard facility and looked around some more at the buildings, and then headed to the entrance to wait for the next city bus to take us back to the bus terminal near the port. After about 20 minutes, a van arrived, which was marked with the #17 logo, so we got on with about 6 other persons. The bus we had taken over was much larger and was air conditioned. This was a van that only held about 8-10 persons and was not air conditioned. Needless to say, the ride back was not as nice as the ride over.

Since we had not seen much to look at around the port, we headed back onto the ship for a late lunch in the buffet. We thought about getting back off and looking at some of the stores along the waterfront, near the pier, but decided we did not really need to do any shopping.

We just headed back up to the pool area and sat in the chairs near the pool, enjoying the afternoon.

The ship left Antigua at 5:00 PM. We had not been that impressed with this port. I am sure there were some nice beaches to visit, but overall, this was not the best port we have visited in the Caribbean.

There was a Bavarian Fest in the buffet, so we went to that instead of going to the Dining Room. The food was good, but there were no German Beers for sale like we have had on previous cruises. They were only serving the normal beer selections, which was a little disappointing.

We had some Riesling wine with dinner and then headed to watch some of the music entertainment in the Atrium while we sat at the Vines Wine Bar.  We have an early wake up time tomorrow, so we headed back to the room around 10:30 PM.

 

Today we stopped on the island of St. Lucia, in the port town of Castries. We are doing a tour through an interdependent tour company called Cosol Tours. The tour is about 5-6 hours long and visits several of the sights around the island.

We needed to meet the tour at 8:20 AM, so we got up around 6:30 AM, showered, and went to eat breakfast in the buffet. We then headed back to the room to apply some sunscreen and to get all of our gear ready. Part of the tour is visiting a beach for snorkeling, so we packed all of our snorkel equipment up in our special mesh backpack, along with some of our other camera gear in Stephanie’s backpack.

We headed off of the ship and met the tour group in the terminal. We waited another 15 minutes before all of the persons on the tour arrived, and they split us into groups of 8-10. We met our driver, “Bumpy”, and headed over to his really nice van and boarded. Most of the locals have nicknames that they go by instead of the real first names, and “Bumpy” had been given his name based on how he walked as a child, so he said.

We headed out and Bumpy gave us a lot of information on the buildings and other city sights as we headed for our first stop at a banana plantation. We stopped along the road at a banana field and got some freshly picked bananas to try. They were so much better than the ones we get in the grocery at home.

Then Bumpy gave us a detailed explanation on all of the steps that are done to the banana plants as they grow and produce the crops. It is very structured, and there was much more manual work involved in growing the bananas that we had known. All of the bananas grown here are exported to the United Kingdom. They had some great locally made sauces, one was something they called banana ketchup, and the other was some hot sauce

The next stop was at a small shop that had great views of the coastline. They gave us some refreshments, beer, water and home made rum punches. Afterward, we headed to the next stop where they had prepared some of the local foods for our “breakfast”.

We got to sample many items that were familiar, such as fried plantains, but there were a lot of other local dishes that we had not heard of, including some of the local fruits, and fried fish dishes. It was all really good. Of course, more refreshments were distributed before we headed out for the next stop, a beach between the two famous mountains here called the Pitons.

The roads were really winding, with a lot of sharp turns as we headed through the mountainous countryside. We had read from other reviewers of this tour that there was the possibility of getting car sick. We had brought along some Bonine, but had not taken any before we left. We were doing fine but one man in our group was not. There was one seat in the front next to the driver, and he was able to move to that seat to try and relieve some of the motion sickness issues. Unfortunately, that did not help.

Our next stop was at a small dock where we boarded some boats for about a five minute ride over to a beach to snorkel. The ill passenger opted to wait in the van, with his wife to try and recover. We were heading to the beach for about an hour.

The beach was OK, it was a little rocky. We did do some snorkeling, but the visibility was just average. However, it did give us a chance to practice some, especially for Stephanie. We did see a lot of fish, and some coral.

When we finished, we re-boarded the boats for the short ride back to the area where the vans were parked. The next stop was at the “drive through” volcano and hot sulfur springs. Unfortunately, this drive was even more curvy than before, so it was not long before our one ill passenger’s motion sickness returned. This time, he had to get out of the van so we dropped him and his wife off a short distance from the volcano area, about two blocks form the parking lot.

