Departure, and DANG 6am comes early!

This morning, we sailed into San Juan harbor, and docked at the Pan American pier. I could tell, because the ship stopped rocking and rolling when we entered the harbor at 4am. I think the slow speed of the ship, size of the swells and the location of our cabin (all the way aft, up on the highest deck) conspired to keep me up all night. Everything was creaking or moving and I think I would be lucky if I slept for a few hours at most.

We were officially back, and getting ready to make our trek back to Portland. Our flight was at 1140am, so we were assigned group 1 tickets, and were scheduled to get off about 730am and head for the the airport. A quick shower, breakfast, finish packing stuff into the carryon and off we went to the Rende-vous lounge to wait for our time to be called, we were lucky, as we barely had settled in our seats when they called #1, and off we went. A trick for cruising in and out of San Juan? ALWAYS get a porter. I know, you just have to tip them and you can carry your own bags, but they get you through the fast line at customs (not that there was much of a line at 720am!) and they will get you a taxi, so no random wandering about once you exit. We were in the cab by 735am, headed for the airport. Our friends (who got off about 930am) said it was a nightmare because the customs lines were about 50 people deep.......except the porter line, so that's where you want to go!

Once at the airport, needed to rebalance the bags and go through the agriculture inspection - don't forget to do that, because if you don't do it, they won't let you check your bags. I have no idea what they see, but you put your bags on the conveyor, and then you get a sticker saying they've been inspected. Weird.

Checked our bags, and headed out to the gate. The time? 815am. Under an hour from leaving the ship. Very nice, but you can't alwasy count on it, sometimes the airport is a disaster area, and getting off the ship can be a problem later as well. Better to be 3 hours early in this case.

Our flight to Atlanta was uneventful, and we landed at gate e2, and were going out of e26, so should be simple, right? Oh, not so much.

We were actually on the jetway to board our PDX flight, when they decided the plane was broken (?) and we needed a new aircraft. Um, really? So we got a new plane (and a new gate! A29!) and made our way over there quickly - they boarded the aircraft, and then realized we needed the catering to be moved (as well as the luggage that had been loaded on the other plane!!!) so we ended up with a 1 hour 40 minute delay, and we are decending into PDX RIGHT NOW. So I will finish this once I'm at home (and probably tomorrow.....!)

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St Thomas and the unthinkable. RAIN!

Well, the weather finally caught up with us today - it was a total washout. We'd had some random rainshowers on a couple of other days, but it was a total bomb today unfortunately. We got up to see rain out the balcony door, and after a rather long drawn out breakfast in Blu (have no idea what happened there, but it was almost an hour) We thought we'd go back to the room and get started on our packing, and we packed one whole suitcase!!!! Then we went upstairs to hang out by the pool (undercover of course) and see if it was going to get any better. Nope, this is pretty much what it looked like all day.

Later, it looked like this

You get the idea, I am sure. We had a nice view of the harbor however, so we just enjoyed some quiet reading time, with some drinks from the pool bar. Also watched the tour boats drive back and forth from the dock - morning, back at noon, back out at 1, back at 4pm! Not sure today was when you really wanted to be sitting out on the open deck of a tour boat, but hey, I guess you only get wet once, right?

Since the cruise ends tomorrow (how sad!) we needed to get packing completed, so we went back to the room and started getting ready so we could pack the other bag prior to dinner. Fun times, to have to cram everything back into the suitcases, since we hadn't bought much, it wasn't too difficult this time either. Also time to check the onboard account and make sure it was all shipshape.....and what is this $92 charge from Blu last night that I am seeing? I do not remember buying anything at dinner.....turns out, it was a charge for 5 glasses of a rose sparkling wine.....and since we'd been only drinking regular sparkling wine (that was under the price limit on our drink package!) I'm pretty sure that it's wrong. Oh, Mr Bennett signed for it? No, I don't think he did, so you should look into that. This was the conversation with guest services. When we went down for dinner about 6pm, I also mentioned it to Luigi (yes, that was really his name) the maitre'd of the restaurant - and poof, about 830pm, it was removed from our bill. Nice. They added a bottle of evian water (seriously people, it's covered by my drink package, and I don't like evian anyway, so why again did you add $3.45 to my bill? Sigh. Another phone call (at 1130pm) to guest services, and lots of "oh yes ma'am, we will remove it" but I'm betting not!!! Anyone thing Celebrity is going to get a phone call when that charge hits my CC? It's the principle of the thing really.

