ship – Page 11 – Wanderlist Vacations

Our Favorite Port: Bermuda

Here we are at the end of my five part series, and we’re ending it with the trip that I started this blog with, Bermuda. We all agree this is our favorite to date, and it was a pretty easy choice. Since I’ve already talked about this port in-depth in my Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 posts back in June, I’ll do my best to bring new material to this entry.

When we were initially looking for a graduation cruise to take our daughter on, we were looking at Alaska. Jen and Bayley had never been there, and everyone who’s been on an Alaskan cruise seems to love them. After a bit of deceptive questioning to avoid letting Bayley in on the surprise, we came to realize that she’d prefer something tropical. My wife and I started the search over, quickly coming to the realization that we wanted to do something different from the normal Caribbean itineraries we’d been doing. We did consider cruises out of San Juan, since those go further south to ports we haven’t been, but most of those were out of our budget when adding airfare. That was when my wife brought up Bermuda. We’d talked about this in the past, but weren’t sure how we’d like a cruise where you basically park in one spot for three days. In researching it, she found it to be a favorite of a large percentage of those who posted reviews on Cruise Critic. Many people talked about how they’d been to Bermuda multiple times on cruises, which is something we really hadn’t seen with any other U.S. based itinerary. We were sold.

This itinerary started with two days at sea. On the morning of day 3, I got up early to watch the sunrise as we arrived in port. If you cruise to Bermuda, I highly recommend being up early and getting out on deck or a balcony to watch the sun come up as you pass around the island. The arrival provided some of the best views of the trip in my opinion, and as you can see, the Norwegian Breakaway beat us in to port:

Getting back to the point of this post, this island is our favorite port of all time for a few reasons:

The people were all incredibly warm and friendly, and you never felt unsafe. Wherever we went, people were always smiling, and willing to help you out with information or directions.
The transportation system is second to none among ports we’ve stopped at. I talked about this in my previous posts, but when you first get off, there are transportation stands just off the ship where you can buy bus/ferry passes. If they can’t get you where you want to go, you probably don’t need to go there. We made use of the bus and ferry every day we were there. These are the same buses the rest of the island uses to get around, and the same ones kids take to and from school.
A friend of mine at work is from Bermuda, and always talks fondly about the island (except maybe the cost of living 🙂 ). I’d heard about a few of the different landmarks on the island, like Somerset Bridge, so we made time to stop and see a couple of things most visitors aren’t aware of on his recommendation.
There’s a ton of stuff to do. Even with 3 days in port, we still didn’t see everything we’d planned to. We definitely want to visit again and work on that list some more.

Number 2 above is a huge deal in my opinion. Going in, we had zero guided excursions planned, private or cruise sponsored, due to all we’d read about how good the transportation system was. When it was all said and done, we only took one guided tour, a last minute choice to take a jetski tour on our final morning there. As I mentioned in the Day 3 post in July, that tour was excellent and worth the extra money that was spent on it. Outside of that, everything else we did was on our own, utilizing the transportation system and our feet to get us where we wanted to go. It was nice to not be on a set schedule, not having to hurry to meet tour operators. We basically got off the ship whenever we want and headed out, and returned whenever we wanted.

This cruise also represented the first time we’d been parked in the same port for more than a few hours, which we all found pretty cool. On the first and second day in port, there was no stress about getting back to the ship before it left, since it wasn’t going anywhere. It was an awesome way to see Bermuda.

I think that about covers it. I highly recommend reading my three posts about our days on the island (linked in the first paragraph in this post) to get an idea of what we did. It’s been fun going over these five ports and reliving our time on these islands. My next posts will come some time next week and cover our upcoming trip to Daytona for the Rolex 24, a 24-hour sports car endurance race. In the meantime, here are a few more shots from Bermuda!

