Watch for the Signs—How the Ports Tease and Tempt You

In San Juan, they’re in Spanish. In St. Barts, they’re in French. And everywhere else in the Caribbean, they’re colorful, often kooky, design to tempt, taunt and tease. I am, of course, talking about the signs.

We take restaurant and shop signs for granted. But they can stop you in your flip-flops. Bring a smile to your face. Some of them are even memorable. Like the one at the St. Thomas Crown Bay pier greeting cruisers with “Free Beer Tomorrow.”
 
Below are some of our favorites for your viewing pleasure. And don’t forget, the next time you’re tripping the Caribbean, watch for the signs!

Glad we settled that. (Dominica)

Sure beats chicken noodle! (St. Maarten)

Any funnier and you’d have to feed us. (Grand Cayman)

Leave your fishing rod at the door. (Grand Cayman)

Anything else come with that? (St. Maarten)

 

Taking a sip? Leave your partner on the ship! (St. Maarten)

Wahoo! It’s ladies' day! (St. Maarten)

Their clothes or their grammar?  (St. John)

Amen to that! (St. Maarten)









These Ports are Made for Walking Part 2: Western Caribbean

Here’s good news for budget-minded cruisers who don’t want to shell out extra money for excursions at the Caribbean ports: there’s plenty to do just on foot. In an earlier posting, I covered some walkable highlights of the Eastern Caribbean, featuring San Juan and St. Maarten.
 
Here, I’ll do a quick take on the Western ports of Grand Cayman and Cozumel:
 

Slice of the Grand Cayman waterfront

Fish and other fun in Grand Cayman. Most ships dock in the center of George Town. The harbor
horseshoes around the blue waters, and provides plenty of shops—both high and low end—and a Margaritaville, as well as a bit of history in the form of (very few) remains of Fort George, originally built to protect the island from Cuban invaders.

 

Along the waterfront’s Harbor Drive, merely steps from the cruise pier, is a small fish market on the sand, where you’ll be as likely to find a snoozing local in the shade of the market tent as an array of snapper, grouper and other fruits of the sea laid out like handicrafts.


Take your pick among these fruits of the sea

The fishmongers throw chum into the water a few yards away, drawing two-feet long tarpon and other species, delivering an aquarium-like experience literally at your feet.
 
And if watching all this gives you a craving for fresh seafood, you only need to venture a bit further down Harbor Drive to find a restaurant sign beckoning with “You hook it, we cook it.”

Mexican mementos in Cozumel. The docking for most ships is Puerta Maya pier, two miles and about an $8 taxi ride into town. We did the walk a few times, but it’s not for the faint-hearted, especially under the scorching Caribbean sun. Perhaps the only benefit of doing so (along with walking off those newly accumulated calories) is the chance to spy an iguana scurrying in and out of the brush or check out the large modern supermarket (with public bathrooms upstairs) along the way. 

Fortunately, a plethora of shops have sprung up at the cruise terminal and during a recent trip, we found ourselves so immersed in the shopping, we never left it. 

Tchotchke shopping at the pier in Cozumel

While mass produced, there are plenty of inexpensive and different trinkets to bring home as mementos—from costumed dolls (actually made in Mexico!), colorful ceramics and onyx chess sets to the local specialties of vanilla and tequila.

If you want to spend a bit more, the jewelry store owners would be only too happy to show you their silver and stone. The shopkeepers can be quite aggressive, but it does work to your advantage. The price of a silver-and-lapis piece I was eying had dropped in half by the time I exited the store door. Needless to say, bargaining is strongly recommended.

Try to make it to the far end of the shopping village, where you’ll find Los Cinco Soles, the best of the shops. It’s an outpost of the bigger store in town, but has same higher quality of ceramics, jewelry, onyx, folk art, clothing and more. 

Fill your fruit bowl at Los Cinco Soles

One unique offering at Los Cinco Soles is a huge variety of watermelons, mangos, red peppers and other brightly colored papier-mâché fruits and veggies. Filling a lovely wooden bowl from the Western Caribbean port of Roatan (watch for a future posting) with these makes a great centerpiece (and conversation starter) for your table back home.

And if shopping’s not your thing, the pier’s got several places to eat and drink. Or, get your photo taken with a modern Mayan, submerge yourself for an underwater oxygen infusion or turn yourself into mush with a massage by the sea.

 

The Cure for Deck Plan Distress

Well, maybe I’m exaggerating the agony of trying to select a stateroom with those microscopic cruise catalog deck plans…or am I?
 
