Cruising! Part 2

Day 2 was HAL’s Half Moon Cay.
We were all ready for this port and even had breakfast delivered to our room at 7:30 a.m. so we would be up and ready to go. At first there were some worries that it might be too windy to tender in. I was nervous! I really wanted to relax on this powdery sandy beach! We were a bit delayed, but they decided to tender away! Tim and I were in line for the first tender and got to the cay by 9ish. We found a couple of lawn chairs and set up camp on the beach. We enjoyed the sun, swan and snorkeled all morning.

HAL serves lunch on the island which was included. It was nothing special – a barbecue that was hot and crowded. We both had chicken, rice and fruit and I also had to have a piece of mahi mahi. After that we walked on the cay’s Nature Trail to the other side of the island. It was nice, but when we were done, we were hot and tired and ready to go back to the ship. We walked along the beach one last time before catching a tender back to the ship. I was glad that we weren’t going to be tendering in the next day. Don’t care much for that. That night we decided to check out HAL’s Italian restaurant called Canaletto. Now, this restaurant used to be included, but now the charge a $10 per person surcharge. This seems to be a popular thing to do among all the cruise lines. (As, I am sure, like HAL tries to get you to spend your money on things like spa treatments, fitness classes, drinks and excursions.) Anyways … it was a great time. Since we had just done the Lido thus far, it was nice to actually sit at a table and have people wait on us. Dinner was 4 courses. The first was antipasto, second was salad or soup, and for our main course Tim had Veal Oso Bucco with potato gnocchi and I the Chicken Cacciatore with parmesan polenta. For dessert Tim had Lemonchillo Cream and the
Tiramisu Trio.
Afterwards, we walked around the ship’s shops and peaked in on formal night in the main dinner room, The Vista. We had another early night reading.
Day 3 was Grand Turk.
We were really looking forward to this day as we had booked a snorkeling excursion. We got into port at Noon this day. So, we started off with a cycling class in the gym at 8 a.m., followed by breakfast by the Sea View Pool and then a Detox class. We learned a lot, but then the seminar ended up being a sales pitch for some algae detox program.
After arriving in Grand Turk we got on our catamaran to head out to Gibbs Cay to see some sting rays.

After that it was to the Oasis Sun Reef for snorkeling. There were two docile nurse sharks that lived here and we got to see them. Pretty cool, eh?

After we got back, had to have some more conch fritters! This time it was at Margaretville. The conch fritters weren’t near as good as the ones at the Southport Raw Bar (which actually ended up being the best conch fritters on the trip). We also had some cracked conch – it’s just not the Caribbean without conch! I also had a super yummy drink called a Havana’s Bananas and Tim had a Land Shark with tequila!
We checked out the Duty Free shopping then went back to the ship.
One thing we did that night and also the night before was to get a small cheese plate delivered to our room to go with the wine we brought along. HAL allows its passengers to bring along wine and champagne, but no other alcohol. So, it was nice to do each night. The cheese plate was really good and came with apricot chutney and an olive tapenade. Having free room services was so much fun! Ha!
I think I could get used to all this great service! HAL really is awesome when it comes to service.
We ended the night with dinner in the main dining room. It was very nice. I had shrimp cocktail, salad and Alaskan Crab Cakes with key lime pie for dessert while Tim had the shrimp and crab fritters, pepper pot soup and jerk chicken. We ended the night by enjoying some of the ship’s onboard entertainment. This night it was a comedian, and he was pretty funny!
Hope you enjoyed Part 2. More to come!

Cruising! Part 1

Well, Wow. As usual, who can believe 2012 has almost come to an end?

Haven’t gotten on here in sometime because I was on vacation Dec. 6-17! Yes, the big trip we’ve been talking about all summer and fall finally has come and gone.

Yes, Tim and I had been planning since May for a cruise to the Southern Caribbean. We knew we wanted to go somewhere this fall/winter. One of our personal/travel goals is to go on a tropical vacation once a year. Last year and the year before we went to Hawaii in October. In 2008, we went to Aruba. In 2009 we didn’t go anywhere. We really thought about going to Hawaii again this year (yes, we love it that much, and actually are planning on going there next year), but decided we ought to try somewhere new. Bonaire came to mind. We also wanted to do a day trip to Curacao from Bonaire while there. But then we saw a cruise advertised that not only went to Bonaire and Curacao, but also returned back to Aruba. We always said we’d like to go back there. While we won’t get to stay at the awesome resort we stayed at while we were there – the Buccuti (which hands down was the most awesome resort ever and we would stay there again in an instant) we would get to see the lovely island again, along with its friendly people. They don’t call it one big happy island for nothing. So, we settled on this 10-Day Southern Caribbean cruise, which also had stops at Half Moon Cay in the Bahamas – Holland America’s own private island – along with Grand Turk and the Dominican Republic.