Our 2nd Favorite Port: Costa Rica

Costa Rica was the second stop on our 2011 Thanksgiving cruise on the Carnival Freedom. To date this is one of the best itineraries we’ve sailed due to what we felt was the perfect mix of port days and sea days, allowing us to relax and reflect between stops:

Leave Ft Lauderdale
Sea day
Cozumel
Sea day
Puerto Limon, Costa Rica
Colon, Panama
Sea day
Sea day
Arrive Ft Lauderdale

Puerto Limon, where the ship docked in Costa Rica, is very industrial and not much to look at. When you get off the ship, you’re directed into a small shopping area where the “approved” tours also meet. My wife had set up up with a private tour through Your Lucky Tour, a vendor who we had to meet just outside of the market. We’d seen a few people on a certain cruise board say that this area wasn’t that safe, and to keep an eye on your family as you walked through the market, but none of us ever felt it was unsafe as we walked through the shops and exited on to the street. We quickly found our guide Pablo, who was holding up a sign with our name on it, and headed for his cab.

Our tour was a bit up a mash-up of the ones they offer on their site, and would have us in the car driving around the area quite a bit. It was cloudy and somewhat misty most of the day, but even with that, we found Costa Rica to be a beautiful country. Pablo was an awesome guide, and gave us quite an education on the country, and each of the places we stopped. We did have one heart pounding moment, as we stopped at a checkpoint and had to hand our passports to a couple of men with M16s, but outside of that never felt uncomfortable or unsafe. In addition to a quick stop at a local stand to try some plantains, our tour took us to some pretty cool places:

Jaguar Rescue Center: Despite the name, they rescue far more than just jaguars, including various monkeys, sloths, baby possums, and a few more I’m sure I’m forgetting. While we got to see a couple of younger sloths, they understandably do not allow visitors to touch them, as they’re very fragile animals. The monkeys, however, love to interact with the visitors, and once you’re in there, at least one will find a home on you. When we were in the monkey house, one of them immediately hopped on to my shoulder and couldn’t’ stop playing with my head. Jen and Bayley had similar experiences, but their monkeys immediately curled up in their arms and fell asleep. In addition to the monkey enclosure, we had a guide who gave us a very thorough tour of the facility, showing us various animals along the way.

Puerto Viejo: After the rescue center, we drove a short ways to Puerto Viejo to walk around and do some shopping. This is an awesome little town right on the water that’s home to some very warm and friendly people. We walked around for about 45min or so, and picked up some things in a few local shops. In the pic of the red car below, the guy standing next to it on his phone is our guide, Pablo.

Parque Nacional Cahuita: The highlight of this stop was the hike to the beach. I don’t remember the exact length, but we were out there a while, and it was one of the coolest hikes I’ve ever done. The trail was pretty lush, and along the way our guide stopped to point out several different animals: crabs, sloths, a raccoon, and some rather large iguanas (one circled in red in a pic below). Since the trail is near the beach, it’s all sand, and was well worth the walk. It would have been awesome to spend some time at the beach, but we’ll save that for another trip down there. Again, it was an absolutely stunning hike.

Those stops pretty much covered the day. As mentioned, we also stopped at a small stand to try some local plantains, which I actually enjoyed. Surprising since I despise bananas. Anyway, after arriving back in the port area, we decided to walk around town and do some shopping. Despite the warnings on a specific cruise forums site, we never felt unsafe walking around, and everyone we encountered was friendly. Yet another stop we’d like to go back and spend more time at!

Our 3rd Favorite Port: Aruba

We stopped in Aruba on Thanksgiving day 2013 while on the Carnival Breeze, and it was definitely an excellent way to spend Thanksgiving, as Aruba is an incredibly beautiful and scenic island. I love to be outside on the ship watching our arrival in to port, and the beauty of the island really made getting up early for that worth it. On this cruise we had an oceanview at the front of the spa deck, which gave us quick access to the “secret deck” at the front of the ship, so I popped right out to watch us dock in Aruba as soon as I saw we were close. In a word: Wow. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves

For this stop, my wife had set us up with an all day tour through HF Tours, and we loved every minute of it. There were 5 of us on the tour, as my mom and step dad were on the cruise too, and we got a 5 hour tour in a 15 person van for $65/pp, which seemed very reasonable compared to past tours we’d done. To add to it, our guide was outstanding, one of the best we’ve ever had. The tour itself took us over a large portion of the island, including stops at the California Lighthouse, the Old Dutch Windmill, and Eagle Beach.