Anyway, we had our final meal in Blue, which was excellent as it had been the whole week. They had a tortilla tomato soup that was frankly awesome, and some sort of cheese and pepper empanada that was a great appetizer. My grilled chicken was a bit overdone, but the flavor was great.

Then, our last evening at the Martini Bar :( We did have a nice time chatting with our bartender friends, and I even got to pour my own Martini Tasting Flight! I've got some pictures and a short video, so I will work on getting those on here once I have a few minutes to figure it out (the video, otherwise it will just be the pictures)

Headed back to the room about 1115pm (what, the luggage was supposed to be out by 11? oops.) and then finished packing and put the bags out (and then had the fun conversation with guest relations about the evian bottle) and then tried to go to bed. Early morning tomorrow!!!

 

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Sea day, the one and only!

Today is the one and only sea day on this trip - when you leave from San Juan, you are already so far south that the islands are pretty close together - vs a series of 1 or 2 in a row when coming from Florida.

We got up about 830am, since there wasn't an early announcement about docking in the port at 8am. Got dressed and headed out to the pool.....WOW! The chair hogs were OUT IN FORCE! What is a chair hog you ask? Good question - these are the individuals that come out at the crack of dawn and place a single towel and some personal item (usually of inconsequential value) to "save" chairs while they go back to bed or eat or whatever it is they are doing that does NOT involve actually sitting in the chair by the pool. This is frowned upon by many, and yet, people still do it. On some ships, the Pool Butlers are out and about and quick to remove anything that remains for longer than 30 minutes with no one around. This ship, not so much - the pool staff seemed more interested in chatting with each other than making the rounds. Chris and I found a nice set of chairs, slightly away from the pool, and sat down. A few of the chairs were occupied, so I started chatting with one of the women and turned out they were from Rhode Island.

I have literally never met anyone actually FROM Rhode Island before, so that was quite a thrill. I also had a funny story about when we were kids we had this license plate game we played every year in the car - you had to see a plate from every one of the 50 states. The one we ALWAYS were missing? Rhode Island. So you knew it was going to be a good year if you saw a car with RI plates. The best was one year we were in Yellowstone Park, and saw an RV camper that had RI plates - we were so excited it was hilarious! Another funny story? One year when Abra and I were driving around CT checking things out, we actually drove into Rhode Island just to say we'd been there. I think we stopped and bought some Munchkins from Dunkin Donuts and then left. So there's my Rhode Island story.

Back to the chair hogs - there were 3 chairs across from us that literally had NO ONE sit in them until about 1pm (remember, we got there about 845am) - and they were prime sun chairs. These people hung around for about 20 minutes, then left and didn't come back for about 90 minutes. It was seriously crazy.

They had some pool games - volleyball, with the marine vs hotel for the crew (hotel won, which they said was unusual) and then they played the guest team, who also lost. Guess the hotel team was on a roll!!!!

Gave up about 4pm and went back to the room, since the pool band was loud enough to be heard through my headphones (they weren't bad, I just wasn't in the mood for it) and sat out on our balcony for a bit. The balcony was nice, but because the whole set of cabins were added during a retrofit, they don't have any overhang (ie shade!) if the sun is right on top of you, so it got very warm very quickly.

