Ben and Janet's Travel Blog: January 2018

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Tuesday, January 30, 2018- Grenada

We awoke as the ship was docking in Grenada. The waterfront is quite hilly and colorful. We have a UTV excursion booked over the internet with an outfit called Granada Sun Runners. We were scheduled to take a 3 hour tour starting with pick up at the cruise dock at 8:15. We had a quick breakfast in the Horizon Court and then packed for rain and sun with swim wear underneath. The weather looked threatening, but the temperature was close to 80 degrees.

We were at the place in the cruise terminal where tour operators meet their guests at 7:45am, so we logged on to the free Wifi, which only allows 20 minutes per day, to download emails and to try to upload photostream photos. 8:15 came and went with no sign of Sun Runners. We went to the information desk and they called Sun Runners to confirm they were aware that they had guests waiting at the cruise port, and said they were on their way. At 8:45, we had them call again, just as someone did show up. So much for punctuality. They must be on island time.

We walked around to the back parking lot of the cruise terminal, where two Polaris side by side UTV’s were parked. Our guide Bolo had us fill out paperwork and fitted us with bandanas and helmets. The bandanas are mandatory and used to cover our hair, but they assured us the helmets are disinfected between riders. The UTV’s have automatic transmissions and are pretty easy to operate, but they do drive on the left side of the road in Grenada. So it was nice to play follow the leader to get us through traffic safely.

As we were filling out the paper work, the sky opened up with a huge downpour. We had our gortex coats on, while the UTV helmets had full visors and provided good protection of our heads from the rain, keeping our heads dry and comfortable. We had to use our hands as windshield wipers on the visors as we were drenched with sheets of rain. Our lower halves could just have been submerged in a swimming pool for the amount of warm rain that soaked us to the skin. Fortunately, the combination of temperature, speed, helmets and gortex kept us comfortable despite the biblical class deluge of rain.

As we drove through the streets of Grenada, we were glad to be in the small UTV, and not jammed in a minivan or taxi because the streets are very narrow, and the deluge of rain turned parts of the streets into raging torrents of water. We stopped to see the National Sports Stadium and National Cricket Stadium. The Granadans were very proud to have an Olympic Gold Medalist in the 400m track and field event (Krani James). We also saw the only oil fired electrical generation plant on the island. We then climbed up into the hill sides to Fort Frederick, which should have had sweeping views of the Grenada and surrounding islands, but it was raining so hard, we could hardly even see the harbor and city below. While 80% of this tour ended up occuring on paved roads, many of the roads are in terrible condition, making our UTV’s ideal for getting around.

Next we headed to the Southeastern corner of the island and drove through some neighborhoods with very expensive houses with long paved driveways, but connected with the same terrible stretches of broken pavement and gravel roads. We ended up at a very picturesque but rugged bit of the coast with big surf and a rocky shoreline called Fort Jeudy. We then drove to an overlook of Boburn Bay and Hog Island.

From there we took the back roads towards the airport, and when I say dirt roads, I mean mud tracks, for some down dirty mud splashing squishing around fun. At one point, we went through a mud hold so deep that the footwells of the UTV started filling with muddy water, but we powered our way through. It’s impressive what these UTV’s can manage to drive through. We then made a stop at Grand Anse beach, one of the nicest and most famous swimming beaches in Grenada for a 30 minute swim. The sun actually came out and the rain stopped for the duration of our beach visit. Janet spotted crabs that lived in burrows in the sand. When you tried to get close for a picture, they would dart into their underground warrens, so gettin a picture was a bit like playing wack-a-mole. The water was a beautiful blue color, but the rains had clouded up the water so snorkeling probably wasn’t ideal. Still, it was refreshing and relaxing to bob around in the salt water. It was also nice to have Bolo watch our stuff and the ATV’s while we relaxed and had fun.

