This one is a little different from our other adventures. This time we were less interested in sightseeing and more interested in getting away from the cold and celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, New Years and a birthday in a warm, pretty, not snowy, fun place. So, contrary to our usual practices, we booked a double, back-to-back cruise to the Caribbean, spending 20 days in warm places. One unusual fact about this cruise is that it went from Fort Lauderdale to several Caribbean islands and then back to Fort Lauderdale and then back to some of the same islands again and a few different ones. Repeating the time in Fort Lauderdale and visiting some islands twice on the same cruise wasn’t ideal, but the first cruise ended on December 30th and we wanted to celebrate New Year’s onboard and also spend more time away from the cold.
So, how did it work out? It was wonderful. We had a marvelous time. Everything about this cruise was better than we expected. We loved the ship, the Enchanted Princess. The food was excellent. The crew were friendly. Our fellow passengers were fun and friendly and cheerful. The entertainment onboard was spectacular. Some of our previous cruises were much more interesting because of the exotic, fascinating places they went, but for the onboard experience, this cruise was the best we’ve been on so far.
Author's note: Since a lot of our time was spent onboard a ship, there's a significant amount of stuff below that's just sort of a shipboard diary of our cruising experience. I have chosen, for your benefit, to display the potentially less interesting parts in a different color.
We awoke just before seven AM. It was thirty degrees outside in our town and in the seventies in Fort Lauderdale. It was supposedly going down to eleven degrees at home a few days later. We were happy that we wouldn't be there.
We left from LaGuardia airport this time. We hadn’t been there since before the major renovation so we were interested to see what it looked like now. LaGuardia looked quite amazing - a vast improvement since we were there last. LaGuardia had been considered by many to be the worst airport in the US. We agreed with that feeling and had avoided it.
The $8 billion they spent renovating it seems to have been worthwhile - it looked great. Our check in went smoothly. Strangely, there were way too many dogs in the terminal, many more than we had ever seen before. The flight left on time. There were lots of babies on board - dogs too. We had the best airline meal we've had in a long time - potato chips - yum!
We arrived in Fort Lauderdale, got our bags and went outside and got a taxi. The taxi from the terminal to our hotel was stuck in a traffic jam almost as soon as we got in. The traffic jam was caused by some police activity near the exit to the airport. The traffic crawled. The taxi meter ran up $12 while we were only at the next terminal building from the one we had arrived in.
The taxi took us to our hotel. It was a nice hotel. You could tell by the Champagne vending machine near the elevator - classy.
We had picked this hotel mainly because of its location. It was across the street from an art museum, a block from the River Walk, and a block from Las Olas Boulevard, the main shopping and dining street.
We had an early dinner at Moxie’s, a restaurant a few feet from our hotel - a “trendy” place, which meant a lot of young people staring at their smart phones and a lot of noise. The food was good. I had a very good French Dip sandwich.
We walked along the Fort Lauderdale River Walk in the evening. There must have been lots of very rich people who had very expensive homes there and some very big yachts.
We slept late and had breakfast in the hotel. We had weak coffee but unexpectedly good croissants. It was very expensive - everything is here - seven dollars for orange juice - not even fresh squeezed.
We went across the street to the NSU (Nova Southeastern University) Art Museum which housed Contemporary Art. I am not a fan of “Contemporary Art”. In my humble (i.e. worthless) opinion, most of it is just silliness, but here the art was made with some imagination, skill and effort so I didn't hate it too much. The best work there was an old-style pinball machine that you could play for free. I did - very artistic.
Photo by D. Kravitz
There was also a nice Photography exhibit including some wonderful Berenice Abbot pictures and one magnificent Ansel Adams that I had never seen before. There was also a large exhibition of Joel Meyrowitz pictures which were not my favorites - too much like snapshots for my taste.
Afterwards, we walked to the River Walk and took a Water Taxi tour. We sailed past many, many multi-multi-million dollar homes. The tour guide pointed out the ones owned by famous people or owners and founders of huge corporations. Most are unoccupied. We were told that rich people “park” their money here because of some Florida law that protects their home equity. Even the empty lots were tens of millions of dollars. There were also an astonishing number of very, very large yachts, probably costing in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The tour guide pointed out one extremely large yacht and told us that the owner replaced it with a new one every three years! The trip took three hours. It was interesting and fun. I still don't understand where all these billionaires come from.
We went back to the hotel for a little while and had a nice pasta dinner at a little family run restaurant called Bellagamba’s. In the evening we walked along Las Olas Street and the River Walk.
We went for a light breakfast in the hotel and a little after eleven we checked out and asked the hotel staff to get a taxi for us. The taxi arrived in a few minutes and the ride to the Cruise Terminal was quick. Most amazingly, from the time we got out of the taxi to the time we were onboard the ship was nine minutes! On several of our previous cruises the embarkation process took hours.
Once onboard, we were told where our muster station was and that we could visit it immediately if we wanted, or sometime before the ship leaves port. This process is a requirement of international maritime law. It used to be that you were required to go to the place where you had to board the ship's lifeboats, wearing a life vest and listen to a briefing on emergency procedures. We did that on one cruise outside in the rain. Now all you had to do was prove that you had been to the indoor station where you were supposed to gather in the event of an emergency and to watch a safety video on your stateroom TV. Both of these events were noticed by the ship's computer because, by law, if every passenger didn't perform these duties, the ship couldn't leave port. I have heard that in some cases if a passenger refused to follow these requirements they were put off the ship.
Our muster station was outside the entrance to the theater in the front of the ship but all we had to do when we got there was to tap our Princess medallions on a little electronic doohickey that the crew member had. This told the ship’s computer that we had checked in at our muster station. We didn't have to wear life jackets.
Princess uses these little circular electronic discs they call medallions instead of the plastic cards the other cruise lines use. The cards and medallions are used for identification when getting on or off the ship, to pay for anything onboard, and to unlock your stateroom door, but the medallions differ from the cards. They work remotely, probably via bluetooth. The door to your room unlocks when you approach - you don’t have to do anything. The display panel next to your door even displays your picture and a welcome message with your name. Even a little ring around the door handle lights up green. In our case the door unlocked when we were five or six doors down the hall - or at least when Donnie was. More about that later.
The waiters and bartenders and dining room hostesses know who you are even if you are standing a few feet away from them. If you need to pay for something, a drink say, they know what account to charge it to without you having to do or say anything, it's all automatic, if it works correctly. Once it didn't. More about that later.
The medallions are both handy and a little scary - the ship's computer is keeping track of you constantly so even the Princess App on your phone can locate your partner on the ship for you because of their medallion. They even have a service where you can order drinks or food via their app and the waiter will deliver it to you wherever you happen to be. They charge a one-time fee to use this service, and we heard that it was very unreliable. We didn't use it.
The medallions came with a cheap cloth lanyard so you could wear them around your neck. Most people looked pretty silly with them dangling in front of their chests all the time. Princess did sell “accessories” such as wrist bands and clips if you didn't want to use the cheap lanyards, but most people, including us, didn’t want to pay for the accessories. A lot of people even wore them while ashore. They looked really silly.
Donnie wanted to explore the ship a little so we went up to deck sixteen and had lunch in the buffet.
After lunch, which was at the very rear (aft) of the ship, we had to get to our stateroom, which was at the very front (forward) of the ship. It was only about a three mile walk. This was a loooong ship. This ship was probably the largest we have been on. Unlike most of our previous cruises, there were a lot of young people and kids - probably because it was a Christmas cruise.
Our stateroom was the largest we had ever had on any ship. It was very roomy and had a full size sofa. There was a very spacious closet and, unbelievably, almost too many hangers! There was a lot of additional storage space.
Photo by D. Kravitz
There was, however, one annoying feature. There was an area with the bathroom on one side of a little hallway and the closet on the other, but there was some kind of sensor that turned on a ceiling light whenever you approached the little hallway. This proved to be very annoying because, at our age, we sometimes have to use the toilet late at night and there was no way to disable the light, which sometimes awoke our partner. I found what I believed to be the sensor and tried to cover it with a taped-on piece of cardboard but this proved insufficient. We had read similar complaints from other people and that some had figured out how to block it, but we never did.
After our luggage arrived outside our stateroom we explored the ship for a while and then returned to the stateroom for the dreaded... unpacking. Actually, unpacking isn't that bad - packing is much worse.