There was an extremely hot “bath” of water from the hot springs coming out of the volcano, and there were persons there to apply a mud bath supposedly for helping your skin. The water was extremely hot, probably over 110 degrees, so we did not get in, or get the mud bath. Actually, no one in our group did, but some people in one of the other vans did, so we got to watch. We did feel the water, and it was really hot.  Much, much hotter than a hot tub.

Next, we drove through the “volcano”, which was not really that great. All we did was ride on an open road past some steam vents, and that was the qualifier for “driving through”.

The next stop was at the Soufriere Falls, which was a small waterfall that was one of the recommended sights to see in St. Lucia. It was nice, the water was falling about 50 feet. Some people were swimming at the base of the falls, but once again, we opted out. The water was not that clean looking.

This was the last stop before we started heading back to the port city of Castries. We had to make several stops for our ill passenger, and it was hard to see him feel so bad, and realize that there was nothing that could be done. We had offered him some of our Bonine earlier, but it was not accepted, and probably would not have helped at this point. We did make a stop at a local bakery, and then another stop for some local cheese, and ate some hot bread and cheese sandwiches in the van.

We were not sure this was supposed to be a “to go” lunch, but I think either we were running late from all of the extra motion sickness stops, or the driver wanted to get the ill passenger back to the port as quickly as possible.

We had another hour of driving to get back, and once again, the roads were very curvy. We ran into some traffic as we neared the port, and this delayed our return. Overall, it was a fun tour, but it was definitely impacted by the ill passenger. I am sure he felt bad about it and felt bad from it.

We went up to the pool deck for some refreshments while we waited for the ship to depart at 6:00 PM. It was a nice sail away. We went back to the cabin to get cleaned up before going to dinner in the Dining Room.

At 9:30 PM, there was a deck party out by the pool and we met up with some of the people we have met at the Seaview Bar. At about 11:00 PM we called it a night and headed back to the room.

Today, we are in the port town of Bridgetown, Barbados. The ship arrived on time at 8:00 AM, but we were a little late getting up, and were not ready to get off the ship when they opened the gangway. The plan for today was to take the city bus to the northern end of the island to an attraction called the Animal Flower Cave. We were not planning on going to the attraction, but it was the starting point for a hike along the coastline. This side of the island is on the Atlantic Ocean, and the coastline is very rocky and rugged from the constant pounding of the waves.

We first took a short free shuttle bus from the ship to the Port Terminal, it was quite a walk form the ship to the terminal from where were were berthed. From the terminal, we had instructions on how to walk to the Princess Alice bus station to catch the bus to the northern end of the island, near the town of Connell Town. The walk was about 1 km. and took us about 10 minutes. We had not entirely planned this bus trip in the most efficient manner, we knew the buses left on the hour, but we had not gotten up early enough to get ready and make it to the station for the 9:00 AM bus, so we missed it by about 15 minutes. We waited for the 10:00 AM bus and boarded, paying our $1 US bus fare each.

I had thought the ride was about an hour to our stop, based on information I had read online, but it actually took about 75 minutes, and the bus driver dropped us off on a side road leading to the animal flower cave attraction. We walked about 15 minutes before we actually got to the coast. The northern end of the island of Barbados was pretty sparse, mostly farm land, and looked to be pretty low income.

Once we got to the animal flower cave attraction, we headed out to the rocky coast and began our walk along the coast to the River Bay Park. The walk was supposed to take about an hour based on information I read that was posted online.

The views were really spectacular. In most places, it was about 30-40 feet down from the top of the rocky shoreline to the water.

The waves were not really large today, but at times were big enough to  crash into the shoreline and spray above the top of the rocks. There were several places where holes had been washed into the rocks and we could look down through them and see the water. I am sure if the waves had been larger, there would have been many “blow holes” where the water would have pushed out the air and water.

We had to be careful, the rocks were very rough and jagged. We did see many areas where seaweed had recently washed onto the top where we were walking.  This must have been caused by some very large waves.

There was a little bit of a worn trail to follow, but in some areas, it was just rocky, sort of like coral, but dark in color. We had to be careful when we were walking because it was easy to step awkwardly on the rocks, which might cause a fall.