Our last stop was back to the Sun Runner’s office, which was between the Sands Resort and airport. They get most of their customers from the Sands Resort. We paid with a credit card, and the receptionist was kind enough to give Janet a nutmeg fruit with seed as a souvenir. As we were checking out, 4 more ATV’s turned into the driveway- all customers from the Sands Resort. We then got into a van for a ride back to the cruise ship and saw a bit of the Sands Resort, which is “All inclusive” meaning room, food and drinks. After dropping off the Sands customers, it was just Janet and I in the van as it drove back to the Cruise Ship terminal. The driver gave us a nice narrated tour, and drove to the tops of hills for viewpoints of the town, Grand Anse Beach and the cruise ship terminal now that there was a break in the torrential rains. He also gave us advice on where to shop for spices at the best prices. He dropped us off right at the cruise terminal, so we gave him a nice tip for the personalized private tour of St. George.

After taking showers and grabbing lunch, we walked back into St. George to walk around the public market for a bit. It was certainly a colorful scene, and the streets were flooded with school children in their school uniforms. Many of the stalls were empty or closed by then. The streets are very narrow and there is a lot of traffic, so you have to be careful not to get run over by cars or fall in to a ditch.

We returned to the ship and decided to check out the Elite lounge snacks and then attend the early show performance. We were pleasantly surprised to find them serving sushi rolls with pickled ginger, soy sauce and wasabi.

The show performance featured a Circ du Soleil juggler of 25 years, Steven Ragatz, who put on a high quality and entertaining show. There wasn’t anything done on stage that we hadn’t seen before, but he did it all with the style and timing befitting of a Circ du Soleil show.

We had Caribbean Jerk Chicken skewers and diver scallops for dinner which were quite delicious, followed by a new Chocolate Journey dessert that looked like a space age baked chocolate apple, but was filled with a light chocolate mousse, caramel and rings of dark chocolate.

Tomorrow, we arrive at 7am in Trinidad, and have a city tour of Port of Spain, with a cultural show scheduled at 8am. The ship is having a Caribbean Island sail away party on deck tonight, but we ended up getting our soggy clothes laundered instead.

Monday, January 29, 2018

January 29, 2018- St. Vincent

Monday, January 29, 2018- St. Vincent and the Grenadines

We awoke to find lush greenery outside our balcony as we were docked at St. Vincent. After breakfast, we made our way to the Wheelhouse lounge to check in for our ship excursion. From there, we had to wait in the Princess theatre. There were nearly 200 passengers taking the excursion we booked. They had a fleet of 21 passenger mini-buses although if they folded down seats that occupied the aisles, the buses could have been packed with nearly 30 passengers. It was still a snug fit with just 21, but not uncomfortable.

Our tour guide Elvin Jackson was easy to understand and had a good sense of humor. The streets of Kingstown are narrow, and people drive on the left side of the street. There are no traffic lights or stop signs, so the flow of traffic is pretty much a free-for-all. This is definitely not the place to rent a car casually. Weather since our arrival has been on and off rain showers with the temperature of 80 degrees. Not much sun.

Our first stop was Fort Charlotte, which had a great overlook of Kingstown and the Island Princess docked downtown. The Fort had never been attacked, but was built with cannons pointing inland because the British were more afraid of the Carib indians than the French Navy. It was a small but well preserved fort. It also overlooked the coastline where the Pirates of the Caribbean movies were filmed. Elvin said many of the islanders were hired as movie extras. It was windy, and cloudy, but as we were leaving, it did start raining pretty hard.

The second stop was the St. Vincent Botanical Gardens, which are amongst the oldest botanical gardens in the western hemisphere, established in 1765. There was a break in the rain that allowed us to walk through the gardens with Elvin pointing out some of the more interesting or historically significant species. Captain Bly of the HMS Bounty planted one of the first Breadfruit trees in the Caribbean in this garden. We saw the St. Vincent’s Parrot and Red-Footed tortoise, which are endemic to St. Vincent.

