You may be wondering how we picked this particular type of trip for our vacation this year. While a cruise is not our typical method of travel, we had never cruised together and were curious about what it would be like to do so in a tropical destination. We found a great boxing week deal for this Eastern Caribbean Princess Cruise and ended up booking it on a fairly quick whim followed by flights and hotels booked on our own using points. That was December last year. My usual travel research and planning kicked in shortly after that (researching the ports, pre and post cruise stay, cruise ship secrets, etc). L says she likes to leave the planning up to me and she'll continue to do the travelling bit!
In mid-March, life delivered to me, and to us, a fairly big curve ball. This is one of these 'why me, and why now?' type situations that we had to deal with all of a sudden. Without getting into too many details here, the next few weeks were hectic in every way imaginable, leading right up to the day before we were to leave for our cruise. We made it of course, glad we did, and although the curve ball is a big one and right smack in front of me, I'm planning to dodge it and get back in the game soon.
So here we are wrapping up a great week cruising the Caribbean. By now you have read about most of our activities in L's previous blog entries so I will highlight my top ten most memorable and interesting times on this adventure:
+The amazing ship. The Ruby Princess is one of the newer ships in the fleet and has tons to do on board. Good places to lounge in the sun. A great movie under the stars setup to watch the latest hits. Lounges with non-stop entertainment, decent comedy/magic/broadway shows, and some sport activities like ping-pong, mini-golf and basketball.
+Being 'disconnected' - sort of. Both of us travelled with iPads and I did bring my phone but we used these mainly while in transit at the airports and hotels as a distraction. On the ship, Internet is pricey and very slow so it was nice to be away from all the flurry of day to day emails and other stuff. Okay, I confess that we did get the basic Internet package but that was mainly so that this blog could get updated and the occasional Facebook update could be uploaded :)
+Our balcony room. Definitely worth it! We used the balcony to read, lounge, watch us arrive and depart from the ports, stargaze, eat breakfast and listen to the ocean every day. The room itself was pretty good too with lots of storage for clothes/stuff and a little fridge which we filled with water daily. The shower was tiny as expected but still roomy enough to be comfortable.
+Warm weather. With highs of 28 and lows of 26 on average, the weather was awesome! I was a little worried when theweathernetwork.com forecasted thunder showers before we left but there was nothing but sun, some occasional clouds and calm seas after the first day.
+Tasty food - and lots of it. This is what cruises are known for and Princess did not disappoint. Dining room lunches and dinner were always top notch. Speciality dinner at the steakhouse restaurant Crown Grill was amazing (filet mignon, Kansas grill steak, lobster tails, and more). Freshly baked thin crust pizza made for a repeat snack/lunch (the pizzeria also cooked up tasty waffles in the morning!). Gelato, sorbet, mousse, cheesecake, cobbler, pana cotta, and endless other deserts where too readily available and we could not say no. Fruit bowl delivered to our stateroom and room service breakfast most mornings were a nice touch.
+Princess Cays, Bahamas. This is the first of four ports that we visited. I'll warn you that there is a beach theme to each - a big reason we selected this particular itinerary. Princess Cays is a private beach area which was much better than expected! Turquoise blue water, white sand, swimming and snorkelling areas. A perfect first stop.
+Orient Beach, St. Martin. Located on the French side of the island this beach was also tropical paradise. 2 miles of the same amazing water and sand. A little choppier here with tourists tearing up the ocean on wave runners so I decided not to snorkel.
+Governors Beach, Grand Turk, Turks & Caicos. Like the other beaches, I researched this beach ahead of time and learned that it offered clear turquoise blue water and fine white sand (starting to see a pattern??) without being busy like the beach located next to where the ship docks. We took a taxi out here and spent over 2 hours in the sun, water and snorkelling.
+Coki Beach, St. Thomas. By far my favourite beach on the trip! Coki beach is small and you have to take a taxi to get there but we lucked out because we were the only ship on St. Thomas that day so we enjoyed over 3 hours of relaxing, swimming and great snorkelling at this picturesque beach spot.
++And last but not least is spending time with L who has been a great partner and made this trip fun despite all of the hectic-ness we faced before leaving.
Although I don't think we are going to become regular cruisers after this trip, we enjoyed it enough (and enjoyed all the wonderful food and pampering) that we will probably end up on another ship sometime in the future.
That's all for this edition of the 'guest blog'!
Z
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