We finally made it to the River Bay Park, it was just past an abandoned hotel complex that had been built in the late 1960’s. We had known the old hotel was there, but it was a much larger facility that we had anticipated.  There were several individual 2-3 story buildings that were in complete ruin.

Once we realized we had actually gotten to the River Bay Park, we had to backtrack a little to find a way down to a much lower area to get over to the other side. The park was actually situated at what appeared to be a natural drainage valley going into the ocean, so we could not have accidentally passed it because we needed to cross the stream that ended up being quite a large opening at the shoreline, blocking us from going any farther along the edge of the rocky cliffs. We had to cross a make shift “bridge” on the small stream, someone had put some logs across that we had to walk on to get to the other side. There were actual buildings in the park that appeared to be some restrooms, but we did not venture over to them.  There was no one at the park today, so we did not see any need to wander around.

We walked along the entry road to the park and found the bus stop. While we were walking, within about five minutes of our arrival at the park, one of the city buses came by. The identification sign on the top front of the bus said “Connell Town”, which was on the same route as the bus we had originally taken from Bridgetown to get to the Animal Flower Cave access road, so we did not try to attempt to get on it.

We surmised it was heading the few more stops to the end of the route at Connell Town, and would return as the “Bridgetown” bus, heading back to Bridgetown, which was what we needed to board. We walked a little farther along and picked a bus stop near some houses, adding a little security to our wait. We thought it should be only about a 20 minute wait for the bus to return from the end of the route since we were already pretty close to Connell Town, but there was no bus in sight after waiting about 50 minutes. We were getting a little nervous due to the time, knowing we needed to be back in Bridgetown and on the ship by 3:30 PM, and it was now about 12:30 PM. We decided that no matter what, we would get on the next bus that came by, whether it was Connell Town or Bridgetown, just to know we were going somewhere, and not just waiting in a remote part of Barbados. We had seen a young man walk by us earlier, heading down the road, and so we thought we might need to go to a different bus stop to catch our bus, even though all of the bus stops we had walked to so far had direction signs indicating “To City”, what we needed, and “Away From City, what we had taken to get here, located on opposite sides of the road so you knew what side to wait on for the appropriate bus.

In my research on this adventure, I had seen the actual bus stop listing on the web site for the Barbados Public Transportation, and it had shown the River Bay stop on the Connell Town bus route coming from Bridgetown that we had taken to get here, but not on the return listing for the bus back to Bridgetown. I had even asked at the bus station this morning about this, but was not really given a good answer on where we needed to wait. What really confused us was the “To/From” bus stop signs that were at every stop. From my research, I had actually though we might need to go from the park down to the highway to catch the return bus, based on the route listing of the stops. We decided to walk to some additional stops and actually found one with a young man waiting at it, and we asked if he was waiting for the Bridgetown bus, and he said he was. We asked when it was scheduled to come by, and he said on the hour, but it was no where in site at 12:00 PM. By about 12:25 PM, another Connell Town bus came by, and headed onto the road to the River Bay Park, about four blocks from where we were now waiting. A few minutes later, it was coming back out of the park, but then turned to go away from us, instead of toward us. We asked the young man about this and he said it was still heading to Connell Town and would return soon as the Bridgetown bus. After about 20 minutes, it did indeed reappear as the Bridgetown bus, but this time it did not go onto the road leading to the River Bay Park, just as the route map had indicated. Apparently, even though there are the To/From City signs at the about three different bus stops on the River Bay access road, you have to take the Connell Town bus if you want to go anywhere from that road. It was just as confusing to us as it probably is reading this, but it did confirm what the route schedule had shown, only the Connell Town bus stops at the three or four stops on the road leading to the River Bay Park.

It was now about 12:45 PM, and we were just glad that we were finally on a Bridgetown Bus. We rode the hour and fifteen minutes back into Bridgetown to the bus station, and then walked to the port. After looking at a few shops in the port terminal, we took the free shuttle from the port terminal to the ship. It was just after 2:00 PM, which had been our chosen time to be back to the ship, so we were well within our window of time designated for this adventure, but it had been a little stressful. In the end, we had enjoyed the walk along the coast, and it would be really easy to repeat now that we knew the bus schedules and how the bus stops worked at the River Bay Park.  We could have set up the tripod and taken a few more photos of the shoreline with us in them, but had passed on taking the time to do this due to the uncertainty of the duration of the walk along the shoreline.