Our next stop was a crazy busy lookout over the Mesopotamia Valley, where most of the produce found in the Caribbean is grown. It was really windy, but there was again a break in the rain that allowed us to go out and get pictures and then get back into the bus. Seeing all the buses and taxis turning around on the narrow street was a real spectacle.

We then headed down to the Villa Beach, which was a tiny but scenic beach, where we were served rum fruit punch, made with the local white rum. As we were leaving, the sky opened up with a tremendous downpour. We used the Wifi at the terminal to download some emails, but the connections were poor, so we weren’t able to upload pictures.

We had lunch in the Horizon court buffet and then attended the afternoon Trivia game at 3:30pm. We teamed up with Bob from New Jersey, as well as 3 new partners- Al, Barb and Doug, who were all from BC. We came closer to winning this game, getting into a 3-way tie for first place. The tie breaker question was “How many times does the word “Blood “ appear in Shakespeare’s MacBeth?”. Our initial guess was 52, but at the last second we revised it up to 152, thinking MacBeth is a really long plan, and an especially bloody one. Well, it turns out that the real answer was 42. If we had stuck with our first guess, we would have tied again for first, but we lost. And the prizes were Princess wine bottle stoppers- something we could actually use. Better luck next time.

It was raining really hard as the Island Princess pulled away from St. Vincent. You could just see sheets of rain rippling across the water, and storm drains from the island turned into waterfalls emptying into the Caribbean.

While walking the decks for exercise, Ben found that there is an open balcony at the aft of Deck 8 where you can look out over the wake. It may be the only place besides private suites on the stern to be able to see that end of the ship as it traverses the Panama Canal towards the end of the trip.

We had dinner and tried playing music Bingo. This turned out to be a lot of work, and required a lot of teamwork. They handed out bingo cards that had names of songs and artists in each square instead of BINGO letters. There were 4 cards and each was unique. The host played a rapid sequence of audio clips. If you recognized a song and saw it on your card, you would mark that square. If you didn’t recognize the song right away, 10 seconds later, the name would scroll up on the screen, and disappear off the screen after 30 seconds. To add to the complexity, there were different patterns that had to be satisfied to call BINGO, and the first team to call BINGO would win, even if multiple teams could call BINGO on any game. We started as a group of 6, but split into two teams of 3 so that we’d have twice as many chances on the game cards. You needed one person dedicated to reading the names that scrolled on the screen and two players to scan the cards for the song names and artists and mark the squares. We have never worked so hard or intensely on a cruiseship game event. We managed to mark a BINGO, but were out-called by another team by seconds. The prizes were bottles of champagne for each game. We don’t think we’ll be doing that game any more because it was so complex and intense.

Because St. Vincent is where the Pirates of the Caribbean was filmed, the ship had a Pirate party following the music Bingo, so we stuck around to see what that would be. Then club band played Caribbean dance music while entertainment director’s staff were dressed in Pirate gear and engaging people to come up and dance on the stage. They then offered raffle tickets to anyone who came down to the stage and danced. Boy, that filled up the dance floor pretty quick. As it got louder, we took that as our cue to move on.

We attended the late show in the Princess Theatre which featured a “Female Impressionist” Karen Grainger, who was funny and entertaining. She did a number of songs by artists like Celine Dion, Barbara Streisand, Cher and Tina Turner while changing wigs and putting on exaggerated stage moves characteristic for each artist.

Tomorrow we arrive at Grenada, where we have a UTV tour booked. We will be sharing a side-by-side UTV, rather than riding individual ATV’s like we did in St. Maarten. We hope the weather will be nicer, but the forecast is for more of the same- 77 degrees with scattered showers. We’ll have to bring rain gear in addition to water shoes, sun hats, sun screen, sun glasses, beach towels and swim suits.