After getting out of our bathing attire (so NOT appropriate for formal night) we got dressed in our not formal clothes and headed for Blu about 545pm, where we met Pam and Michael and had another spectacular dinner, followed by the favorite ice cream!!!! Dinner took a little longer than normal, so we got up to the Martini bar about 730pm and BOY, the peoplewatching is fantastic on formal night. I think people were more dressed up for this night (probably because it was a sea day and they had more time to prepare) but who knows really. People do lots of things for no apparent reason. And as I've said multiple times, the definition of "formal night" varies from person to person, and it ran the whole spectrum this evening.

I think sitting in the sun all day must really take something out of you, because by the time 10pm crept around, we were ready for bed, that's for sure. So off we went, with dreams of more sunny pool time in St Thomas tomorrow!!!!

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Grenada part 2

Well, we got off the ship and utilized the pay wifi in the cruise terminal, it was $3, for unlimited use and we spent about an hour getting caught up on emails and uploading all the blog posts as well. We mailed a few postcards and then went out to the front and looked to buy a steel drum from the same guy we bought from in Dec, and mission was accomplished! Here's a photo.

 

Since it seemed really warm outside, we decided to head back to the ship and grab some snacks for lunch from the Oceanview cafe, and then went out to the pool for some sun time! What a great afternoon, and the pools were fairly empty that time in the afternoon, as most of the tours weren't back yet. It did start to fill up about 4pm and there was a loud dance contest going on, so we went back to the room to get ready for dinner.

We've been eating dinner around 6pm every evening in Blu, and it has worked out great so far. Most people seem to want to eat around 7, so we never have any issues with getting a table and the service is great with only a few people there.

Dinner has been finished every evening with my favorite ice cream, After Eight. Our waiter has somehow convinced the galley to have it for us every night, which is super awesome!

Then, as usual, martini bar fun before calling it a night. Tomorrow we have a terribly hard day at sea!

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Grenada

After all the action yesterday, we decided to stay onboard today and started with breakfast in Blu. What, you want a picture?

HA! So there. Anyway, we had a nice breakfast that took about 30 minutes to get, fresh cooked and everything. I have to say, Blu is amazing, we've never been at dinner longer than 75 minutes, and most times we are in and out in under 60 minutes, which is perfect timing. You don't feel rushed, and the food comes at a steady pace.

 

We then spent some time on the pool deck, hanging out and catching up on the blog posts (notice the postings that have appeared today!!!) We will be heading into the town for a little wifi action soon.

Ciao until later!!!!

 

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Dominica Part 2 - Titou Gorge and Trafalgar Falls

We were driving up into the hills for our next swimming adventure in Titou gorge, which is a freshwater river. Dominca gets an average of 350 inches of rain a year (!!!) so there are lots of rivers and streams. It's also volcanic, so there are lots of mountains. The gorge is about 2000 feet above sea level and it took us about 45 minutes to get to from the city.

Lots of windy roads and many photo opportunities of the lush countryside. So, when we arrived at Titou gorge, some bad news - due to the volume of water in the river, the current was way to strong for us to swim against, so we weren't going to get to see where some of Pirates of the Caribbean 2 was filmed (bummer!) but we've got some nice photos of the area. You have to hike about 1/4 mile to the entrance along the path the diverted water for the hydroelectric power goes (about 40% of the electricity in Dominca is from hydro power) We hiked to the overlook above the Gorge, and could see into it.

Down by where the van was parked, the water volume was slower, so we all walked around in the shallow, cold water.

Then it was off to Trafalgar Falls, for our next adventure (and death-defying climb!)

Pretty, right? What you don't realize, is we climbed down OVER most of those boulders.....

Not straight down, but off from the left in this picture. I have no idea what the heck we were thinking (other than hey, I can do this) but it was something else. I only ended up with 1 scrape on the back of my left calf, so that's pretty good really.

Chris and Michael standing in the middle of the river.

Here's Chris and I with our guide Floorboard. No, he's not 16, he claims to be 23.