We were tired, partly due to the walk and partly due to the stress of waiting for the return bus, but we had seen a lot of Barbados. As a little side note, the full size city buses  go really fast on some very narrow and winding roads, it was amazing, and at times a little scary how the bus driver handled the bus on these roads.

We dropped off our gear and put on our bathing suits to relax by the pool until our scheduled ship’s departure time at 4:00 PM. We enjoyed the sail away, and remained out by the pool until the sun set at around 6:00 PM.

We headed back to the room and got ready for dinner in the dining room. After dinner, we walked around the ship and listened to some music in the Atrium before heading back for the night. I was not feeling 100% by this time, sometime during the day I had acquired a scratchy throat, and it had gotten a little worse as the day progressed, so we did not want to stay out late.

The port stop for today is St. Kitts. We were not scheduled to arrive until 10:00 AM, it was quite a distance to travel from Barbados to St. Kitts, over 300 nautical miles, so it was a later arrival than normal due to the distance between these two ports.

As I indicated yesterday, I was getting a cold, and it was about as bad this morning as yesterday evening, just mostly a scratchy throat, but I could tell I was not feeling 100%, and did not have a lot of energy.

We had originally planned on taking a taxi to the Shipwreck Bar Beach, located on part of a beach called South Friar’s Beach. We had already planned to sleep in a little, and we were still in the room getting ready when the shipped docked at 10:00 AM. We headed to the buffet for breakfast and discussed a different plan of action for today.

One issue of going to the beach was that we would need to prearrange a return pick up time for the taxi we took over there since taxis do not normally go to this particular beach a lot, at least that was what we had read online as the recommendation to insure you have a taxi to get back to the ship. There was supposed to be some good snorkeling here also, but I was just not up for that, and did not want to be stranded at the beach waiting for our return taxi if I started to feel worse. We just decided to hang out in the small port town Basseterre looking at some of the shops.

In addition, today is our anniversary, and we are scheduled to go to one of the specialty restaurants on the ship, the Crown Grill, at 6:30 PM for our celebration dinner.  We both felt that it would be better for me to take it easy during the day so we could make it to the anniversary celebration later tonight. We also knew we would need to be back to the ship early to get ready for the dinner, so it was already going to be a short port day.

We got off of the ship about 11:00 AM and headed into the small town. We had researched going to Catholic Mass here since it was Sunday, but had found out that the only mass is at 8:30 AM, well before our scheduled arrival at 10:00 AM, so we knew that was not possible. However, while we were walking through the town, we saw the Catholic Church, and decided to go inside and say a few prayers to at least make some effort to do something in church on Sunday, even though it was not Mass. It was a nice church inside, but was not air conditioned, so it was very hot. In general, today was really hot and humid, enhanced by some rain we had at about the time the ship was docking, which did not help lower the humidity, especially since it was about 85 degrees outside.

We walked around the town a little more, and headed back to visit some of the stores located near the pier. We bought a couple of items, and at about 12:45 PM, I decided I had enough of the steamy heat and going in and out of the air conditioned stores, none of which was helping my sore throat, so we headed back to the ship.

We knew we needed to do some laundry, and guessing that the laundromat would not be crowded on a port day, we gathered up our load of laundry and headed to the washers. We were correct, and although there were a few people in the laundromat, there were still a couple of available washers.

While the washer was completing it 35 minute cycle, we came back to the room to work on the blog postings since we had gotten behind. There has not been much time to do the posts because we have been stopping in ports the last few days. We have a lot of pictures, but have not been able to process them and add them to the posts, which consumes even more time. So, the next best thing is to at least write the posts and we will try and add pictures later, to both the blog posts and to the photo albums.

When the washer cycle was complete, we put the clothes into the dryer and then we went up to get a beer from the bar on the stern of the ship and enjoy the views of the island while we were waiting for the dryer to complete about 20 minutes of its cycle, and then we could take out some of the partially dried shirts to hang up in the room. We had already sent a load of wash to the ship’s laundry as one of the benefits we get as Elite members of the Princess Captain’s Circle. However, we had a few items that we did not want them to dry all the way, mostly my shirts, and a few of our bathing suits, which prompted today’s washing experience.