Sunday, January 28, 2018

Sunday, January 28, 2018- Martinique

The ship was still underway as we woke up this morning. Our arrival at Martinique was scheduled for 8:45. We booked a tour through the internet with Karambole Tours. This tour was discovered through Trip Advisor reviews, and while it followed the same tour stops as the Princess Cruises tour, it was a small group tour with a culinary sampling feature. Crystal, the proprietor, driver and guide, had received excellent reviews except for a couple of reviewers who felt that they had been crammed too many passengers into the minivan. We were just keeping our fingers crossed that the van would not be overfilled.

While I had criticized the breakfast buffet for its lack of cottage cheese, there was cottage cheese this morning. As for another of my favorites, there is always a pot of oat meal, but I like grits with bacon. There is a sign that Grits and Cream of Wheat are available on request, so I retract any criticisms of the breakfast. During breakfast in the Horizon Court, we were able to watch our approach to Martinique. There were roving rain showers that we went in and out of. The official forecast called for overcast with a chance of showers, but it was looking like we might actually be in for some real precipitation. Accordingly, we packed rain hats and umbrellas.

The ship ended up docking a bit late, so we didn’t get off the ship until 9:30am. There was a huge throng on the dock alongside the ship that was a mob scene, where the ship’s excursions were trying to get organized. We made our way to the head of the dock, where it was much less congested and easily spotted our guide by a colorful native Caribbean hat she wore. She later explained that this simple fabric hat was of Eastern Indian origins, and how it was folded denoted a woman’s marital status. If there was a single point on the front of the hat, this was a married woman and not available. However you could go up to as many as 3 points to say “come and get me” if you wanted.

Crystal was very easy to understand. Her English was excellent and she spoke at a reasoned pace. She taught high school english, but says that the French aren’t very good or diligent at learning languages other than their own, even if mandated by the state. Martinique is an overseas department of France, so residents of Martinique are French citizens.

After she greeted us she pointed out her van, a Mercedes Viano 9 seater (including the driver and a diminutive spot in the center between the driver and passenger with no leg room). There was a couple sitting in the middle from Michigan, who had booked a tour with another tour operator, but they said they were bumped from that tour because a woman that was also booked said she wanted the van to herself, so she “bought out” the van. There was one other passenger from our ship that had booked directly with Karambole Tours over the internet. She was single gal from Texas.

The Michigan couple claimed the middle row, so I hopped into the passenger seat to ride shotgun, while Janet and the gal from Texas sat in the 3rd row. Janet said there was plenty of leg, hip and shoulder room in that 3rd row with out a middle seat passenger. Crystal used a microphone connected to a rearward speaker mounted on the back of her headrest. I think the Michigan couple might have regretted their choice of the middle row because Janet needed to have the speaker turned up to maximum volume to hear the narrative in the back row.

Crystal did a good job pointing out sights and explaining historical tidbits as we drove through Fort-De France. There is a statue in the center of town of Josephine, Napolean’s wife. It is missing it’s head. She explained over the years, the statue had been decapitated by locals unhappy with political issues like slavery. The head had been replaced at least twice, and the third time it was decapitated, the town decided it was safer to simply display the head in a museum, and leave the statue headless. We learned a bit about Josephine including the fact that she hid her teeth in her portraits because they were rotten. Being raised in an aristocratic family, they had access to sugar, but weren’t into modern dental hygiene. We also learned that although she never fathered a child with Napolean, her daughter, who was adopted by Napolean, married Napolean’s brother, so her daugher and she were sister’s in law. Her daughter gave birth to Napolean the 3rd, and was also responsible for much of the royalty throughout northern Europe. And all this from a local Martinique girl.

Crystal explained that the name of her tour “a Pile et Face” meant to see both sides of the coin, referring to the wet rainforest side of the island, and the dry side of the island.

Martinique is a very hilly island, so driving around it involves a lot of twisting and turning through tight valleys. After a quick drive through Fort-de-France, we headed up into the rainforest. We drove past several land slides and learned that the Caribbeans have hundreds of small earth quakes a year because they are between the Caribbean and Atlantic tectonic plates. We learned that there are no banana plantations in the rain forest proper because it is too wet, and there isn’t enough sunlight. Bananas are grown in drier and sunnier parts of the island though.