We were a little late to watch the ship sail away but we watched the tail end of it from the sun deck and then had sail away drinks. Later we had dinner in the Capri dining room. This ship has three main dining rooms - Capri, Amalfi and Santorini. They were used in a way that was new to us. The Santorini dining room was only for people who wanted "traditional" ship dining - this is the way cruise ship dining used to work and some people still prefer it. You eat at a fixed time and sit at the same table and have the same waiters for every meal.
The Amalfi dining room was for people who didn't want that but were willing to make a reservation for dinner at some point before they showed up. You didn't sit at the same table every time, and could make the reservation using an app on your smartphone or on your stateroom TV or in person.
The Capri dining room was for "walk ins". You showed up any time you wanted, but risked having to wait in line until a table was available. Since we frequently didn't know when we would be hungry, or when there might be some activity on board that we wanted to participate in, this was the dining choice we used most.
The food at dinner was only ok, but this turned out to be unusual. More about that later. After dinner we went to see a magic show in the theater. The magician was very good. I like magic acts. I practiced magic tricks when I was younger, taking out every book on magic in our local library. I even tried doing some again not too long ago, but it requires deft hands and a good memory, neither of which I have anymore.
We walked around three miles today, all in the ship! This turned out to be an indication of the future.
We slept late. When we opened the balcony curtains there was beautiful sunny weather outside - another continuing theme - a pleasant one.
We had a calm, relaxed breakfast in, of all places, the buffet. We sat in the outdoor area at very back (aft) of the ship. It turned out that most people entered the buffet from the front side and never went far enough to see the outdoor tables at the rear, and so there was always a table outside even if the indoor part of the buffet was crowded. Every day, except one, the weather was pleasant enough to eat outdoors.
Photo by D. Kravitz
Amazingly, the free coffee in the buffet was pretty good, much better than the usual ship’s buffet coffee. Hooray!
After breakfast we went to get our tickets for the “Water Shuttle” to the island. Princess Cays was the only "Tender Port" on this cruise. That meant that the ship didn't pull up to a pier but anchored offshore and you had to take boats to and from the island. I wondered why they used the term “Water Shuttle”. On most cruises they call them Tenders, which are usually the ship’s lifeboats. This time they were big multi-level boats that probably held a couple of hundred people. Since they never have enough boats to hold all the passengers going ashore at once, they have to schedule the use of the boats so they give out numbered tickets and make announcements when the next numbered group can go down to deck four to board the Tenders or Water Shuttles.
The last group we had heard called was group twelve. Our tickets were for group thirty-six! Our group was finally called about 11:20. We made it to the island about 11:45.
Princess Cays is a private beach, owned by the Princess Cruise Line, with lots of lounge chairs, shops, bars, and a big, complementary burger and hot-dog buffet.
We wandered around as we always do. Since we aren’t really beach people, there wasn’t a lot for us to do. The rest of Eleuthera was a long cab ride away so we didn't get to see the real part of the island.
We sat on some lounge chairs while Donnie sipped a coke and sent photos to the known universe. The unknown parts of the universe will come later. Who knows, perhaps some far away extra-terrestrial intelligence will reply, commenting on her photos.
In the background we heard Christmas carols played to a Caribbean beat - of course. It snowed back home last night. Here there was a bright blue sky and a temperature of about 75 degrees in the shade. It was a little too warm and humid in the sun.
We decided to skip the burger and hot dog buffet so we got back on the shuttle to the ship at about 1:30. We were back on the ship fifteen minutes later. Princess Cays was a pretty place, even if it was just a beach with opportunities for Princess Cruise Lines to make more money selling drinks and renting beach umbrellas, and cabanas.
Back onboard we went to the pizza bar near the pool and had pizza slices for lunch. My pepperoni slice was fresh out of the oven and I thought it was pretty good. Donnie’s margarita slice had been sitting for a while and she wasn’t that thrilled with it. A while back, also on a Princess ship, we had tried the pizza at the poolside pizza bar and were amazed that it was really, really good, as good as many New York pizzarias, which is damn good.
In the afternoon we attended an “Enrichment Lecture” entitled “Sunken Treasure Around The World”. The speaker, in my opinion, was not good and spoke in a way that was very boring. Unfortunately, he was the only guest lecturer onboard for the entire cruise.
We had dinner in the Capri dining room again. The service was very slow and I got the wrong dish, but the food was reasonably good. After dinner we wanted to sit and have a drink and listen to some live music so we went to three different music venues but none of them had any music we wanted to hear.
We were awakened by our phone alarm which we had set to wake us up before the in-room breakfast we had ordered arrived. Donnie really likes the room service breakfast because she likes to have breakfast before getting dressed and showering. I prefer the wider variety of choices elsewhere because the room service breakfast menu is very limited. Also I am not enamored of the fact that we have to ensure we are awake before it is delivered. You have to order it the night before via a card you hang on your door, specifying a time range to have it delivered. We had our coffee and croissants out on our balcony while watching the Atlantic Ocean drifting by - nice.
Donnie wanted to go to the “$10 For Everything” sales event but while she was showering I went to check it out and it was just two small tables on the pool deck where they were selling a few cheap Hawaiian shirts and some hats and tote bags.
My “medallion” had not been working properly. When Donnie approached our stateroom door the screen outside the door showed her picture and the door unlocked. When I approached the door it said “Access being verified” and the door remained firmly locked. So I went down to the Guest Services desk and a nice helpful crew member took my medallion and went into a back room. She came back about five minutes later and told me that it would work now. When I got back to the room - no change. C’est la vie.
In the afternoon we went to the theater to watch a “Destination Talk” about San Juan Puerto Rico & Sint Maarten. The speaker was a member of the Excursions Desk staff but his talk was good and wasn’t merely an attempt to sell ship’s excursions.
After the interesting talk we went down to the Piazza to find a seat before the next thrilling event on our busy schedule, the “Ugly Sweater Competition”. There were passengers dressed in the most silly, elaborate, holiday-themed costumes, not just Ugly Sweaters. Some people obviously had brought an entire extra suitcase to hold their silly, complicated costumes.
We stayed in the Piazza and had a light lunch from the International Cafe while listening to some nice classical music from a string duo called “Diamond Strings”. It turned out that they were onboard for the entire twenty days but they only played classical music once, at least as far as we were aware.
The International Cafe is one of the best features of Princess ships. It’s a small area in the main Piazza on deck five where they serve small food items 24 hours a day, and an adjacent area where they sell premium coffee and tea beverages. The food items - pastries for breakfast, soups, pot pies and sandwiches for lunch and dinner, snacks, etc. are all complementary and were excellent. If we wanted something not too large or didn’t want to spend time dealing with the buffet or dining room, this was a great alternative. They also had great home-baked cookies 24 hours a day. Donnie made great use of this feature.
Afterwards, Donnie insisted that we attend something called the “Musical Spoons” class (sigh!). On our way there we stopped once again at the Guest Services desk because we had found a charge on our statement for nine dollars and change. The charge was for a beer, which we hadn’t ordered. This was the case where the medallion payment system was not working correctly. Somebody had ordered a beer and for some reason the ship's computer charged us - possibly because we were nearby. On most occasions, when we ordered drinks say, the waiter would look at his or her little device and double check by mentioning our name or asking our room number. Somehow this beer order wasn't verified that way. It wasn't a big problem - they removed the charge with no fuss. Fortunately this was the only such hiccup.
Also I wanted to try again to get my medallion to work at our stateroom door. Once again a crew member took my medallion into a back room for a while and then said that she reset it - long story short, it still didn’t work at our door except if I touched it directly to the display screen near our door. If Donnie approached within a mile of our door it displayed her picture and said “Door Unlocked”. Oh well.
So we went to the “Musical Spoons” class which was given by the Irish Music duo from O'Malley's Pub. They handed out plastic tongs with spoon-shaped ends. Donnie became a Musical Spoons virtuoso. I went back up to the stateroom while she played. I prefer soup spoons. I can make beautifully musical slurping sounds with them.
Later we went to the buffet for an afternoon snack and once again sat in the pleasant outdoor area in the very aft behind the buffet.