The Turks and Caicos were on our list of islands we’d like to visit some day and the DR also spiked our interest. So, we were set. A 10-Day Southern Caribbean cruise it was. Now, a cruise hasn’t always been on our dream list. We often look at cruise ships when we visit other places and wonder just how fun that would be. Would it be full of a bunch of people just wanting all day buffets? Would the ship be crowded? Would it be bad for the environment? So, I did a little research, and it seems Holland America pretty much recycles everything on its ship and is as environmentally friendly to the earth as it can be. Its ships also are smaller than some of the mega 4-5,000 people ships. In fact, our ship only held 1,900. As for people just wanting all day buffets, well, that part is true. I seriously think some people just get up, get dressed up and eat all day. Tim and I obviously went because we’d get to go to 6 countries on one trip. It was really odd for us to hear some people on the ship talk abut not even getting off the ship in port. We also were excited to be very active on the trip. One thing we were a little worried about was the cruise line of the trip we found – Holland American Line. It is known as a classic cruise ship line and has formal nights were everyone actually dresses up with, I’d say, 50 percent of the men wearing tuxes and women in sequins and rhinestones — definitely not Tim and I’s thing. But they do have a casual Italian restaurant, the Lido deck, which is casual every night and in-room dinning that is included in the price of your trip. So, we thought we’d be OK. And, actually, in the end, we decided to do a couple of the formal nights. Tim and I aren’t really into partying down on vacation. So, didn’t think the more classic cruise line would bother us too much, and it didn’t. If I were to do it again, I’d go with a line that catered more to adventurous folks. And in fact, I have the cruise line already picked out that we are going to take next time. Yes, there will be a next time. I don’t know when, but when we do it is going to be on a Windstar cruise to the Virgin Islands. So, that is my review of the cruise. We had a great time. We had never cruised before and were very glad we experienced it. It was very nice to have your “floating hotel” and it was great to easily see 6 different islands. The only thing I didn’t like was having to remember what time you had to get back on the ship!

So, now that I’ve gotten the how, when, where and why out of the way. Let me tell you about the actual cruise!

To start out our trip, we first had to fly to Ft. Lauderdale. Our travel agent recommended we leave the day before. If you have a flight delay you are pretty much screwed as the ship ain’t gonna way for ya! So, we did and got into Ft. Lauderdale on time. The weather was lovely! (Such a welcome escape from December in Nebraska.) We stayed at the Embassy Suites close to the cruise port which also is close to the airport. It really is quite something how they have all this stuff made to be so easy for everyone. If we would have flew in the day of, we could have got on transportation at the airport to the cruise port.

However, since we flew in early, we did have to do an overnight in Florida, which I was OK with. I actually had never been to Florida, so it was nice to spend 24 hours there. After we got settled into our motel, we were starving because we hadn’t eaten lunch yet. So, we had a late lunch/early dinner and the loveliest place ever – the Southport Raw Bar. YUM. If you are ever in Ft. Lauderdale for a cruise – go there! We got there at 4 p.m. and found a nice table outside overlooking the water. We started with a dozen oysters on the half shell. We then had to get one our true loves – conch fritters! Well, I think these are more one of Tim’s true loves, but I like them too. And boy, were they freaking awesome. Seriously, they were the best damn conch fritters we’d ever had. We fell in love with these tasty little morsels, which are just kind of like hushpuppies with tiny bits of cracked conch in them along with onions and other herbs and spices, on our honeymoon in the Bahamas. The fritters are served with remoulade sauce for dipping, which is one of my favorite parts. I also had an ahi tuna salad and Tim some fried shrimp. After dinner we went back to the motel and enjoyed the pool that evening.

The next day we had a very leisurely morning. We had breakfast, we worked out and then we checked out at noon and headed to the cruise port. We were on our ship and in our room by about 1:20. It was very fast and easy to check in. After we got on the ship, we checked out our room. It was so much fun to finally be on the ship! We reserved a deluxe verandah room, which was very nice and extremely clean, but small. If you can spring it go for a suite. But the room served us just fine. We aren’t the claustrophobic type and we are fairly neat and tidy, so we didn’t have too much of a problem. I think a balcony is a must. Tim and I loved sitting on it enjoying drinks in the evening, coffee in the a.m. and watching the ship come and go from port. So, after we got to our room, we unpacked and put everything away in the closets and drawers provided. Did I mention we also had mail already? Ha! Our travel agent had bought us lunch in HAL’s Pinnacle grill – a nice touch. (The Pinnacle grill is HAL’s premiere restaurant which for lunch has a $10 per person surcharge and at dinner a $25 per person surcharge.) HAL has nice little touches on the ship, which I really liked. For example, they had plastic covers on our bed in which they set our luggage on. We also had stateroom attendants which introduced themselves right away and got us what we needed when we needed it. They put fresh fruit in our room each day and also cleaned our room each morning while at breakfast and each evening while we were away at dinner. They even left chocolates and towel animals each night! After we were unpacked, lunch was being served on the Lido. However, on our way there, we had a few sales pitches first. We were a little surprised; actually, just how many sales pitches there would be on this cruise. It seemed every time we left our room, someone was trying to sell us a bar package – like a wine tasting or a bar hop or a spa treatment. So, before lunch, we toured the spa where we signed up for a Detox seminar and 3 cycling classes, and also fell for a couple of the bar packages – a wine tasting and a mixology class. Finally, when we made it to the Lido deck, I chose a red curry seafood dish over rice with green papaya salad, which Tim had Pad Thai and rice. He also had to try a grilled Ruben. Yeah, that is how diverse the food options were. We thought we would get tired of the food after 10 days, but never did. I’ll tell you more about it each day, don’t worry.

After that it was off to explore every deck of the ship and then back to the stateroom to do a bit more rearranging before the 4 p.m. muster drill. After that it was sail away at 5 p.m. with a couple of yummy mojitos! How beautiful it was to sail away at sunset!

That night we played it casual again and enjoyed the Lido for dinner. Tim had Caesar salad, prime rib and a baked potato, while I had seafood Louise and a salad to start followed by ahi tuna along with carrots, zucchini and a butternut squash soup. Again, the food was hot and yummy and choices were abundant from the Lido deck and a nice casual start to our trip. After dinner we had a drink in the Crows Nest bar – Baileys and coffee for me and an Old Fashioned for Tim. Then it was bed time! What a day!

I hope you’ve enjoyed the start of my cruise! More to come!