Our first stop was the Sacre Coure of Martinique, which is a local copy of the Sacre Coure in France at Monte Marte. There were services going on because it was Sunday, but we were able to walk around the outside, peek inside and use the restrooms. True to French form, the men’s urinals are fully visible from the sidewalk.

Crystal offers treats and tastes on this tour. When we first boarded her van, she passed out handmade local sugar candy that were colorful, and tasted like dinner mints. At the Sacre Coure stop, we sampled two empanada like treats filled with guava and banana, along with some local banana wine. She baked the pastries fresh this morning.

We ventured further into the rain forest and stopped by a running creek at Pont de L’Alma. A local man was taking a dip in the creek. There was an abandoned hiking trail that started next to the bridge that the creek ran under. We could walk up some stone stairs into the rain forest to where the trail disappeared amongst monstrous tree roots. Crystal served us a local hot chocolate and cinnamon beverage with more freshly baked pastries. Ironically, they were called apple and cinnamon buns but contained neither apple or cinnamon, but were freshly baked and an excellent complement to the hot chocolate. She explained that in local lore, mermaids were born in rivers and streams, and grew their tails as they matured. The chocolate-cinnamon drink was thought to help mermaids grow their tails. Alas, nobody sprouted any tails in the van.

Our next stop was a waterfalls called Saut Gendarme, which would have been a beautiful stop except for the fact that a vendor had set up climbing ropes on the face of the falls, and was charging people 10 Euros to rappel down the falls. That was kind of obnoxious. The setting in the rain forest was nice, but you did have to descend some steep narrow and slippery stone steps to get to the falls.

We drove through a the small town of Le Morne Rouge where an unusual WWI Memorial featured a statue of a black soldier from Martinique who was sent to the trenches of WWI. The soldier held the French flag and a rifle, but Crystal said it would have been appropriate to put a flower in the barrel of the gun as the men who left Martinique eager to serve Mother France, were ill equipped to deal with life in the cold and miserable trenches on the front. Crystal was just full of local knowledge and surprising cultural depth.

Next, we visited Saint-Pierre, the former center of commerce and culture in Martinique until 1902 when Mt. Pelee exploded with a pyroclastic flow that wiped out the entire city, killing tens of thousands nearly instantly. The only survivor had been a prisoner in a basement cell. He was rescued but suffered severe burns. He eventually ended up making a career in the Barnum and Bailey Circus in the Freak Show as the sole survivor of the eruption of Mt. Pelee.

We encountered periodic downpours as we drove through the rainforests and then around the “dry” side of the island. Fortunately, most of the time when it was pouring down rain, we were driving from one stop to the next. Our next stop was the DePaz Rhum Distillery, where we were able to sample multiple types of locally produced rums, and learned the difference between light rums (distilled and rested in stainless steel drums) and dark rums (distilled, and then matured in oak casks). Their claim to fame is the use of pure locally grown cane mash instead of molasses as the basis of the liquid that is fermented. They had samples of most of their products. Janet liked the flavored rums (passion fruit) best, while Ben liked the 18yr aged dark rum. We walked around the distillery on a self guided tour, and then climbed back in the van.

Our last stop as along the western coastline at a viewpoint overlooking the Caribbean ocean. We were not able to see Mt Pelee, as it was shrouded with dense clouds all day. Crystal commented that this kind of raininess is unusual for this time of year, which should be in the dry season. Valleys that should normally be all brown were still verdant green. We sampled their local lager “Lorraine”, which was a fine beer for casual drinking, along with a pork stuffed pastry commonly served around Christmas. We did learn however, that the favorite beverage of the islanders is French Champagne. We encountered a bus full of fellow Princess cruise passengers who looked jealously at us as we relaxed with our beers. Their tour bus had a guide who only spoke French and Spanish, so these ladies were not very happy with their excursion.