On our way back to our stateroom, we were about to take an elevator when it opened its doors and a stream of little kids, all wearing cat ears, came pouring out of the elevator. The stream seemed to go on forever. The elevator was supposed to hold a maximum of nineteen people but there must have been at least forty little kids inside. It was like one of those circus clown cars. I think that they must have stacked them one on top of one another. Since this was a holiday cruise, there were a lot of families and kids onboard, but the kids were all well behaved and were never a nuisance. They probably knew Santa was onboard and keeping his naughty and nice lists.
Later we went back down to the Piazza again to listen to the string duo again. While we listened, the crew were setting up the Champagne Christmas tree, i.e. a pyramid of champagne glasses, in preparation for the Captain’s Champagne Waterfall. One very tall crew member was the pyramid of glasses virtuoso. For at least half an hour he very diligently and carefully stacked Champagne glasses, very gingerly positioning them, sometimes taking some off and gently nudging others a fraction of an inch. When he was done, other crew members carefully brought a platform with steps up close to the pyramid, very, very gingerly sliding the heavy platform closer and closer being extra careful not to hit it and cause a catastrophe. Later, after the Captain's ceremony, they would have passengers step onto the platform to have their pictures taken pouring Champagne into the topmost glasses. There was a long line of people, mostly couples, waiting to do this.
Since it was a Formal Night, we went back to our stateroom to get gussied up for dinner. We went to the Champagne Waterfall and had our pictures taken, but not at the waterfall. Formal nights on the Princess ships are photograph-selling opportunities. They have photographic setups all over the ship with various background cloths and professional lighting setups and photographers waiting to take pictures of families and couples, which they will later sell at high prices. We had done this on a previous Princess cruise and were pleased with the pictures they had taken and had purchased the ones we liked best. Some are still hanging on our living room wall. The pictures they took this time were not as good so we didn’t buy them.
During the Captain’s Champagne Waterfall event, the Captain announced that there were 3954 passengers on board from 54 countries!
Later we briefly went to the Crown Grill Lounge to relax before dinner. When we briefly waited for our table at the dining room, we found out that the dress code for formal night was definitely not enforced. At least a third of the guests were not wearing dressy clothes. Some were wearing T-shirts, some silly Christmas garb. Some cruise lines strictly enforce the dress code and will not allow people dressed inappropriately into the dining room - they must eat in the buffet.
My dinner was excellent, the best so far. Donnie’s not so much, she had ordered fish a couple of times and she planned to avoid fish in the future. This worked, all her subsequent meals were good.
We sat next to a couple and chatted with them. The woman had two appetizers, a Caesar Salad, a pasta course, a main course of beef tenderloin, and two desserts. During a dinner later in the cruise, a man next to us had an appetizer, a salad, three orders of Surf and Turf, and two desserts while his wife had two orders of Surf and Turf and two desserts - all complementary. I saw why some people like cruising.
After dinner we wanted to go to one of two musical performances, either an Irish music group or an acoustic guitar player. We couldn’t get near the Irish music and we didn’t like the guitarist so we just called it a night. Once again we walked three miles today without ever leaving the ship. Our room is way in front and the dining rooms, buffet, two entertainment venues - the Vista Lounge and Princess Live are way in back. The Piazza, International Cafe and most bars are in the middle.
We went to breakfast in the surprisingly uncrowded buffet, once again sitting outside. Then we went up to a high outdoor deck to watch the sail in past Castillo San Felipe del Morro.
We stayed to watch the ship pull up to the dock and then went back to our stateroom to get ready to go ashore. The weather was cloudy with occasional glimpses of sun and very, very humid. It was 9° at home and 82° here with 78% humidity.
We walked to the Plaza des Armas and had two Piña Coladas in Barrachina, which we had learned during the destination talk was one of the two places that claimed to have invented them. The bartender asked us if we wanted alcohol. Donnie said just a little so the bartender asked me if I wanted the rest of her alcohol in mine. I said yes! He poured a very generous amount of rum into my glass. The bartender said he sells between 2200 and 3500 Piña Coladas a day! They were good. Hic!
Photo by D. Kravitz
We walked around a little more and then, exhausted by the humidity, we crawled back to the ship and collapsed in our air-conditioned stateroom.
We were planning on having a light lunch in the buffet. To our surprise it was deserted. Also to our surprise, there were so many interesting and delicious looking dishes that we put too much on our plates. Again, to our surprise, everything we chose was delicious. We ate too much - yet another continuing theme.
I was hoping that San Juan would be photogenic but it was disappointing in that regard. We didn’t wander very far or for very long because of the humidity so there were probably parts that were more interesting but we didn’t get to see them. San Juan is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but we hadn’t booked any excursions to see the really historic parts.
In the afternoon, Donnie was able to participate in her favorite shipboard activity - doing laundry. Unfortunately, the laundry room was practically at the opposite end of the ship from our stateroom, and we had to walk there once to bring the laundry to be cleaned, back to our stateroom because we didn't want to wait in the laundry room for forty minutes, back again to move the laundry from the washers to the dryers, back again to the stateroom and finally back to the laundry room to get the dryed clothes and back to our stateroom to bring the clean laundry back to our stateroom - at least six miles. We have to commend Princess Cruise lines - they have laundry rooms on each of the passenger cabin decks. Several of the other cruise lines have no passenger accessible laundries and force you to pay exorbitant prices to have them do your laundry.
We chilled out for a while and a little later in the afternoon, while Donnie was emailing to a few million single-celled protozoans whom she had forgotten to email to the day before, I went down to Guest Services and got one of the ship’s crossword puzzles and, although I shouldn’t have, went to the International Cafe and got two pieces of very good pound cake.
In the early evening we went down to the Piazza to listen to the string duo, who were playing Latin music. We got there only in time for one song. So we went to an early dinner in one of the dining rooms. Both of our dinners were delicious.
We wanted to go hear the Irish Music duo but they play in O’Malley’s Irish Pub, a small restaurant and even though it’s open to the atrium we really couldn’t hear the music.
After a little while we went to the “Sherlock Mystery Challenge”, which turned out to be a game show. We watched for a few minutes and thought it was pretty silly and boring so we left and went to the theater early to see another magician. This magic show was just ok.
We awoke around seven AM to discover an island outside our balcony. Assuming the Captain and navigator knew their jobs well, the island was probably Sint Maarten, which is how the Dutch spell Saint Martin. The island is half French and half Dutch, but we were docked at the Dutch side.
Once again we had breakfast in the buffet. Even though we had planned to try to avoid it as much as possible on this trip, we seemed to be irresistibly drawn to the huge selection of foods, all of which had been very good so far. On many of our previous cruises, especially on other cruise lines, the buffets had been very overcrowded and the food mediocre. On that day it was a little crowded but we found a table easily. Who cared if I gained a measly ten pounds?
We went ashore and got tickets for the water taxi from the port to Phillipsburg, the main town of the Dutch part of the island. The town was not near the cruise port, so the water taxi was better than a long walk into town. There was a pretty big crowd waiting at the water taxi dock but two large catamarans came quickly and we were in Phillipsburg soon.
As usual we wandered. There were at least a hundred jewelry shops in Phillipsburg. I am not exaggerating. More amazingly, every jewelry shop, even the tiniest on a side street had customers inside. Most of Phillipsburg was tourist shopping. We are not really shoppers, certainly not for jewelry. We don’t understand why all the Caribbean Islands are chock full of jewelry shops. There is a company called Diamonds International that has very large stores at the cruise ports of every Caribbean Island and many other cruise destinations. They have advertisements everywhere and even the water taxi had big Diamonds International ads on it.
After wandering past all the jewelry shops, we stopped at an outdoor bar for a couple of cold soft drinks. We walked slowly back to the water taxi dock and took the water taxi back to the cruise ship dock. During the ride, the on-board bartender did a very good rendition of “Sweet Caroline”.
After boarding the ship, we went down to the International Cafe for sandwiches. While we were there they started something called a “silent trivia” where they just handed out a sheet of questions and you had twenty minutes to write your answers. We got fourteen correct out of twenty. Amazingly, we won! Our prize was a few cheap plastic Princess drink coasters - fantastic! I think that the reason we won was that most people were ashore. There were very few participants in the trivia.