While those stops were all cool, our target for this tour were really the following landmarks:

Philip’s Animal Garden: While all three of us enjoy animals, my daughter is definitely what I’d categorize as an animal lover. Her goal in life is to work with animals, as she wants to train animals for TV and movies after she graduates from college. She also has her cat at college with her, has an Instagram account for him, and as you can see in those pictures, he’s quite active with her on campus. Back on topic, Philip’s was the first long stop we had. Our guide dropped us off right at the gate, and after paying the entrance fee, had a guide come up and walk us around, talking about the history of the facility, and telling us about all of the animals they had. If I recall, we spent about 45 minutes there and enjoyed it from start to finish. Very beautiful facility that’s growing, and doing good work, as they take in and house all kinds of animals that people decide they no longer want. Well worth the stop.

Casibari Rock Formation: This was a pretty cool stop, allowing us to climb up to the top of the rock formation, where we had a great view of the island. Not much to say about this, as it’s a giant rock formation, but it’s a cool place to stop. If you go, be sure to climb the rock, it’s worth the effort. If you look carefully in the picture of my daughter and I, just above her head, you’ll see the two cruise ships in port that day.

Donkey Sanctuary Aruba: You read that right, we visited a donkey sanctuary. Did I mention my daughter is an animal lover :)? The road leading up to the sanctuary is a bit small and rocky to the point that we weren’t sure the van would make it, and pulling up we really had no idea what to expect from the facility. Walking in, I was amazed at how many donkeys there were, they were everywhere! There really isn’t anything else to the stop, but it’s exactly as advertised, and run by some very friendly people. We spent some time there feeding the donkeys and listening to them talk about the facility. It was definitely an interesting stop.

Natural Bridge: This is one of the most well known landmarks in Aruba, and was very cool to see in person. Unfortunately the bridge itself collapsed several years ago, but it’s still a great area of the island with spectacular views, and it’s a great place to walk out on the rocks, watch the waves come in, and clear your head. Almost cathartic.

I know I said this earlier, but we really enjoyed this tour, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend HF Tours to anyone going to Aruba. I’d have loved to spent some time in the water at Eagle Beach, but that’s for another trip, as Aruba easily made our shortlist of places we want to spend more time. Even after such a long tour, we had plenty of time to stop and do some shopping in the area around the port before boarding, so here are some shots of that shopping area, along with a couple from the ship as we were pulling out of port.

Our 4th Favorite Port: Roatan

It’s hard for me to rate this as low as 4th, as Roatan is one of my absolute favorite places. If I had my way, we’d be living down there by now :). I know there are various challenges in the area from time to time due to the political and economic climate in Honduras, but I fell in love with the place the first time we visited. For purposes of this post, I’ll be focusing on the first of two stops we’ve made in Roatan. On that trip in March of 2006, we came in on the Norwegian Jewel and docked at an older location near Coxen Hole, a dock that I don’t think is in use anymore. This was one of the first cruise stops where we didn’t use a cruise sponsored excursion, and as far as I’m concerned, it was one of the best stops to date.

We were on this cruise with the staff of the dental office where my wife worked. Over the years, we did a few cruises with that group, and always had a blast with them. For this trip, my wife was doing research on the ports, and came across a post on one of the cruise boards where someone who had recently visited was mentioning an orphanage they’d stopped to visit (Greenfield Children’s Home), and how they could use some athletic equipment if anyone was headed that way. She brought that up with my daughter and I as an option for our visit to the island, and we were sold. The post mentioned a local we could hire to drive us around, show us the island, and take us to the orphanage. My wife went ahead and set that up, including contacting the orphanage to set up the visit, and ensure that athletic equipment was really what they needed the most. In addition to the items we bought, my daughter organized a donation drive at her school to help get even more equipment to deliver to the kids. It’s been a while, but if I recall we had at least 4 over sized duffel bags full of various sports gear to haul with us on the flight down and on the boat, but it all worked out fine and we got it all on board the ship without issue. When we got off the ship in Roatan, we simply put the bags through the scanner for an additional security check, and once that was done, we were on our way. NCL had definitely seen cruisers do this before, and never questioned the purpose of the gear.