The way out was really entertaining, you went up the other side where there were some hot springs and pools to sit in. Here's Chris showing off his guns.

The hike back up wasn't nearly as bad, but I was BEAT by the time we got back to the van, all the way back at the top. Once at the van, we had a beer and water break (learned a new party trick on how to open a beer bottle with a water bottle from Floorboard!) and then climbed in the van for the drive back to Roseau and our ship, which took about 30 minutes.

Overall, I would say this was a great tour because we got to see all the main sights of Dominica, but it's not for the infirm or out-of-shape! Bummer on Titou gorge, but what are you going to do?

We got back to the ship around 3pm, and then went upstairs and sat on our balcony (which was in the shade!) and rested for a bit. The ship departed about 5pm, and we got cleaned up and ready for another dinner in Blu (still no pictures! battery was dead again) and it was excellent. I had the french onion soup and a ribeye steak with a white bean/truffle side (which tasted a LOT like the white bean soup from marmalade, strangely enough!) For dessert, Collins came through and got us some After Eight ice cream (he'd gotten the restaurant manager to ask the pastry chef to make us some) so he gets many bonus points for that amazing feat!

We headed for the Martini Bar (yes Jeffrey, we are there a lot!) but wasn't very busy, I think people are starting to be tired from the long days onshore. I know I was after our Dominican adventure today! We called it a night and headed upstairs to the cabins for some reading and sleep. Nighty night!!!!!

 

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Dominica - part 1 - Champagne Reef & Morne Bruce

This morning we grabbed some breakfast and headed off the ship about 820am to meet our tour group and guides for the day. We had a few things planned, snorkeling at Champagne reef being the first, followed by a few scenic stops, then Titou gorge, and Trafalgar Falls and the hot springs. We have quite a day planned

Our directions from Bumpiing tours were excellent, and we located them very quickly. We then hung around for about a half hour waiting for the rest of the tour people to show up, and then met our guide Nathan, who preferred to be called Floorboard (as in pedal to the metal floorboard) and our driver Ozzy. They both did a great job and provided a lot of information while we were driving around.

First stop was Champagne Reef, so named because of the bubbling gas (in this case, sulfur dioxide) that can creep up from the rock formations. While the weather wasn't the best for underwater pictures, it was still clear enough to see quite well.

You have to hike down to the shoreline, which is all very rocky (thank goodness for our water sandals!) and then get into the water from the rocky shore, while putting on snorkel gear and fins. Let's just be kind and say it was a giant cluster. There were easily 80 people trying to get into the water at the same time, and most of them had little to no snorkeling experience, so weren't waiting until then were in the water to put on the fins.....which are hard enough to walk in on a flat surface, and a friggin' disaster on these rocks. Wow. Anyway, we managed to get into the water quickly off to one side, and then snorkeled around until the rest of our group was in (about 15 minutes) and then started to see some of the bubbles we had been told about.

I have no idea whose hand that is, but the bubbles were cool.

I have some neat video as well, but can't upload it from the slow wifi on the ship or in port, so will wait until we are home to try.

Some coral and sea urchins

A few fish

We then got out of the water and took off our gear and hiked back up to the entrance and our van. The next stop would be a viewpoint overlooking the city of Rouseau called Morne Bruce. That's a soccer stadium in the foreground on the right.

Anyone ever seen what a cashew nut looks like on the tree?

The fruit is the yellow part, and the cashew nut grows on the bottom. It's removed from the fruit, and you roast the green part, which splits open to reveal a cashew nut. Cool, eh?

Anyone know what this one is?

No? Coffee bean. Split open there are 2 beans, which get dried and roasted to make your favorite morning brew. The fruity part around the bean is sweet, so you can open the berry and suck on it like candy, then spit out the bean. The berries are about the size of a large grape.

Onto Titou gorge!