We went back to our stateroom to chill for a while. We had noticed that the cell phone coverage was very flaky here and Donnie had not been able to send her daily gazillion emails so she went up to one of the uppermost decks to try and get a better signal. After she came back we cheated again and went to the buffet for a light afternoon snack.
In the evening we went down to hear Christmas carols but we arrived too late. We watched the beginning of the Cruise Director reading “T’was The Night Before Christmas” to lots of little kiddies and we abandoned that pretty quickly and went to the Crown Grill Lounge for some drinks before dinner.
While sitting in the lounge we were able to see the incredible variety of dress on Christmas Eve - every style of dress imaginable - casual, Christmas costume, formal, bathrobes, ball gowns, ultra-short dresses, matching Grinch costumes, matching Christmas pajamas, everything. There were Santa hats and antlers everywhere. I don’t know if it was fun or just weird - maybe both.
We went to the Amalfi dining room a couple of minutes before our reserved time and found a very, very long line waiting to get in, and this time it was the dining room that required reservations. Even so, we only had to wait about ten minutes.
We chatted with people from Idaho and Las Vegas sitting next to us. Dinner service was slow so we had to skip dessert to make it to the show.
The show was called “Sand Show Barajolka”. A young woman, Barajolka, drew unbelievable pictures on a table that were projected onto the large theater video screen. The pictures were drawn with just sand and her fingers, in time to music, and she transformed them from one image to another with just a few strokes of her fingers. It was beautiful and mind-boggling. We had seen something similar on a previous cruise a while back but she was a cut above our previous experience.
On our way back to our stateroom we stopped at the International Cafe for the dessert we had skipped at dinner.
The weather today was mostly sunny and about eighty degrees. Since it was Christmas Day, everything was closed. It was even supposed to be hard to get a taxi, so we didn’t rush out. We had a relaxing breakfast in our favorite breakfast location, the outdoor area of the buffet.
We got onto the island about eleven and walked down the pier into town. Well, not exactly into town. The area of St. John’s nearest the cruise port was populated almost entirely by, what else, jewelry stores, and, contrary to what we had been told, they were all open on Christmas Day. $$$$! Ka-Ching!
So we wandered past the jewelry stores into the town proper. Again, since it was Christmas Day, not much was going on. The town, like all of the Caribbean towns we had seen so far, was poor, run down and not very interesting or photogenic. Not that this was unexpected. We’re visiting Antigua again later on this cruise so maybe next time we’ll take a tour of the prettier parts of the island. We went back to the ship pretty quickly and went up to our favorite hangout in the outside area behind the buffet and had some soft drinks and eventually a light lunch.
In the afternoon we had coffee and a little snack in the International Cafe - sounds familiar for some reason. While we were sitting there in the Piazza they put a big red chair in the front of the central circle and then they put two big boxes of gift-wrapped packages near it and then they made an announcement asking if the owner of the packages would come to the guest services desk. Then a line of children appeared waiting for someone. Then the piazza started filling with people. I guessed that someone important was coming. Then Santa came down the golden spiral staircase. Then it started to snow in the Piazza.
In the middle of the chaos, families started lining up and one family at a time stood behind Santa and had their pictures taken while Santa handed little wrapped packages to their children. We were told that every child seventeen and younger would receive a gift from Santa. At one point two young men who might have been seventeen stood next to Santa and received their gifts. One of them needed a shave.
Later, in the elevator, a man unwrapped the package for his cute daughter and inside was a little stuffed animal which she loved. I wondered if the “seventeen” year old with the five-o’clock-shadow loved his little stuffed animal.
That night was supposed to be another “formal night” but based on what happened on the previous one and what people were wearing that day, I’m pretty sure that it was really “anything goes night”.
We had Christmas dinner in the dining room. It was so busy that the kitchen was backed up a little so dinner was a little slow but we didn’t mind. Donnie had Christmas turkey and I had Christmas ham, both were excellent. So far, except for the fish, the food in the dining rooms and the buffet was very good, the best of any cruise we had been on to that point.
We awoke just in time to see the Island Princess pulling along side of us at the pier. We had room service breakfast on our deck, staring out at the Island Princess cabins directly opposite us.
At little before the appointed time we left the ship and proceeded to the end of the pier where we were told to meet our tour. We were going on a “Sugar Cane Train” ride around part of the island followed by a bus ride. Since there were four ships in port today we elected to take an excursion to avoid the crowds this time and to visit the town when we come back in a few days when we would be the only ship in the port.
We waited under a little tent until we were called to go to our bus. There were a lot of little minibuses parked nearby. The big tour group was divided into groups of twenty to fit into the minibuses. Our St. Kitts driver/guide, wearing his Santa hat, told us, in his lovely island accent, that we would be taking a bus ride first for twelve miles around part of the island and then a train ride of eighteen miles afterwards.
We drove out of Port Zante, the touristy port area into the town of Basseterre proper. Since it was the start of Carnivale, we had to negotiate some very narrow streets because many were blocked by revelers. We could hear a lot of music in the streets. We wanted to see the Carnival later and take some pictures but that didn’t happen.
The island used to be a British colony so, of course, they drove on the left. We went around the island and saw some prosperous areas and some poorer ones. When we arrived at the train station and got off the bus I took out my camera so, of course it started raining, heavily. We got back on the bus and eventually the rain stopped so we got back out into the hot sun and humidity. The train took a while to arrive at the station. Well, not really a station. Just a grassy area with a tiny train track curving through it. We only had to wait an hour for the train.
Photo by D. Kravitz
The train ride was slow and wobbly and mostly we saw foliage, trees, plants, flora, green things, and, occasionally, a building. They gave us complementary soft drinks and twice some costumed “dancers” came out and jumped around a little. Still, Donnie loves foliage, trees, plants, flora, green things, etc. so she loved it. Mission accomplished.
They explained that there had been some “technical difficulties” so they were running late but would try to make up the time. We left an hour late and due to their making up time, we arrived back at the port only an hour late.
We walked around the port shopping area because Donnie wanted to buy some T-shirts for her sons. So we only checked out about a dozen shops. Unfortunately, because the train was late, and the Carnivale revelers went home in the afternoon and only started celebrating again in the evening, we missed Carnivale.
Back on the ship, since we were starving and it was almost four in the afternoon we went to the Salty Dog Cafe near the pool and had a hotdog, a cheeseburger and fries. The burger and fries were good. The hotdog was excellent - quite possibly the best hotdog on the sea.
After our yummy late lunch we went to see a Destination Talk about St. Thomas, but, on the way, my lovely wife Donnie forced me at gunpoint to accompany her to “Swirls”, the free soft-serve ice cream dispensary. I resisted strongly, but ended up walking away with a chocolate cone with chocolate sprinkles. I ate it without too much guilt. After all, I had had no choice in the matter.
We chilled for a while in our stateroom and then went down to the piazza to listen to music and drown our sorrows in alcohol - a Mojito for Donnie and a straight rum for me. The straight rum didn’t affect me in the slightest. Hic! Hic! Yo Ho Ho!
Since we had eaten a very late lunch we really didn’t feel like having dinner in the dining room so we risked the buffet. It wasn’t crowded, probably because we went during showtime and, once again, the food was excellent.
Finally, to wash down her hotdog, fries, mojito, ice cream cone and buffet dinner, Donnie dragged me down to the Gelateria, where she had two large scoops of gelato, topped with pistachios and chocolate chips. I passed - this time.
We slept a little late and woke up to a cloudy morning. We had no great plans for today because there were no available interesting ship’s excursions, but once ashore we decided to take a chance and book a third party island tour in an open twenty-seven seat van. We usually avoided third-party tours in favor of ship’s excursions because the cruise line drums into you that if you are on a ship’s excursion and arrive back late, the ship will wait for you, but if you are on a third-party excursion and arrive back too late, the ship will leave without you. Since this third-party excursion was scheduled to arrive back several hours before the ship’s all-aboard time, we figured we could risk it.
On this island they drove on the left. It used to be a British Island I think. The driver raced up winding hills, careening madly around tight curves, stopping briefly at a small lookout for a photo opportunity and eventually dropped us at a mountaintop tourist site which had a view and a huge tourist shop. Inside was a big stand where they sold Banana Daiquiris - “Over seven million sold” a sign said - tourist heaven. We passed.
The van stopped at a couple of additional lookouts. At one a local islander, Darren, was playing some music on a steel drum. He was very good. He charmed us into buying a CD.