We were dropped off at the cruise ship terminal just in time for us to make the 2:30pm afternoon trivia. We sat with two new couples, Dan, Jenny, Laurence, and Pat. We started as a single team, but eventually broke up into two teams after irreconcilable differences arose over some of the answers. As it turned out, our version was correct, but it wasn’t enough to win the game. We ended up with 11 points while the winners had a whopping 16.

We got cleaned up and had afternoon tea. We ended up sitting next to the same couple we had afternoon tea with yesterday- a Filipino woman and her Greek husband, who were very pleasant and well traveled. They strolled through town, but were disappointed to find everything closed. They have been to most of these islands many times in the past, so weren’t really expecting anything new this time. They just enjoy cruising through the islands. After tea, went back to the head of the dock to use the Wifi, until a moving van appeared and started to pack up the building. They thought the ship was scheduled to leave at 4:30pm-as originally planned but later altered to 6 p.m.The Wifi got switched off prematurely. We were able to download some emails before it went down. A Caribe percussion band came down to the dock to bid us farewell with a rousing selection of drum and whistle songs. Martinque celebrates carnival and the band represented some of the island’s culture with homemade costumes and a lot of red color

We went to dinner at 6p.m. The head maitre’d was able to get us a table upstairs in the fixed dining room. We had oysters Rockefeller and frog legs. The oysters were shucked and cooked on a bed of spinach covered with a white cheese sauce. They were tasty, but not as good as Panko pan fried in our experience. The frog legs came attached to the pelvis, so it was a bit gross. The meat itself was very bland- not fishy at all, but somewhere between chicken and tilapia. They were OK with a bit of salt and pepper, but we wouldn’t go out of our way to order them again.

We then got to the Princess theatre for the evening show, which featured a Xylo-Synth player David Meyer showing off his virtuosity with a selection of popular and classical music arrangements. His wife came on stage to do some lighted baton twirling and modern dance to accentuate some of his numbers, but her rendition of Carmen was a bit strange. But it was entertaining and good quality.

We actually had an opening to do the 9:15pm evening trivia, which featured close up pictures of items that needed to be identified. We missed just 3 out of 21, but finished one point out of the lead. We decided to play alone rather than joining a larger team. We were getting closer to a win.

Ben made a trip to the buffet to pick up grapes for Janet, and a bowl of wonton soup and samplings of their Caribbean night cuisine which included jerk chicken and ribs.

Tomorrow, we arrive at St. Vincent and the Grenadines, where we have our first official Princess booked excursion.

Saturday, January 27, 2018

Saturday, January 27, 2018- St. Maarten

We awoke to find the ship tucked into port at Philipsburg, St. Maarten. There was an empty second cruise ship dock outside our balcony, and a small containership facility beyond this. St. Maarten appears to be made up of multiple cone shaped peaks. There were a pair of large water storage towers on the hillside closest to the cruise ship docks, but one of these appeared to have been smashed in and partially collapsed. Undoubtedly the result of hurricane Irma last fall. The destination lectures included pictures of the cruise ship dock showing a nice large building at the head of the dock housing shops and poorly working wifi. However, when we looked off the bow of the ship, instead of the building, there were piles of debris- another victim of Irma. The temperature was about 80 and there were scattered clouds with a forecast for partly cloudy weather.

We had breakfast in the Horizon Court buffet. Unlike our experiences on Norwegian Cruise Line, where we always had trouble finding a place to sit, there seems to be much less crowding and greater availability of seating in the Horizon Court. The breakfast selection was satisfactory, although I noticed there was no cottage cheese when I was craving some cottage cheese and peaches this morning.

We noticed we were docked next to a fabulous mega yacht named “Eclipse”. Everything about this boat just dripped with money. It had it’s own custom power gangway that retracts into the hull, and a custom landing complete with carpeting with the “Eclipse” logo emblazoned on it. There were two helicopter pads, and the dingy appeared to be as large as one of the Island Princesses tender vessels. The captain made an announcement that this was a private yacht, the second largest in the world, owned by a 51 year old Russian private investment fund owner. I wondered if that really meant “launders money for the Russian mob”.