If you’re like me, you’ve pained and strained to read those numbers that seem to get smaller every year. We’ve done a Sherlock and wielded a magnifying glass. Stacked as many eyeglasses as our noses would hold. Held the catalogs up to the light and pushed them as far out as our arms could go.
 
The good news is that after the all the eye strain, the migraine and a dose of research, I now have a few decent suggestions for dealing with deck plans for picking that perfect stateroom:
 
1.      Blow it up. We’ve taken a page from the catalog, enlarged on the copier and then did it again and again until it got legible. Then, we mounted it on foam core.
 
2.      Look it up. Here are some websites that are a real help:

cruisedeckplans.com –Perhaps the best of the sites, it promises to “make cruise deck plans fun.” It certainly has a lot of neat features, which enable you to:

·        View a number of decks on one page, convert it to PDF for printing, and make the display larger or smaller (select “Deck Plans” from top menu)

·        Drag decks over each other to see what’s above and below (select “Drag Decks” from top menu)

·        Hover over a cabin to get a diagram and general square footage for a category

·        Where you see a photo icon on the deck, see actual photos of the area on the ship

·        Be alerted to possible issues in a deck area, such as “This blank space is a crew area and you may hear doors opening and other noise coming from this area” (a star on the deck plan indicates a comment)

 

And if you join for $8.99 a year, you get actual photos of rooms submitted by readers, as well as downloadable photos of public areas. There were quite a lot of photos, which makes the reasonable fee well worth the cost. 

In fact, they’ll even pay you—if you submit your own photos ($.25 each).

icruise.com—A great feature of this site is that you can plug in a room number and it takes you right to it on the deck plan, flagged by a can’t-miss-it flashing square. To use this feature, from the homepage, select “Cruise Lines,” then your ship and “Deck Plans” from the left menu. Enter your room number in the “Find Your Cabin” search. Be sure to include the letter with the room number when searching (e.g., D415) or it won’t work. 

Also, the deck plans are oversized and clear, and can be enlarged or reduced. If you select the “Public Rooms” tab (in the middle of the screen), it will show if there are any public rooms on that deck.

deckplangenius.com—This site claims advice on 83,000 staterooms. From the top menu, select “Cruise Ships,” your ship and then scroll down the page to select a deck. The deck plans are easy to read, but not enlargeable. Click on a room to get info about it, and pros and cons of the location. However, this info is very general in nature.

For example, the first room we chose, in a bump out, said, “At this time, there have been no extraordinary issues identified with this cabin. However, that does not mean that there are not possible issues with this cabin.” 

And the caption under the stateroom photo said: “It is not the actual picture of the stateroom, but should be quite similar to the actual cabin.” In fact, we’ve stayed in a mini-suite on the same Princess ship and this was not an accurate representation.

Some detailed reviews on specific rooms have been submitted by readers, which can be very useful, because they comment on everything from noise level to condition of the room. Unfortunately, there’s a limited number of reviews; for the Caribbean Princess, for example, there were only four.

cruiseshiprooms.com—Deck plans on this site are also easy to read, but, again, can’t be magnified. If you click on a room, you get just general info.  It provides an area for reviews and photos, but none was available for a room on either of two ships I searched.

 
3.      Give it up. The easiest way to pick a cabin, of course, is to let your travel agent do it. Or, select a “guarantee” room, which will save you some money, but you could end up with a room anywhere—including next to the laundromat.
 
Musing’s Top Tip: Other helpful resources for trip planning are cruise reviews—by folks like you and me who actually took the trips on the ships you’re considering. Check out this posting for some of the best cruiser review sites.

These Ports are Made for Walking

If you’re like me, you really appreciate a port with lots to do right around the pier. After all, ease of travel is one of the best parts of cruising.
 
Fortunately, there are a number of ports that are made for walking. And two that come immediately to mind are the Eastern Caribbean’s San Juan and St. Maarten. Here’s why:
 
San Juan


The colorful, captivating Old San Juan--just steps away from your ship

Even before you pull into the pier, you know this place will be special. The imposing 16^th century San Felipe del Morro fort greets your ship as you enter the harbor and land at old Europe’s doorstep. Walk off the gangway and you’re smack in the middle of Old San Juan, complete with lapis-blue cobblestones, horse-drawn carriages, statue-studded fountains and thriving cafes. Throw in the pastel facades of the Caribbean and you’re in picture-taking paradise.  
El Morro is one of two fascinating forts you can walk to in town; 17^th century Fort San Cristobal is the other. They’re well-preserved and each takes hours to explore. And with their positioning on the ocean, the photo ops are perfect.
 