After retrieving our items from the dryer, we headed back to the room to hang them up to finish drying, and then went to eat lunch in the buffet. It was already about 2:00 PM, so we did not want to eat too much knowing we would be going to dinner at 6:30 PM. For the rest of the afternoon, we relaxed in loungers up on the pool deck until it was time to get ready for dinner. Tonight is also a full lunar eclipse, starting at 8:12 PM and fully covering the moon by about 10:15 PM. The ship had posted that they were making some of the upper decks available for the lunar eclipse, and were turning out some of the deck lights to make it darker. We initially though more was happening at the 8:12 PM time, so we wanted to make sure we would be finished with dinner by then. However, while we were having a glass of wine before dinner at Vines, and while talking to the bartender, we learned that the 8:12 PM time was just the beginning of the eclipse, so we knew we would not miss anything if dinner went past that time.

We headed to dinner at 6:30 PM, and really enjoyed the experience. We had some champagne with our appetizers, which were pan fried scallops, and lobster bisque soup.

Stephanie had an 8 ounce Filet Mignon, and I had a 12 ounce New York Strip.

These were special aged steaks, and they were very good. We had also ordered two small lobster tails, normally one of the dinner items, to go along with the steaks, making it a special surf and turf. We both ordered baked potatoes and grilled asparagus with dinner. All of the food was cooked perfectly.

We had not intended to get the special anniversary dessert, opting to get items from the dessert menu, but the waiter brought us the small special celebration cake and candle and sang happy anniversary to us. They ended up wrapping that up as a to go dessert, and brought us the ones we ordered, which we very good. The meal was really good and we thoroughly enjoyed the steak, lobster and wine for dinner.

We headed back to the room to change and go out to see the eclipse. It was progressing very slowly, so we headed to the Vines Wine Bar for a couple of glasses of wine to continue our anniversary celebration. Eventually, at about 10:00 PM, we headed up to the highest deck, and watched the earth’s shadow finally completely cover the moon. What remained was the full moon, but it was a dark brownish orange. We waited for the shadow to start to uncover the moon, but after about 30 minutes, we were tired and headed back to the room for the evening. Even though I was a little under the weather, we still had a great anniversary celebration.

St. Thomas is our port of call for today. We have been here many times, so we did not really have any specific plans for the day. Initially, this was to be our first “day off” after visiting four ports in a row that we had never been to before. Unfortunately, since we had not done much yesterday due to my cold, we have already had a “day off”, so we could have had more of a plan for today that we did. I was feeling better, but still not 100%, so we slept in until about 8:30 AM, much later than the ship’s arrival at 7:00 AM.

We went to eat some breakfast in the buffet and discussed what we wanted to try and do today. We knew that we needed to at least go downtown and visit a liquor store to purchase a bottle of Seagram’s VO for the next cruise since we will not be on the all inclusive beverage package for those ten days, and need to stock up.

We were berthed at the newer pier in St. Thomas at Crown Bay, so we needed to take an open truck “taxi” into town. Since it was only another $1 per person to go over to the old pier at Havensight, we spontaneously opted to head that way instead of stopping at downtown so that we could ride the aerial tram to the top of the mountain for some good pictures. It was a beautiful day in St. Thomas, and we had not ridden the tram since visiting here several cruises ago.

In addition, the St. Thomas K-mart is near this area, within walking distance, and we needed to purchase some supplies there.

The tram ride was nice, and the views form the top were really great. Last time we had done this there were some trails to walk where you could see some of the local flora, but we did not see any trails open this time. It appeared that there was more restaurants, shops and bars at the top than we had remembered, maybe they had displaces the nature walk trails.

We did not stay long, and headed for the bottom to walk to the K-mart to pick up some personal items. Afterward, we were quite hot, so we decided to ride the tram to the top once more to cool off in the breezes at the top. The wrist band we purchased for the tram was good for the entire day, for unlimited rides, so we rode up once more, just because we could.

After the tram ride, we took another “taxi” to the downtown area to visit some shops and purchase our Seagram’s VO. Once the liquor was purchased, we headed to our favorite jewelry store, Trident Jewelers, just to look and see what they had. Stephanie had wanted to look at diamond bands to enhance her wedding band and engagement ring set, and we had actually looked at some last time we were in St. Thomas, but purchased other items instead.