When we got home we found that the CD contained non-caribbean music with an orchestra and just one steel drum sort of in the background - boring.
The van dropped us back at the port area and we went into a few shops because Donnie was still looking for T-shirts for gifts. She couldn’t find any suitable ones, so we went back aboard ship and had Coney Island hotdogs (horseradish mustard and sauerkraut) at the Salty Dog Grill on the pool deck but we took them inside the buffet where we enjoyed them in the air conditioning.
At five PM we had an invitation to the Captain’s cocktail party where they gave out canapés, free cocktails and live music. It was nice, except the canapés were pretty bad. We found out that there were 3967 passengers onboard, 450 of them children. That's a lot of kids! They brought the most frequent cruisers up to the podium to celebrate their loyalty to Princess Cruise Lines. The biggest spenders were two women from Canada who had over 1500 cruise days on Princess in 130-some cruises ($$$) - ouch!
During the brief ceremony, the Future Cruise Director mentioned a 54 day cruise in March 2026 that went from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia and back, so Donnie suggested we put a deposit down for that cruise. The deposit was only $200 and was fully refundable until November 2025, so we did it. We’re crazy. Note - this was Donnie’s idea.
We had dinner in the dining room as usual. Then we went to see yet another magician in the Vista Lounge. This magician was pretty good. Then we wanted to sit in a quiet lounge and relax with some drinks but the quiet lounges were full so we had to settle for a noisier seat in the Piazza.
The Piazza is the open area at the bottom of the ship's multi-story atrium. Surrounding the Piazza is the International Cafe, a bar, the Gelato bar, and O'Malley's Irish pub. On the decks above are other bars and restaurants and shops, all open to the atrium. One problem with this setup is that the Piazza, O'Malley's and several of the bars were also music venues, so that each one had to schedule its performances so that no two were simultaneous, since they were all directly off the atrium. This also meant that it was rarely quiet in any of them.
We had breakfast on our balcony again. It was sunny, warmish, slightly breezy - quite pleasant.
We went to a “Caribbean Sale” on the pool deck where they were selling Caribbean-themed Princess T-shirts. Donnie bought some for her sons, who, in my opinion, wouldn’t really be thrilled with them, but what do I know? There were ten or so different styles of shirts so it only took her about forty-five minutes to pick out four.
Then we went to a movie and presentation in the theater called “Behind The Seas: Studio To Stage”. It described the process of producing the Broadway-quality stage shows they had onboard the Princess ships. The stage shows we had seen so far on this cruise were very elaborate and spectacular, a far cry from the ones we had seen on previous cruises.
Once again we had lunch in the buffet, and we sat outside again and it was very windy. Afterwards we went to hang out at the Crown Grill Lounge and discovered we were in the tail end of the “Musical Spoons” class again so Donnie was happy. This was the third, or maybe the fourth time Donnie wanted to learn “Musical Spoon" playing. I lost count.
At 2:00 we went to a talk about “Navigation at Sea”. The speaker was a one-stripe ship’s officer, a young man with a strong Italian accent. He was obviously chosen to give the talk because he was the low man on the totem pole. He was clearly nervous about speaking in public.
At 5:00 we went to the early Irish Music performance in O’Malley’s Irish Pub. We went early because the pub filled quickly once they started playing. The pub was much too small for the event. The performance was great. One of the pair played the Uilleann Pipes, the Irish equivalent of Scottish bagpipes. They use a bellows instead of blowing into an air bag. The tone of the uilleann pipes is unlike that of Scottish bagpipes. They have a different harmonic structure, sounding sweeter than other bagpipes. He was very good. They even did a rendition of “Blowin’ In The Wind” by Bob Dylan. I guess he was of Irish descent, so technically it's Irish Music.
Photo by D. Kravitz
It was a pub so Donnie had a glass of wine and I had Irish coffee. Hic! Annoyingly, they didn't even have Guiness on tap.
We had dinner in one of the main dining rooms again. Once again the food was delicious, and the portions were huge. Donnie couldn’t finish hers. Then we went to the Crown Grill Lounge to relax before going to the stage show. We listened to a live pianist.
At 9:30 we went to the theater to see “Rock Opera”. The title alone turned me off, but we had heard that it was something special. It was. The show was extraordinary - very professional, with a lot of special effects and much better than we expected. They even sang a bit of Carmina Burana, a very famous classical oratorio by Carl Orff, with incredible costumes and lighting effects.
It was cooler, mostly cloudy today. It was windy and the sea was a lot rougher.
We had set our alarms because we were supposed to attend a meeting to explain what we needed to do on the turnaround day the next day. This twenty day cruise was really two ten days cruises back-to-back. We did a “turnaround” in Fort Lauderdale. Most of the passengers on the first part were leaving the next day but not all. Also a lot of new passengers would be coming onboard. We found out that about three hundred people were staying onboard for the next part of the cruise.
We received a piece of paper explaining what we needed to do the next day. We needed to get off the ship before 9:30 and go through immigration and stay off until the U.S. officials had cleared all passengers. Strangely, we read that once we got back on the ship, we wouldn’t be allowed to get off again. Ah, your government at work - making life complicated. Today’s meeting was to explain it all and answer questions. I doubted if they would be able to answer my main question - WHY?
The crew member who ran the meeting had a strong Italian accent as did the Captain and several of the other officers we had heard, so we were beginning to suspect that the ship had an all Italian crew, which would explain why the buffet had very good marinara sauce.
We then went to our favorite breakfast hangout in the outdoor area behind the buffet and had a true light breakfast of baked goods and coffee. After running a couple of errands, we went up to the Sun deck to relax on some deck chairs. The clouds parted and the wind lessened and the temperature in the shade was perfect. We sat on deck chairs and read and listened to audiobooks - very calm and peaceful.
Later we had another tasty lunch in our go to spot behind the buffet. Then we went down to the Piazza because Donnie wanted to watch the Salsa dance lesson, but first she had to make a quick stop at the soft-serve ice cream bar. The next item on our agenda was a lecture on “Life At Sea” where Alexandra, our perky, outgoing, funny cruise director described life onboard for the crew.
We then went back to our stateroom for a while but Donnie wanted to stop at the International Cafe for tea and cookies. Unfortunately they also had their delicious Christmas Stollen bread which I couldn’t resist. Even more unfortunately, the server put two slices on the plate even though I had only asked for one. I couldn’t give it back, could I?
Later we went to “House of Mouse” trivia, all about Disney movies. The presenter joked that he wasn't allowed to mention the name "Disney". Annoyingly, it was about the later movies which we hadn't seen, or in some cases hadn't even heard of, so we got a horrible score of seven out of a possible twenty-six (sigh).
We had another good dinner in the main dining room again.
We decided to cancel a reservation we had booked a while back at the premium restaurent, The Crown Grill for the next night and then we went to investigate other options. Then we went up to the sun deck to see the night sky. We might have stayed there but they put away all the deck chairs.
It was disembarkation day for 3600 passengers. We awoke early and did our morning stuff at a leisurely pace. We had to meet the other 300 or so passengers who were staying onboard at 9:30 to be escorted through the immigration rigmarole. We were bored waiting in our stateroom so we decided to brave the disembarkation chaos and went down to the International Cafe for coffee and a light breakfast. I had really, really good bran muffins. The chaos was minimal, although there were still a lot of people sitting in the Piazza with their suitcases, waiting for their assigned group to be allowed to exit the ship.
We went to the meeting place and waited. We had to wait until all the disembarking passengers had cleared customs. Then they started calling us by groups. The whole process from the time we were supposed to arrive at the the meeting place until we got through customs and were back onboard was only thirty five minutes - not bad. Part of the reason for the speed was the the US Customs and Immigration department was using facial recognition devices so all we had to do was walk up to a tablet-like device and stare into its camera for a couple of seconds until it lit a green light and displayed OK and we could go back onboard. We didn’t really even need our passports, except if the light turned red.
I still find all this facial-recognition stuff worrying. I've been a Software Engineer (we used to call ourselves Programmers) for more decades than I like to admit and I am one hundred percent positive that one of these days this AI-based facial-recognition technology will make a very big error with dire consequences.