We had booked our excursion through the iPhone Shipmate App, which processes the orders through a company called Shore-Ex. The printed electronic ticket included instructions to meet the representative of Blue Bubbles by the bronze statue near the tourist information desk at the head of the dock at 9am. We had no trouble finding the spot and arrived at 8:45. 9am rolled around and nobody showed up. We waited until 9:10am, and then called the local contact number, which didn’t pick up, and then the emergency contact number, which ended up being a disconnected number. We were beginning to get a bad feeling about this, but on the second call to the local contact number, someone picked up and instructed us to get directions from the tourist information desk on how to get to where they were. The tour desk person said to walk out through the cruise dock security gate and ask for “Kayum” or something like that. So we walked out of the cruise terminal gate to find a bunch of taxi drivers milling about. I shouted “Anyone here know Kayum? We are supposed to do an ATV tour with him.” One of the taxi drivers put his sign down and had us follow him down the road. There is a lot of debris and torn up infrastructure, including large holes where the sidewalk had once been, and conduit and wires poking out of the ground all over the place. We walked about a half block and then crossed the street to what looked like an alley. There was a small lot surrounded by battered fencing that contained what looked like a bunch of wrecked ATV parts, but this was apparently our guy. A young man with gold chains around his neck and gold caps on his front teeth came out to greet us and introduced himself as Safraaz. Janet asked if that was a Carib name, but it was Arab. He had come to St. Maarten from South Africa. He got on his cell phone and after a brief conversation with whomever was on the other end, he concluded that we were the only two customers for his tour today. This was actually the first time they have had customers for ATV tours since Hurricane Irma devastated the island. The Island Princess was only the second Princess cruise ship to call on St. Maarten since Hurricane Irma.

Safraaz then walked into the lot and miraculously started up and backed out two ATV’s. Looking around, it looked like there were only 3 out of the more than 20 ATV’s in the lot that were in drivable condition, so I guess it’s a good thing we were the only customers today.

After the briefest of safety and instructional briefings, he mounted a small scooter- not an ATV, and lead us off. While we were on an ATV tour, we might all just have well been on scooters or motorcycles because the entire tour stayed on St. Maarten’s paved roads. However, the ATV’s are easy to use and feel a bit more substantial than his tiny scooter for getting around in the island’s traffic.

Shortly after we headed off, it began to rain on us, but the rain was fairly light and the 80+ degree weather made it not at all uncomfortable to get a bit wet. That lasted less than 5 minutes. We were probably doing 40+mph on the roads in places, but got to see most of the island. The island is very hilly, and there is quite a bit of traffic, so this would not be a place to do a bicycle tour.

What was quite striking was the extensive damage everywhere. Trees and cacti were in twisted heaps along the roads, and most homes did not appear to have roofs on them at this point. We did spot some huge bright orange and yellow iguana’s sunning themselves on some of the downed twisted up trees. Along the water, there were boats of all sizes and shapes strewn about or capsized in the water, or on the shore. There were hundreds if not thousands of wrecked ships in the waters and harbors around the island. Many cars were driving with smashed windshields and plastic duct taped over other windows that had been smashed. We also saw a few upside down airplanes and crushed cars in a few places. Virtually every standing building has some damage to the siding and roof, and there are lots of lots that are just piles of debris.

Our first stop was at the famous (infamous) Orient Beach on the French side of the island, or St. Martin. There were French flags marking the border crossing, and not much else. Orient Beach is touted as one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, and features a nude portion as well. The hurricane ended up pulling a lot of sand off the beach, and utterly destroyed the Orient Beach Resort that backed onto the beach itself. The locals have erected a bar and cantina at the near end of the beach, and have set out beach chairs and umbrellas. When we were there, there must have been a 40mph wind blowing onto the beach, so getting in the water would have not been so much fun. We walked along the beach, and encountered a few nude sunbathers, but with bodies that you really did not want to see in the nude. It was funny to see some of them with the Princess Cruises blue tote on the sand next to their beach chairs. I’m not sure we’ll want to be dining with any of them. At the end of the beach is the remains of a once famous bar and restaurant. It as totally destroyed. The front of the building looked like a giant had decided to sit on the building, and it slipped out from behind him as it collapsed.