In the end, we both made some purchases today, they had some great prices since it was the end of the season. It was interesting because we had met a couple from Seneca, SC who had both been teachers at Clemson, and we happened to run into them in the Trident store. They were there with another couple from SC, and we all made purchases, and spent time together at the store. As was the case last time we visited, the jewelry store offered refreshments, this time they offered us “Bushwhacker’s” instead of beer that we had last visit.

We all had a good time, and I am sure the refreshments helped convince us to make some purchases, although the folks at Trident are really friendly, and do offer us great prices since we have made purchases from them before.

We finished our shopping there and took a taxi back to the pier and arrived just a few minutes before the 4:30 PM “All Aboard” time. It was a fun day of shopping.

We took our belongings back to the room and then headed for the Seaview Bar for some refreshments. We were both tired from the day in St. Thomas, so we did not even go back to the room again before dinner, we just went to the buffet in our same clothes from today. The buffet was really good, they had made to order Mongolian Barbecue, and it was quite tasty. We stopped off at the Vines wine bar for a to go nightcap, it was only about 8:30 PM, but we were tired. We headed back to the room to relax and watch some of the first run movies on the TV.

It had ended up being a nice day in St. Thomas.

Today was a sea day as we head toward the Princess Cruises island, Princess Cays.  There is a tropical storm heading toward the Bahamas, and we were experiencing some of the cloudiness and breezes from that storm.  It was actually nice to have some overcast, it helped to make it cooler out on the open decks.

We did sleep in today, still a little tired from having visited ports for the last several days in a row.  We could tell as soon as we awoke that the seas were a little more bumpy today than any of the previous days on the cruise.  However, since we can’t see outside, we were not sure how cloudy or sunny it was out on deck.

We got ready and went to breakfast in the buffet, and then headed out to the bar on the stern of the ship where I had a Bloody Mary and Stephanie had a Bellini, which is similar to a Mimosa, but has peach schnaps added to the champagne and orange juice.

We headed back to the room and applied sunscreen, and headed to the pool deck.

It was generally sunny most of the time, but we did experience a few passing rain showers, some of them were pretty heavy, but all were brief.  We just had to head for some covered areas as they passed through.  There was another show at the Seaview Bar by the bartenders, and this time we had our camera.  The show was really good, especially when Jorge and Rommel did their act.

Later in the afternoon, we had a couple of drinks at the Seaview Bar before heading in to get ready for dinner.  Tonight was the last formal night, and the Captain’s Circle Party, which was at 6:15 PM.

Tonight was also lobster night in the dining room.  After the Captain’s Circle Party concluded, we went to the Vines Wine Bar to get some glasses of wine to take to dinner since the selection of wines available by the glass at Vines is much better than in the normal dining room.

We were seated pretty quickly once we got to the dining room, but we did not like our table, it was right out in the main walking path through the dining room, and also right next to a serving station.  We later learned that although the table was not that great for location, it would have been better for service since the table we were moved to had terrible service.  By the time we were just being served our main course for dinner, the couple that was seated at our original table was already finished with their entire meal.  It appeared that the assistant waiter for our table was not properly trained, and our main waiter seemed to have to do all of the work, which made the service extremely slow.

Everyone being served in our area seemed irritated by the slow service.  The food was good, although the lobster was really small, and served with prawns, which are not my favorite.

After dinner we went back to Vines and ran into one of the couples we had talked to on the Barbados tour.

We were getting tired, so we headed back to the room, but only to change into more comfortable clothes, and then head back out, Stephanie wanted to attend the big balloon drop party in the atrium.  They had placed some type of prizes in a few of the hundreds of balloons that were suspended in netting from the ceiling of the Atrium.  Although it was scheduled for 11:15 PM, they did not actually release the balloons until about 11:30 PM while everyone was dancing on the floor of the atrium.  We almost caught a balloon that appeared to have something in it but another balloon diverted it and we were unable to catch it.  The ones we grabbed did not have any prizes in them.

We headed back to the room afterward, and this time, we were in for good.  Tomorrow we stop at Princess Cays, the private island for Princess Cruises.  There was speculation that the weather might be to stormy for us to stop since it is a tender port.  However, no official announcement had been made today.   We will just have to wait and see.