I must preface this post with a comment by Carrie Nipper. She is the Carnival Travel Agent that assisted us with our cruise purchase and follow up. She took this very cruise the month we booked. Her counsel..."Get plenty of rest before you go on this one!" All other cruises we have been on have a couple of days at sea. These are great for resting before the next shore excursions. This particular cruise had 5 ports of call and only 1 day a sea. Yike!! And we are getting older.
I did take 1,500 pictures. I'll share a few in the Blog and just briefly look at each day. Claude took lots of notes. He will write our narrative of the trip. I have edited the pictures. We'll make a big scrapbook of the entire trip that will have all the detail. So this Blog will just be a few highlights. It'll be long but shorter.
The flight from Cincinnati to Atlanta was 2 hours late and our connecting flight to San Juan was 2 hours late. We made it fine and all luggage arrived with us. Yeah!!
Monday, January 22, 2012 - San Juan, Puerto Rico:
We had the morning to play a bit in San Juan. Took a walk to the ocean just a block and a half from our hotel. Walked down Ashford Drive to see what we could find. Had lunch at Chili's followed by ice cream at Cold Stone Creamery. Puerto Rico is a United States territory so there are lots of things just like home. We would go back to the hotel and get our luggage for the taxi ride to the Carnival Victory, our home for the next week. We boarded the ship about 2:30pm and it left port at 10pm.
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| Tiny Crab on Rock |
We always book a shore excursion every day. We prefer they be something that shows us the lay of the land, how the people live, what they eat, what grows there, and/or the history. In St. Thomas our excursion was to have been Peaks, Panoramas and Plunder. After boarding the ship we learned this tour was canceled. We quickly found another and booked it via our television. It was called Colonial St. Thomas. It included some of the items from the tour we booked before. The tour included a drive through town, Magen's Bay, Blackbeard's Castle (which also included the Rum Factory, Britannia House, Haagensen House and the Amber Museum) and ended with shopping in the vendors area in town. We boarded our ship and enjoyed a beautiful rainbow from our stateroom balcony in the evening.
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| Claude with statue of Jack Sparrow. There truly was a real pirate named Jack Sparrow. We always thought he was a fictional character made up for the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Not so, he was a real person. |
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| This is 25 foot man-made waterfall. It is backed with real amber stones. |
I woke up as the sun was getting ready to come up and took a lot of pictures and some video. Love watching the sun come up!!!
Our shore excursion in Barbados was a 4X4 Island Adventure. And it was an adventure. Off road in places and on very pitted roads in others. We went through sugar cane fields, rain forest, and from the tops of mountains to the ocean shore. It left our skeletons sore but our hearts full of interesting and beautiful memories. We visited Bathsheba which Claude would hold up a huge rock in the Atlantic Ocean. We even found where Tiger Woods was married. Great day!!
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| Old Sugar Mill |
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| Termite Nest in crook of trees on right |
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| Can you find the 'Sleeping Man'? |
This was a day I was looking forward to because of the view I anticipated. It did lot disappoint. St. Lucia had two peaks formed by volcanic eruption. They are called the Pitons. Our shore excursion for St. Lucia was named 'Piton Height Nature Trail. It would be our longest day away from the ship. The drive to the Pitons was 1 1/2 hours each way. After arriving at the location of the Pitons, we would first walk through the Tet Paul Nature Trail. This was a lovely botanical gardens built on a hill. Not unlike living in Sadieville. We would see lots of plants that grow on St. Lucia and learn how cassava is processed and tour a replica of an old home. The walk would culminate in viewing the Pitons from their level. The drive to and from took us through many villages, we viewed mud slide areas were many lost their lives, we saw farming for bananas and cocoa beans and lots of other foods. I even learned that ferns, given the right condition, can become fern trees!!! I do not think Kentucky has those conditions.
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| Can you find the cashew?? |
Friday, January 27, 2012 - St. Kitts:
On to St. Kitts. What kind of adventure can we find on this island? Our shore excursion was titled St. Kitts Highlights and Brimstone Hill Fortress. Our driver was Donald (he said not to confuse him with Donald Trump). At times his voice sounded like Darth Vader to me. I loved that he put on a special hat so we could find him in a crowd when touring. Our tour would take us through the towns with narrations about history, we would visit the Romney Manor Gardens and Caribelle Batik, Brimstone Hill Fortress ending with a drive to the other side of the island to see the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the Caribbean Sea on the other. The Romney Manor Gardens are built on land originally owned by Samuel Jefferson, the great-grandfather of Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States. The name Caribelle is made up of two words: Caribbean and Rebellion. We watched a lovely demonstration of the making of batik. We also learned that St. Kitts is really St. Christopher after Christopher Columbus. St. Kitts is shorter and what has stuck as the name.