 

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St Kitts and staying onboard

Today is another day with a serious lack of pictures, I really didn't take many because I had left the camera in the cabin most of the day. We got up and decided that it wasn't going to be the pool day we had envisioned because of the serious sunburns we had managed to get on our snorkel trip (this, on top of the ones from San Juan!!!) I'm pretty sure this is the sunburn cruise, that's for sure.

After a little breakfast, we took ourselves up to the pool deck and parked it on some lounge chairs in the shade. There was a nice breeze, and we turned the chairs to look out the windows on the beautiful tropical view. I did some reading, but mostly got caught up on the blogs (notice a large # of postings appeared on Monday? That's why.)

About 130 we grabbed some lunch. Lucky for me, they had After Eight ice cream (obviously leftover from dinner the night before) in the buffet so I got a cup of eat. AWESOME!!! Then came the realization I needed faster wifi (and cheaper!) than what I was getting on the ship to get everything uploaded and caught up. So we headed off the ship to the nearest restaurant with free wifi- happens to be called Sweet Lime, and it's just to the right of the dock when you go through the port building. Head through the casino, and go upstairs. It has a fantastic view, and pretty good wifi, so we had a few drinks and got caught up on our emails etc. This took a couple of hours, so we headed back to the ship about 4pm. The most interesting part is that the tide must be really low, because we had to duck to get into the ship off the gangway - it couldn't have been more than 4 feet high. So they had a guy standing there saying "please watch your head" to every single passenger as they got on board.

Dinner was again in Blu (although it's not formal night) and we had another excellent dinner with our same waitstaff as the night before. French onion soup and a Chicken orzo dish, plus chocolate lava cake for dessert. Alas, no After Eight ice cream, but Collins (our waiter) promised to have some for tomorrow, so we will see how that goes. The food was all excellent and I really enjoyed the chicken orzo, it had sundried tomatoes, peas and some sort of vinigrette sauce that was very good. The camera had not left the room again, so alas, no photos. But we'll make up for it when we get to Dominica, I promise!!!! Headed back for the Martini bar, which was less crowded than formal night, and found ourselves some seats in Crush, which is an overflow area. Ari, who had been our preferred bartender was covering that area so we just sort of waved at him when we sat down and drinks appeared about 10 minutes later. Handy, it is.

My only complaint about the cruise so far is the LACK OF LIMES! There is apparently a shortage, and the prices have gone up astronomically so the cruise line has chosen not to buy them. I get it, but it's sure annoying when you want a drink with a lime, and they give you a lemon instead, it's just not as good. First world problems I suppose..........! The restaurants we've eaten in on shore (including the Sweet Lime in St Kitts) all had limes. Geez. Off to bed, and tomorrow is Dominica!

 

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It's formal night?

We came back to the ship after our snorkeling and taxi adventure, and decided to try Blu, the special Aqua class restaurant. We had never actually been to Blue before, and weren't sure what to expect. You can eat in Blu if you are in AQ, or if you are staying in a suite, if there space available, but we never had tried it prior.

Unfortunately, there are no pictures from that evening because the battery had run out on my camera and needed to be charged, so it was back in the room. The restaurant is very pretty, mostly white with blue accents (hence the name!) but the food was spectacular. I had gazpacho soup (delish!) some french onion soup (because I could!) and a chicken breast with veggies for the main course. For dessert, the favorite ice cream ever, After eight. What is it, you ask? Basically, mint chocolate chip ice cream where they use after eight mints as the chocolate chips. We had stumbled across this on our Solstice cruise a few years back, and hadn't seen it since. Jackpot!!!!

Now, what was interesting, was that this evening is considered formal night in the main dining room. Blu has it's own dress code (smart casual, basically no shorts) and we had decided to leave the fancy clothes at home even before we left. So, we were in our not-formals when we headed out to the Martini Bar for some people watching....which was spectacular! The definition of formal apparenty varies quite widely and there were many occurances of "just because you can get it on, doesn't mean it fits" with some of the clothing choices. We actually spent most of the time sitting in an adjacent area, because the Martini Bar WAS the place to see and be seen that night. We called it a night around 10pm, since we were all a little tired from the snorkeling adventure.