Then there’s the shopping, the restaurants, the bars and the people watching. With your ship still tied up at the pier when night falls, you can see the place really heat up. Hang out at the plaza near Starbucks on the Calle Tetuan and let a fellow fill your arms with parrots—for a price, of course.

St. Maarten



Philipsburg has it all—shopping selections from high end to tchotchkes priced just right, a beach with cheap umbrella-chair-beer combos, restaurants, bars, casinos, all manner of water sports, Segways on the sidewalk and an overall lively scene. And once you take the water taxi, it’s all as far as you can throw your flip-flop.  

You can pick up the little ferry at the end of the cruise pier and it’s a great bargain: $5 for one way or $7 for an all-day pass (yes, you read that right). The ride is 10 minutes max, and you can even get a brew to go with your view of the turquoise water, beach and town.

Musing’s Top Tip: At the end of a cul-de-sac alley off the Boardwalk, near the courthouse, is a shop that sells inexpensive original paintings by local artists ($10-50 and up). Look for the cluster of paintings leaning against the wall (see photo above, third row) at the alley's entrance. Bargaining is accepted and don’t be surprised to find your artwork wrapped to go in the local newspaper.

 

What’s Alluring About the World’s Largest Cruise Ship

What’s the allure of the world’s largest ship? In a word, entertainment. Of the four cruise lines I’ve sailed with, no one does it better than Royal Caribbean.
 
The fare served up on the stages of Allure of the Seas is a refreshing departure from the usual shipboard shows and are worth the effort of scheduling your trip around them.
 
Allure’s full production of the musical “Chicago” was great fun, and the voices were strong and

Broadway on the seas.

clear. How neat is that—a Broadway-quality show for free! And if you get to the theater super early, you can even get the best seats in the house.
 
Then there was “Ocean Aria,” a diving and acrobatic show that’s so compelling you won’t want to take your eyes away for a second.

Adonis-like acrobat brothers wrap their bodies around each other in poses where you can’t tell where one body ends and the other begins. Divers from 90 ft. high fly into the air and amazingly, land gracefully and securely into the Allure’s tiny theater pool.
 
Inside the ship, on the ice rink, professional skaters—one a veteran of “Disney on Ice”—twirl, jump, spin and lift, while on a moving vessel, no less. The “Monopoly” theme lent itself well to playful and colorful sets and costumes.
 

Soaring from 90 ft. up.

The singers from “Chicago” re-emerged in “Blue Planet,” which had everything thrown in—acrobatics, singing and dancing—all in a celebration of nature. I won’t give it all away, but it included a trampoline, large rings and a human tree.
 
This comes on top of onboard surfing, ice skating, zip-lining, rock climbing and miniature golf. And then there are the three “neighborhoods;” their personalities ebbing and flowing by the hour. There’s the Promenade, the hub of the ship and venue for parades, dance classes and the best people-watching; Boardwalk, where you can ride a full-size carousel over and over again for free or eat foot-high pink cotton candy for a cost; and Central Park, an oasis of real foliage (but fake bird sounds).
 
Exciting, yes. But it does steal the show from the real leading lady—the mysterious, fascinating and ever-changing sea.
 
Not as Alluring
The Allure’s weak spot is the food. Some dinner dishes in the Main Dining Room were good (memorable was the shrimp on Italian-theme night), others were disappointing (Chicken Marsala was rendered as fried chicken with a nearly invisible sauce).
 
But what we most noticed—and missed—was the absence of beef choices, particularly compared to competing cruise lines.
 
We found that among the free dining options, the Windjammer buffet was often the best choice. Not only did it have a wider variety (shrimp crackers, anyone?), but some standout spicy Asian choices. It was a nice break from the usually bland and unimaginative dining room dishes.
 
Aside from the food, the other area where the ship doesn’t compare well to, say, the Caribbean Princess, is the staterooms. While okay on size, the Allure’s cabins offered less in the way of storage space. The closets are tight and night tables have open slots, which make them minimally useful.

Another downside is that the balcony chairs don’t recline, which makes seaside napping a challenge (but nothing that a glass of wine can’t cure!).
 
The Bottom Line
But, hey, you can’t be good at everything.

This may seem heretical, given all that the Allure and Oasis have going for them, but Musing wouldn’t recommend these ships for first-time cruisers. Because you’ll be permanently spoiled, and forever searching for the carousel and ice skating rink on every other ship.

Musing’s Top Tip: to really appreciate “Chicago,” stream or rent the movie version before your trip. And don’t forget to reserve all your shows online well in advance of your cruise. You can try to get in once on board, but be forewarned—the lines for standby outside the shows were substantial.

 

Photos by R. Greenburg