When we got back onboard Donnie wanted coffee so we went up to the buffet but food wasn’t available yet because they were changing over from breakfast to lunch, but she was able to get coffee. We sat outside as usual. Later we had another delicious lunch at the buffet.
Even though we had previously decided that we wouldn’t go on many excursions on this cruise, we had discovered during the first half of the cruise that the areas near the cruise ports on the islands were not very interesting, being almost entirely shopping opportunities. In addition we realized that we were not seeing the prettiest places on the islands. So we booked four excursions in the next few ports. They were pretty expensive compared to other cruise lines or even previous cruises with Princess.
It being Donnie’s birthday, she gave herself a big treat - she did laundry! While the laundry was laundering we went up top to watch the sail away. The upper decks were a zoo! Every railing was occupied. I managed to eventually find a place to snap a few pictures but it required a lot of walking around the crowds and jostling to do it.
While wandering the upper decks I noticed that the ship's dancers who had been very good in the stage shows were now performing for the crowds right near the pool. I'm not usually a big fan of chorus dancers but these were very talented.
After enjoying the fun of folding laundry, we spent the rest of the afternoon in our stateroom looking at all the bar menus on our TV - even more fun!
Later we went down to the Crown Grill Lounge for our evening libations (booze). Donnie had decided that she didn’t want to have her birthday dinner at the premium restaurant, The Crown Grill, so we opted for the Ocean Terrace Sushi Bar instead. We were a little wary about having sushi on a cruise ship since they couldn’t possibly get fresh fish every morning. We needed have worried, the sushi was delicious. Donnie was surprised that I enjoyed the sushi. I was a little nervous because the two sushi chefs did't quite look Japanese to me, but I could have been wrong about that.
And, after a wonderful birthday sushi dinner, the perfect topper was gelato. All through dinner and gelato we were entertained by live music in the Piazza. After dinner we listened to a band in the Piazza and then went to see yet another magician in the theater - R. J. Cantu, who was amazing.
Once again we had room service breakfast but in our stateroom not our balcony because it was windy and a little cool.
In the morning we attended a destination talk about Antigua and Martinique. Then we went to “Coffee with the Captain”. Alexandra, the cruise director, interviewed the Captain and people were allowed to ask questions. Unusually, some of the questions weren’t stupid - just some.
Afterwards we tried to go to the deck above a quiet no-kids-allowed area called the retreat and relax on some deck chairs but, unlike on the first part of the cruise, they were all taken, so we relaxed and read on our balcony instead.
We went to a late lunch in the buffet but it was too windy to sit outside. Once again everything I tried was delicious and I have been trying a lot of different things. This doesn’t help me with my desire not to gain weight.
In the afternoon, we rested for a while in our stateroom and then went down to the Piazza for tea and guitar music. We sat and, once again, watched the crewman build the “Champagne Waterfall” pyramid of glasses.
Then we participated in a “Star Wars Trivia”. We got seventeen out of twenty. The winners got nineteen. The Force wasn’t with us.
At 7:20 we went to the reservations-only Amalfi Dining Room where we had made a reservation for 7:30 on New Year’s Eve, because we thought that a lot of people would be eating in the dining rooms that night. When we got there it was chaos. There was a line of people stretching out from the dining room entrance, through the elevator lobby and up two flights of stairs - at least one hundred people. We spoke to a woman ahead of us in the line and she told us that the young woman assigning tables had said that there would be a wait of 45 minutes to an hour, for people who’s reservation times had come and gone.
We weren’t going to wait for an hour on the stairs so we figured we would check out the “walk in anytime” dining room and if that was equally crowded we would just eat in the buffet. The Capri dining room line was only about ten people but when we got to the head of the line the young woman told us that since we had a reservation at the other dining room and since all her tables were full she couldn’t let us in. We explained about the chaos in the other dining room and told her that we wouldn’t be the only ones switching rooms. Eventually, after we explained it three times, she checked with her manager and got us a table.
Dinner was fine although the service was slow, but that was probably because the kitchen staff were overwhelmed. Our waitress, Anna, a sweet young woman from Ukraine did her best in a tough situation.
We had planned to go to the stage show after dinner and then make a brief visit to a few of the various New Year’s Eve parties scattered around the ship, but alas, the cold that had snuck up on me that afternoon attacked with a vengeance and I had to go straight to bed. At home we frequently didn’t make it to midnight on New Year’s Eve anyway.
We woke up to a bright blue sky. My cold seemed to be a little better. We had our usual continental breakfast on our balcony and then went to a destination talk about St. Kitts and Dominica. Afterwards we walked along deck seven and Donnie saw that they were holding a beanbag toss challenge, officers vs. passengers, down in the Piazza. She insisted on stopping to watch. Amazingly, the officers won. Could it be that they get more practice?
We wandered around the sun deck looking for two available deck chairs. It was almost impossible. Annoyingly, it has become pervasive on cruises that people go up to the outdoor areas early, put towels or personal items like sunglasses on the deck chairs to "reserve" them and then go about other business, only coming back to their "reserved" deck chairs occasionally. Most of the cruise lines say that this is forbidden and that they will remove the towels or personal items that have been there for over an hour, but we have never seen this happen. Eventually we grabbed two deck empty chairs at the very aft. Lunch was good hot dogs from the Salty Dog Grill on the pool deck, but we took them into the air-conditioned buffet to eat them. The afternoon was mostly naps in our stateroom. Both of us had colds and we were pretty draggy.
The dining room dinner menu was pretty uninteresting so we had dinner in the buffet about seven. It was pretty empty. One end was closed. We didn’t go to the show - it was some Italian singer. Neither of us was feeling one hundred percent. I was feeling about forty percent, but then my normal percentage is about fifty.
iPhone alarm - bathroom stuff - dress, etc.
It was mostly cloudy when we awoke. The forecast was for a one hundred percent chance of rain - naturally since we booked an excursion to go sightseeing.
We had a quick breakfast on our balcony and hurried ashore to meet our excursion to Nelson’s Dockyard, The Blockhouse, and Shirley Heights. We boarded a small bus and drove to the other side of the island. We stopped for forty five minutes at Nelson’s Dockyard National Park, another UNESCO World Heritage Site. A guide took us on a fifteen minute tour and then we were given about twenty minutes to explore on our own but it really wasn’t enough time. Nelson’s dockyard is a restored dockyard built in the 18th century and named after Admiral Nelson, of The Battle of Trafalgar fame.
Then we drove to an old fortification called the Blockhouse which was really just a lookout over some amazing views. There were some stones that were the ruins of a fortification. Finally we drove to Shirley Heights, another lookout with a beautiful view of English Harbor and Nelson’s Dockyard.
It didn’t rain - at all. So much for the one-hundred percent chance.
Back onboard, we had a late lunch in the buffet. After chilling for a while in our stateroom we went to the open area at the aft behind the buffet to watch the sail away. It was an excellent place for that. Since most people watched sail aways from the crowded railings on the upper decks.
Then we went for libations in the Crown Grill Lounge. I tried a cocktail called a Hurricane - not bad. Afterwards we went down to guest services again because finally my medallion had been completely rejected twice, once trying to come onboard and once by a drinks waiter. This time instead of “resetting” it, they made a new one and voila, our stateroom door finally recognized me! It even showed both our photos when we walked up to it. Hooray! Ain't technology wonderful? (Hah!)
Once again we had a good dinner in one of the main dining rooms and then we went to the theater to see the show. It was a singer called Chris Lash who sang old rock hits at very high energy. Even though most of the music wasn’t my cup of tea, or even my glass of rum, I sat through it and actually sort of enjoyed it.
Once again we awoke to a clear blue sky - how monotonous. The freezing cold and snow back home is much more interesting. I think I prefer this monotony. We had to get up a little early because we had an excursion that we had to meet up with at 8:35 AM (yawn).
The ship was a little late letting people debark, but we made it to the meeting point just on time but of course we had to wait anyway. We eventually got on a modern, very large, air conditioned coach bus which took us from Fort-de-France, the main city on the island up north into the hills. The driver took the bus along very narrow, very twisty roads that were bordered by heavy overhanging vegetation. There were several times when cars, trucks or even big buses like ours were coming in the opposite direction and it seemed impossible that they could get by ours. Once or twice we or they had to stop at a slightly wider spot to the the other pass.