 

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St Croix and Buck Island

Today we docked at Fredrickstad on the western side of the island and needed to get over to the main harbor on the eastern side of the island.

You can catch a cab to the other side, which will cost you about $45. Or you can take the shuttle van, which is $16 round trip. Sounds like a good deal, but be careful about what time you'll be back.....depending on who you ask, the last shuttle is at 345 or 4pm....and when we showed up (about 12 of us from the snorkel trip) about 340pm no one was there and not many were willing to help us. Finally, one of the shuttle drivers showed up, and although he was full, he got one of the other cab vans to take the rest of us back to the cruise ship. In hindsight, would have probably gotten a cab, the cost wasn't that much different for 4 of us.

Anyway, it's about a 30 minute drive, and we even passed Home Depot!!!

We arrived in Christianstad, and headed for the Jolly Roger, our transportation for the day.

And off we go to Buck Island!

The trip was very fun and relaxing, and when we arrived, we were on a beach on the west side to allow us all to make sure our snorkel gear was working OK.

Here's Captain Mike on the Jolly Roger. Chris is in the foreground.

Then we sailed around the east side of the island, and anchored for our snorkeling adventure. It was great actually, it was a little choppy, but the water was beautifully clear and we didn't have any issues seeing fish.

There's a trail you can swim through, with some markers telling you about the fish and coral.

A parrotfish

Some coral.

Soon, it was time to sail back to our starting point, and catch the shuttle (or not!) back to the ship. We did see the fort right before we left.

Then, back to the ship, where we got back onboard and cleaned up for dinner. Which was apparently formal night, although I didn't know that until Pam called me!

 

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To the Ship, they say!

This morning dawned bright and clear, and after a quick breakfast, we packed up our stuff and stored it with the hotel when we checked out. We wanted to do a quick walk from the El Convento and get some pictures along the city wall that was the closest to the hotel.

All the cobblestones that are this odd shade of purple were originally used as ballast in the bottoms of ships. They were then used to pave the roads and over the past 400+ years, the glazing has turned this shade of purple. They are slowly being replaced with modern cobbles when the roads are being updated (so they aren't so lumpy) but I'll miss the old ones, they are something else.

The beginning of our walk. The red gate you see in the photo is the main gate of San Juan, and if you were an important personage back in Spanish colonial days, you would have walked right along that walkway up to the gate. I believe there were 5 gates total, this is the only one that is left.

View from the walkway back up the city walls.

We did a big loop around the city, and ended up back at our hotel.

We then said goodbye to the hotel, and caught a cab over to the ship. It's about a 15 minute drive over to the Pan American pier, where we dropped our luggage and got in line to board the ship. No pictures, it was hot and annoying. Once we got on board, our room was ready so we went upstairs and dumped our backpacks off, and then went to look for Pam and Michael. Our room is what is called an AQ1, or Aqua Class 1 room. They are all on deck 11 on this ship, and were added during the last retrofit in 2012. They are right above the Oceanview cafe, which is the buffet eating area. We even have a little waiting area right outside our cabin.

We found Pam and Michael, and decided to eat at Normandie restaurant for dinner. They were offering a 50% off rate for the first night for AQ class cabins. The food was excellent, we really enjoyed it. Here's some photos. My heirloom tomato salad.

Followed by our chateaubriand, carved tableside by the head waiter.

 

Then a cheese course quickly before muster drill.

After muster was over, we headed back for our desserts.

Cocoa cake for me, souffles for everyone else. We spent a bit of time walking around, but it had been a long day so we decided to head for bed.....after a drink at the Martini Bar!!!! Tomorrow was going to be snorkeling at Buck Island for the day, so needed to get our beauty rest!

 

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