Our guide/driver met us at the port and loaded up all of the stuff we’d brought into her van. She also had a surprise for us, a hand carved jewelry box for my daughter, as that stop fell on her 10th birthday. After getting everything loaded, she took us on a driving tour of the area, through the local town, and driving around the countryside, giving us the rundown on the area along the way. The local kids were in school that day, as we saw several of them walking around in their school uniforms with smiles on their faces. The area was a mix of poorer sections interspersed with a few large waterfront homes outside of town, and even a couple of resort/condo communities under development at the time.

After the tour our guide drove us to the orphanage, where we were greeted by the staff on hand that day. Upon arrival, we took all of the gear inside and gave it to the kids, and they immediately dug in to see what we’d brought. Everyone, the kids included, were very warm and welcoming. While we hung out with the kids, the staff gave us a tour of the facilities and the history of the organization, which is headquartered only a couple of hours from where we live. Here are a few shots from our time with them:

I don’t recall how long we were at the orphanage, but it was easily the best part of my day and the highlight of the cruise. I rarely talk about where I donate my time/money, and this is probably the first time I’ve talked about this stop outside of discussions among our family, but those kids and that group left a lasting impact on me, and I’ll never forget our time with them. Huge thank you to the staff for making time to let us come by for a visit that day.

Even with everything we’d already done that day we did have some extra time after visiting the orphanage, so our guide took us to Paradise beach for a couple of hours so we could spend a little time relaxing before we headed back to the boat. There weren’t many people there, and when you combine that with the crystal clear water, it made the stop that much better.

After a little food, swimming and relaxation, our guide took us back to the ship. This is definitely one of the most memorable stops in my eyes, and shows that you can still give back to a local community, even if you’re only in town for a day.

Turkey Day on a Ship

One year ago today, we were boarding a ship to enjoy our third straight Thanksgiving on a cruise. As I sit here and look back on that today, I realize just how much I’ll miss not spending Thanksgiving on board this year. Couldn’t be helped, though, with our daughter Bayley at college this year, we didn’t really figure her schedule would cooperate, and this isn’t grade school anymore, you can’t just pull a kid out of college classes for a few days and expect the professors to let her make that work up. The education comes first. Thankfully, we’ll still be spending the holiday with her, as we’re driving down Tuesday evening to spend a few days with her. More on that at a later date, for now let’s head back to last year.

Thanksgiving on a cruise ship is a blast, no cooking or cleaning to worry about, no stress of hosting family, just a week of relaxation and fun. On this trip, my mother and step-father were with us, as they wanted to take us all on one last family vacation before Bayley started college. Frankly, without them paying most of our fare, our string of Thanksgiving cruises would have been broken, as we simply weren’t in a position to do a cruise last year. So let’s look back on that week:

The Ship

The Breeze is the largest ship we’ve been on to date, and we were all interested to see how that played out. It also represented a departure from the normal decor that adorns most of the contemporary lines (gaudy chic? :)). The breeze’s decorum is definitely one of my favorites to date:

The ship was very easy to navigate, and offered plenty of food choices. I enjoy a good burger, and definitely liked being on a ship with Guy’s Burger Joint. The Pig Patty was a winner for me. Additionally, BlueIguana offers a delicious steak burrito. Another yummy stop was Fat Jimmy’s C-Side BBQ, which is only open on sea days. We tried it on day one, and overall wasn’t bad. The line’s generally kinda long right when it opens, so if you go, wait until it’s been open an hour or so. Frankly, Guy’s and Blue Iguana are the same the first day or two. Regardless of th wait, it was nice to have more than just the buffet and pool grill to eat at. My only complaint was the pizza station, as it takes way too long to get a slice of pizza on a Carnival ship. We experienced that on our previous two Thanksgiving cruises (both on Carnival too). Minor annoyance most of the time, but after skipping dinner to spend extra time in Curacao, pizza was one of the only things open when we got back on board, and if I recall, I waited 45 min for two slices. Yikes. Eh, we were on a ship, so one little thing like that’s not going to ruin my day.

Activities on the Breeze were in abundance. As I’ve mentioned in past posts, we love to stay active on sea days, especially if there’s a trivia event, which there were plenty of on the Breeze. We attended several, and even managed to win a couple. It is amusing to watch the people who take trivia on board way too seriously, too. Arguing with the person running trivia over whether an answer is right or not (especially when you’re blindingly wrong) seems a bit ridiculous when you’re on vacation, but to each his own. It’s all in good fun, and it’s not like the prize is super valuable, although I admit we enjoy winning them, and have at least one from each of the four Carnival cruises we’ve been on.