One interesting fact we learned from the tour guide was that Martinique isn't an independent country or even an overseas territory, it's an actual part of France. It's like Hawaii is to the U.S.
We stopped at a church built to look a little like Sacré Coeur in Paris.
Although it was sunny in town, it started to drizzle at the church. This is normal in the islands in general and more so in the north part of Martinique. The huge bus drove north on a very narrow, twisty road through the lush vegetation. It was a very serious tropical jungle. Donnie loved it. She is a jungle fanatic. The tour guide mentioned that the only snake on the island is the Fer de Lance. It is a very, very poisonous snake and is also the title of a mystery novel by one of my favorite authors, Rex Stout, whose main characters, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin star in most of his books.
Our next stop was the Depaz rum distillery. The scenery there was beautiful.
It’s a very old rum distillery but there wasn’t really much to see, but we bought a collection of four sample bottles of aged rums.
The next stop was the ruins of Saint-Pierre, a town that was completely destroyed by a volcanic eruption in 1902 where 30,000 people died. Mont Pelée, the volcano that destroyed the town is still an active volcano and may erupt again at any time. We walked up some stairs to the ruins of the town’s theater. Then we went went into a small museum about the disaster.
After a forty five minute drive back to Fort-de-France, we walked a little bit around the area of town near the pier and saw a little bit of traditional French culture.
Then, hot and sweaty, we went aboard ship and dripped our way back to our air-conditioned stateroom. Donnie had successfully used her “Little Old Lady” disguise and smuggled the rum onboard.
We had lunch in the usual outdoor area in the aft. Later we watched the sail away from our balcony and were pleased to note that we were actually “Sailing Off Into The Sunset”.
As we were told a few days ago to wait until that day, we went to finalize the future cruise booking. We had first booked a cruise from Los Angeles to Sydney and back, but later we realized that we had been to every place on the cruise and we found a more interesting one that went from New York, through the Panama Canal, down to Peru, past Easter Island and Pitcairn Island, through some South Pacific islands and Auckland and finished in Sydney. This sounded great. The Future Cruise person who had booked the two-way cruise for us told not to cancel it and book the one from New York yet because some kind of promotions would be available on January 3. So here we were.
He told usto come back later, because they hadn’t yet gotten the information about the promotions and they would have the information after seven PM. So at seven we went back and were told that they still didn’t have the information and to come back before nine when they go off duty. So we went to dinner in the dining room and finished just before nine. We went back to the Future Cruise desk, which was right next to the dining room but the person was busy with other guests and told us to see him tomorrow after noon - (sigh).
We then went to a stage show called “5 Skies” - about some virtual game worlds. It was so cold in the theater that we had to get sweaters. The show was ultra-high-tech, with multiple video screens, rear projections, moving set pieces, lasers, etc. It was ultra-high-energy, and very elaborate - amazing on a cruise ship.
We slept late because we had already been to St. Kitts and the excursion we had booked for today wasn’t until one in the afternoon.
We went once again to the Future Cruise desk and finally got the cruise situation sorted out. We now have a booking for a cruise that starts in New York (yay!) and then goes to: Miami, Cartagena Colombia, through the Panama Canal, Lima Peru, Pisco Peru, Easter Island, cruises around Pitcairn Island, Tahiti, Moorea, Auckland, and ends in Sydney - 36 days - wow! We later found out that we had booked a small segment of a 115 day World Cruise that goes from Auckland to Auckland, the loooonnnnng way. It does, in fact, go around the world. Curiously, Princess sells twenty different segments of the cruise, many overlapping.
We did some laundry and then had a big breakfast in the buffet.
We then went to our excursion. We were ten people in a minivan. Our driver was “Angel” Gabriel. We learned that Saint Kitts is still legally known as Saint Christopher, its original name. The English had shortened the name.
We drove for a while and then stopped at Fairview Great House and garden, originally built in 1702. We spent an hour walking around the house and garden. Then we drove to a viewpoint called Timothy Hill in a high end neighborhood called Frigate Bay, where the views were breathtaking.
Then we were driven back to the pier where we bought some cheap T-shirts and a cheap baseball cap. When I say cheap, the T-shirt was $5 and so was the baseball cap. I can handle that.
When we got back to our stateroom, after a brief chill down, I checked the excursion list and found that one of the excursions that we were interested in on Grand Turk, had changed from “sold out” to “limited availability “ so we went to the excursions desk and scored two of the three available tickets.
We watched the sail away from our balcony. It looked like storm clouds were coming. We also saw an incredible sunset. We had another good meal in the dining room. After dinner we went to a Stargazing event on the topmost deck. They turned off some lights but not enough. The event was held on the mini-golf putting green and there were no seats and the astroturf was dirty and gummy so laying down on it was not a good idea. Donnie enjoyed the event but I couldn’t see many stars. My night vision isn’t what it once was, and it wasn’t very dark on a brightly lit ship, even if they did turn off a few lights on the very top deck.
We awoke to see two unpleasant things: a very industrial, ugly dock area, and rain. Dominica is known as "The Nature Island of the Caribbean" due to its lush scenery and varied flora and fauna, FYI - Dominica is pronounced DAH-men-eeka, unlike the Dominican Republic which is pronounced Doh-MIN-i-cah. It might even be that one of our dreams may have come true:we might finally have visited a Caribbean island that doesn’t have a Diamonds International.
Dominica is a real, non-touristy, non-commercialized Caribbean island, something Donnie had been hoping to see. They want to grow their tourism industry but haven't yet. Unlike the other islands we stopped at on this cruise, the area near the ship was just an industrial port and they had set up a few tents nearby where they sold a few T-shirts and Chinese trinkets to the cruise passengers, but it was nothing like the commercialism elsewhere.
After the usual room-service breakfast we went out to the excursion where we were loaded into a fifteen person van and Donnie got to ride shotgun, up front next to the driver - she loved it. It was very chaotic in the port. They were switching people in and out of different minibuses. Lots of local tour guides and drivers and people with clipboards were wandering around and having lengthy conversations. Ten minutes late, all the minivans tried to pull out at the same time.
We drove up to a lookout with a view of Roseau, the capital. It was drizzling and the town was enveloped in mist.
Then we drove quickly through the botanical garden without stopping. This was supposed to be one of the excursion highlights so going through without stopping was a little disappointing, but I guess they figured that nobody wanted to walk around the gardens in the rain.
Then we went on a long, steep, twisty drive to Trafalgar Falls. Luckily the rain was lessening at the entrance to the falls After exiting the minivan we had to trek over one hundred wet, puddled, gravelly, broken, scary steps through a drippy but beautiful rain forest to get to the falls. It was worth it. The falls were magnificent. We took a zillion pictures.
Somehow we managed to get back to the minivan in one piece but it was touch and go. Then we stopped for a free drink and finally drove back to the pier. Donnie bought another T-shirt in the tiny market just outside the industrial pier where our ship was docked. As we were walking back to the ship it started to rain again so we finally had to use our umbrellas.
The early part of the trip was a little disappointing but the falls more than made up for it. Dominica is a true tropical island with every imaginable tropical plant everywhere. Donnie loved it. She's a tropical plant lover.
We had a late lunch in the buffet. I filled my plate with a smorgasbord of Indian, Thai, and Italian dishes that were all delicious. Then we went to “Completely Random Trivia”, which was exactly the same things as the "Silent Trivia". They handed out sheets with fifteen questions on them and you had twenty minutes to answer them. The answers were on the back. We got two wrong. We didn’t win.
We went back to our stateroom to chill for a while, took the necessary four or five showers, and came back down to hear the ship’s seven piece band play Bourbon Street Jazz in the Piazza. We ordered some drinks. The band was great. It was a lot of fun.
We went to an early dinner in the buffet because we wanted to be early to the show in the small Vista Lounge to get good seats. On the way to the lounge we grabbed some popcorn they were giving out at the Swirls ice cream bar, supposedly for the people on the pool deck watching "Movies under the Stars" on a giant LED screen.
We got to the Vista Lounge about an hour early but the doors were closed so we waited in a nearby bar until the doors opened when we and a bunch of others rushed in. We started to get two good seats in front in the middle when some woman sitting alone among a big group of seats said in a nasty voice “I need twelve seats.” Unbelievable! We found semi-decent seats elsewhere. While we waited we munched our popcorn. People nearby were commenting on the nasty, pushy woman. At one point an assistant cruise director spoke to the woman but he didn't do anything. I guess he didn't want to cause an incident.