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| Atlantic Ocean on the left / Caribbean Sea on the right |
Our final port of call on the cruise is St. Maarten. This island is half French (St. Martin) and half Dutch (St. Maarten). We could see both halves in our tour. The name of our shore excursion was See and Sea Island Tour. There was lots of driving to see what the towns looked like and a feel for each side. We would also take a glass-bottomed boat out to a coral reef to see it and the fish. This island just feels wealthier than any of the others we visited. I felt it the moment I woke up and looked out the stateroom window of the ship.
We would enjoy our last dinner on our ship with delightful table mates Rita and Craig and our servers Guillermo and Arturo. Claude had teased Guillermo the entire cruise with the dessert spoon. It started the meal at the top of your plate. When your entree is finished, all dishes are removed and the dessert spoon was placed to the side of the place by Guillermo. Claude would wait until his back was turned and move the spoon to the where the top of the plate would have been. Guillermo would move it back when he returned without saying a word. By the end of the cruise we all decided to put all our spoon on Claude's side and see how Guillermo reacted. Alas, Arturo came and looked at that and said, "Four spoons, how did that happen?" Then he took all the spoons and brought us back new ones.
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| Pond to collect salt water. They used to make salt from these ponds. |
The Carnival Victory put into port before we woke up. We determined to spend the morning on the ship since we couldn't check into our hotel until the afternoon. We had a tour purchased through our hotel for that evening and wanted a restful day until then. We walked to dinner to an Italian place and I enjoyed a Dr. Pepper again!! We also purchased new books to read as we both finished ours on the ship. Then we checked into our room, got on our bathing suits and headed to the lobby to catch our ride.
We were going to the 'Bioluminescent Lagoon'. We would paddle our kayak into the mangroves where we would observe little microbes that live in the water that are affected by oxygen entering the water. When your hand or oar go through the water it adds oxygen and the microbes light up just like fire flies do except they are underwater. It is amazingly beautiful. There are only 5 locations that this happens on earth. Three are in Puerto Rico, one is in Jamaica and one is in St. Thomas. Junie, my sister, told me this was a great tour and a must see in Puerto Rico. It was delightful. The downside is you can't take pictures. It is dark and just does not work. That, and the kayak is really wet so you need a camera that would work underwater.
The other thing we found totally fascinating is that Sunday evening are motorcycle and horse back riding evenings. The place we went to had lots of bikers out. Then we started noticing these smaller horses with kids riding them. They ride right down the middle of the streets just as you would a car. The horses have a funny little prancing gate and were all dark in color. It was a very festive atmosphere. Lots of music, family and energy in the air. Little open air restaurants full of people. Parrots on the edge of dining counters. Just fun.
Monday, January 30, 2012 - San Juan, Puerto Rico:
This day we slept in. Our touring today was to be on foot in Old San Juan. We caught a taxi there and then hoofed it around Old San Juan looking in the shops, noting the doors, balconies and streets.
We lunched at Cafe Berlin and enjoyed 'mofongo' and 'muffaletta'. Mofongo was recommended by our driver from Sunday nights tour. It is made of either yuca (cassava) or plantain that is fried and mashed and served with seafood or meat on top. It was delicious. Muffaletta is a sandwich started in New Orleans that Claude and I love. We ordered one of each of these items and then split them between us. Yum!!
The remainder of our day was spent touring Castillo San Cristobal. This fort is hundreds of years old and has a sister fort about a half hour walk away named Castillo San Felipe del Morro. You can see the walls that completely surrounded Old San Juan at one time. We purchased tickets for both forts but due to time running out we only saw Castillo San Cristobal up close. It was interesting to enter and see Department of the Interior plastered over the entry. Many years Claude spent with the Department of the Interior during his career.
Another sleep in kind of morning. The bulk of this day would be in airports and on planes. I couldn't check us in the night before because they changed the flight times again. So we left a little early to be able to deal with any issues that may have created at the airport. All went well, we ended up with exit row seats for each leg of the trip home so there was plenty of room. We got home about midnight, tired and happy.
May I just say here that, as nice as all our accommodations were the entire trip, there is simply nothing like crawling into your own bed to sleep, stepping into your own shower, getting the soda you want for the day when you want it, etc. As fun as travel is, an I do love it, there is, as Dorothy says, "No Place Like Home"!!
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