The ship has several things to do outside of scheduled activities, and we took advantage of two of them. The water slides were an absolute blast, as was the ropes course. The course is situated up high and provides a great view of the ocean on a sea day. I’ve got GoPro footage of my trek around it, definitely a highlight of our time on board.

The Stops

We broke one of our rules on this one, as all four of our stops were back to back. Normally we like an itinerary that breaks it up, but for this trip it was a no-brainer. We went easy with activity scheduling to avoid getting all stressed about planning. I’ll lay out what we did stop by stop. Some of this is probably a repeat from my ‘Choosing Cruise Excursions‘ post, so I won’t go too deep, but we had a blast in every port!

Grand Turk: This was our planned beach day. It’s a tiny strip of sand with little to do, and served as an excellent choice for hanging out on the beach since you basically walk off the ship and right to the beach. We did walk through the shops, picked a couple of things up, etc, but overall just planned to lay on the beach or snorkel. While we were hanging out on the beach, someone came by selling helicopter tours. After he walked by, we discussed it and decided to spend a little money and have some fun. My wife stayed behind, concerned about her motion sickness, so it was just four of us. Since we had a group, they cut $10/pp off the price for the 8-ish minute ride, for a cost of $40/pp. We had an absolute blast, and had a great view of our ship and the beach where my wife was waiting for us. Well worth the money in our opinion, and frankly I think my wife would have been fine, it was a very smooth ride.

Dominican Republic: For our second stop, we’d booked a dune buggy tour ahead of time with Pro Excursions. While the port experience was one of the worst we’ve had (covered in that past post I mentioned above), the dune buggies were an absolute blast, one of my favorite excursions, and any stress getting the correct taxi was worth it. We were covered in mud when we were done, and smiling the whole time. I think the pictures say it all 🙂

Curacao: We got off the ship with no plan whatsoever. We figured if there were tour guides offering island tours at a good price, we’d grab one, but if not, we’d just walk around and shop. As we got off, we found the tour operator stand, and grabbed a cheap tour. It was a little over two hours, if I recall, and half of that was probably spent in traffic :). Beautiful island, but they definitely share some of the traffic problems cities in the US have. Our time in port was 2pm -11pm local time, and by the time we got back from the tour, most of the shops were starting to close up. We were able to do a little shopping, and did walk around the area a bit.

Aruba: We had a blast here. My wife had set up a private tour before we went, so it was just the 5 of us in a van with the guides. The tour took us all over the island, and included stops at Philip’s Animal Garden and a local donkey sanctuary (among regular scenic stops). Our guide had lived on the island most of his life, and obviously knew his stuff. This was a 5 hour tour, and we enjoyed every minute of it, as it basically took us from one end to the other. When we got back, we walked around the shops for a while, picked up a few things, and headed back to the ship not long before departure. Aruba is a very beautiful island, and is on my short list of ones I want to go back to.

We also bought Faster to the Fun passes for trip, which I know some people don’t think Carnival should sell. For those who aren’t familiar, they sell a limited amount per cruise, and a single FTTF pass covers everyone in the cabin. Benefits of the pass include priority boarding, priority tendering (which we didn’t need on this trip), stateroom available as soon as you get on, priority line access at guest services, and priority debark. My main reasons for getting it were priority embarkation and debarkation, as being Gold level we wouldn’t otherwise get priority there. We treat boarding day as an extra sea day, and like getting on as soon as we can. For debarkation, Charlotte’s an 11 hour drive from Miami, so getting off as early as possible helps me get home in time to some sleep before I have to go back to work the next day. We bought a pass for my parents cabin, too, and we all found it worth the cost ($50 per cabin). For the first time in a long time, I had to use guest services for a couple of things, and not having to wait in the long regular line was a huge benefit.

Overall, this was one of our best cruises to date. A great crew, plenty of activities, and some great stops made for yet another awesome Thanksgiving on board a Carnival ship. I highly recommend cruising over turkey day at least once!

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