The show was called “Jim Henson’s Inspired Silliness”. The show was created in conjunction with the Jim Henson Company and had a video introduction by Brian Henson, Jim's son and current head of the company. The show was a mixture of live performers and puppets and was a ton of fun.
Photo by D. Kravitz
Afterwards we went to the theater to see a mentalist, Jeff Newman. I usually don’t like mentalists but I must admit that he was pretty good.
We had no plans today. Since we had been in St. Thomas a few days ago, we thought we might not even go ashore.
We had a biiiiiigggg breakfast in our usual spot aft.
Even though we were here a few days ago we decided to go ashore for a little while. We walked into the very commercialized port area and wandered over to the base station for the arial cable car to the top of the nearby mountain. We thought about taking it up but the price of $30 per person was too much so we wandered around the many tourist shops and bypassed the many jewelry shops. After a total of an hour on land we returned to the ship.
We went down to the International Cafe for a light lunch and while we were there we watched a Parrot presentation with some live birds in the Piazza. The woman who gave the presentation did this for a living. She has seventeen parrots. Five were on perches in the piazza. They were remarkably well-behaved.
Then they started another “Silent Trivia” where they handed out a sheet of questions and you had twenty minutes to write down your answers. We got nineteen of twenty. We won! That was probably due to the fact that they handed out exactly the same questions as the last Silent Trivia. We only forgot one answer from last time. We won a medal! It's genuine steel! It had the Princess logo on one side and the other side says “Winner”! Donnie let me keep it. It might become my most cherished possession - nah.
Photo by D. Kravitz
Then we went up to watch the sail away. We stopped by the pool bar and I asked the bartender if he knew how to make a Painkiller, a rum drink we first had in the Pusser's Rum bar on Tortola. He nodded and produced a drink almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a Painkiller. (Note - yes this a paraphrase of a quote from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy”). I had a healthy afternoon snack: a bran muffin and a pseudo-Painkiller.
We went back to our stateroom and sat on our balcony and watched some Brown Booby’s flying nearby. No, those were not the people spending the entire cruise on the deck chairs near the pool. Those were red boobies.
We went to an early dinner in one of the main dining rooms. We had no evening activities to go to because the show in the theater was one we had seen on the first part of the cruise. Dinner service was a little slow but we had nothing planned so we didn’t care.
We were going to go to the Crown Grill Lounge to listen to music but on the way we saw that there was something in a nearby venue called "Princess Live". The event was called "Tri-Bond Challenge" which sounded like Donnie’s favorite New York Times Connections game, so we went there instead. They showed three images at a time and you had to guess how they were connected. We got fifteen out of twenty five. The winners got twenty five.
An aside - On a previous Princess cruise, which also had the venue called "Princess Live", we were there on Halloween, so they changed the sign to read "Princess Dead" - cute.
Afterwards we went up to the Crooner’s Bar and listened to a pianist/vocalist.
We had to set our watches back an hour last night because we were heading back to Eastern Standard Time. We woke correspondingly early. We had breakfast on our balcony but I brought some food down from the buffet because I wanted a little more than coffee and a pastry. The complementary room service breakfasts didn’t contain a lot of choices.
At eleven we went down to the Piazza to watch some silly game involving ping pong balls. Donnie sat next to a woman who talked her ear off complaining about Princess cruises. This was strange because she told us that she had Elite status which meant that she had either been on fifteen or more cruises or had more that 150 cruise days. If she hated Princess so much, why had she been on so many Princess cruises?
We went ashore to the very, very touristy commercial shopping area and the beach. It was very reminiscent of Princess Cays. There’re was the requisite Diamonds International as well as other big chain stores, plus - “Ta-da” - a Starbucks. We read that the whole area was owned by Carnival Corporation. It was hot and humid with no breeze. We sat waiting for our excursion in the coolest place we could find, the duty free store.
Grand Turk is very low island, with a maximum elevation of only 365 feet and no tall trees, just low bushes. It also has lots of free roaming donkeys.
We boarded a tram-like vehicle that was open on the sides and held about thirty people. The excursion only stopped at two places: a little roadside touristy area with islanders selling cheap Chinese junk from improvised stands, and then at a lighthouse.
The excursion, and to be honest, the island were not very impressive. Donnie had read that lots of people including famous rich ones either lived on Turks and Caicos, or stayed in fancy resorts there. There were no expensive homes or fancy resorts on Grand Turk. It turned out that the fancy homes and resorts were on other islands in the archipelago.
The tram was heading back to the port and was already running late when someone’s walker fell off the tram which delayed us further. A couple of minutes later someone’s backpack fell off. We got back to the ship about twenty minutes later than scheduled but with an hour and a half before the ship sailed so we weren't left on Grand Turk. Donnie would have loved to have been stranded on one of the islands, but I suspect not that one.
We went aboard, dripped back to our stateroom, took seven or eight showers and went down to a dining room for dinner. We had always used the starboard entrance to the Capri dining room because the port entrance had a sign saying “Reserved”. When we got to our usual starboard entrance there was a line of about ten couples so decided to try the port side. There was nobody on line and we were taken to a table immediately. It’s the next-to-the-last night of the cruise and only now we learned to use the entrance with the shortest line. Dinner was excellent again
After dinner we went to the theatre to see “The Mighty Quinn” billed as a juggler, acrobat, unicyclist, comedian, etc. He was a pretty good juggler and unicyclist, but as a comedian he was hysterically funny - another fun show.
It was actually windy and cool aboard the ship. We needed long sleeve shirts. We went to our usual breakfast place in the buffet outside area and had a final humongous breakfast.
We were headed somewhere but passed the theater where a cooking demonstration by the Executive Chef and Director of Restaurant Operations was in progress so we went in and watched. It was two Italian guys trying to be funny. One of them said that the next day in Fort Lauderdale they will load two hundred tons of food. After the demonstration we and several hundred other people were marched to the other end of the ship and did a tour of the galley. Interestingly, nothing appeared to be going on in the galley even though it was almost lunchtime. They were probably very busy making lunch in another galley. There are supposedly three of them.
Then we went back to our stateroom to start the dreaded packing, which we did for a while. We took a break from packing and had lunch in the International Cafe while Donnie watched a line dancing class.
After lunch we went back to packing. We spent most of our afternoon packing. Donnie took pity on me and packed my suitcase with the precision of a surgeon. Brava!
In the evening, after putting our bags outside as required, we went to the Crooner’s bar for a farewell drink and to listen to a relaxing guitarist/vocalist - a nice contrast to the loud, thumping music that was pervasive throughout the cruise. Then we went to dinner in a main dining room for the final night.
We awoke just before dawn. It was 47 degrees in Fort Lauderdale! The Floridians probably were freezing to death. At 7:30 we went to the Piazza to wait for our disembarkation group to be called. You had to be out of your stateroom before 8:00 and off the ship before 9:00. They called us just around the time they had said it would be. When we got into the terminal building we found our bags immediately and we got through border patrol in a few seconds because they used the facial recognition machines again. We found our airport bus and left the terminal about 9:00. Everything was going smoothly. Then just as the bus was about to get out of the port area, it died! We had to wait about fifteen minutes for another bus and then we had to wait while they transferred all the luggage.
Fort Lauderdale airport is small and chaotic. We started to get on the long line just to get to the check in kiosks but were told that we were too early and that we should come back in an hour and a half. The pre-security departure area was very small and all the seats were occupied. Fortunately, a couple got up and we got their seats after only waiting a few minutes.
We had a delicious gourmet lunch at the airport Shake Shack, after waiting seemingly forever for the totally chaotic goings on in the Shake Shack kitchen. This Shake Shack was so inefficiently run I couldn’t believe it.
After lunch we went to our gate and discovered that our 2:30 flight was delayed by 45 minutes. Then a little later it was delayed again. The final departure time was 4:22 but that was just the time we pulled away from the gate. Then we had to sit waiting for “wheels up” time. It was all caused by high winds in New York. Air Traffic Control was holding flights because LaGuardia airport was only able to use one runway. Long story short - we arrived home about three hours later than we were supposed to.
Copyright © 2025 by Jeff Kravitz