We walked back to the ATV’s through what had once been the resort. The bungalows were made of steel reinforced concrete, but they looked like a giant had crushed them like saltine crackers, and knocked them down. We found some conch shells amongst the debris that will make their way home as souvenirs.

Our next stop was Marigot, the French capital on the island, which had a shopping district that we passed on. We also drove by Grand Case, an area famous for its cuisine. There were some delicious smells wafting out of the restaurants as we rode by. We also saw some seafood vendors cleaning fish along a seawall as we rode past.

We then rode around the St. Maarten airport, which has it’s only runway backing on a small but beautiful beach. You’ve probably seen YouTube videos of tourists standing under enormous jets flying just over their heads making their final approaches to the runway, or tourists getting tossed about like rag dolls in the jetwash from jets taking off from the runway. We got there about 11:45, and a Jet Blue airliner was scheduled to land at 12:05, so we took a quick but refreshing swim in the beautiful blue water and waited on the beautiful white sand beach for the Jet Blue to arrive. It never showed, but two turboprop commuter planes did land over our heads, so it wasn’t a complete loss. A 737 did take off, and we saw a bunch of Japanese tourists, scrambling down the beach towards the water, blasted by sand and jet wash, along with their hats and bags. That was worth the trip seeing that little comedy.

Our last stop was a huge flag erected on a hilltop to inspire the islanders after Irma. It was erected 3 months after the storm. We wondered if it had the desired effect, but Safraaz said many islanders would have rather seen the effort and concrete put into putting roofs on houses.

We got showered and changed back on the boat, and had a little bit of free time before the ship was scheduled to depart. Ben decided to try to walk into town to see if he could get some pictures of the devastation since we didn’t stop while we were driving the ATV’s to take pictures. He got halfway into town when the sky let loose with a huge downpour. Ben turned around, and by the time he got back to the ship, it was like he had stepped into the shower with his clothes on.

We had afternoon tea with a couple who had taken the ship’s bus tour around the island and compared notes. We certainly got a much closer look at the destruction at Orient Beach. They never say any nude people or any of the resort.

We had dinner and then saw the late showing of Lovena Fox doing some Broadway show tune. It was a terrific show, and she got a well deserved standing ovation.

We dropped in late on a music trivia game featuring power ballads, and confirmed what we already know- we suck at music trivia, although none of the teams competing did very well. The winning team got 17-1/2 points out of 40. We arrived halfway through the game, and scored 8.

Today was international chocolate cake day, so there was a wide assortment of chocolate cakes of many different styles featured in the buffet. We picked up samples of several, but aren’t really sure when we’ll get around to eating them.

Tomorrow we arrive at Martinique, a bit of France in the Caribbean. We have a tour booked with a local provider outside the Princess shore excursion offerings. We’ll see how that goes.

Friday, January 26, 2018

Friday, January 26, 2018- At Sea

We were able to get up before 7am with some effort and had breakfast in the Horizon Court buffet. We attended the am Trivia, teaming up with John and Wyn from Chicago, and Roger (Santa Claus) from Arizona. Roger is a professional Santa, and recently came from a convention of the International Brotherhood of Naturally Bearded Santas. Yes, that is a real thing. Can you imagine the Las Vegas strip over-run by drunk Santas? We fared no better than yesterday, but made a decent showing, scoring 15/20. The winners got 17, and won the wine bottle stoppers. Ben hit the fitness center before lunch. We had a short morning as the ship jumped its clocks forward an hour from 11:59am to 1:00pm as we crossed into the Atlantic time zone. We did the hamburger and brat stand along with the pizza bar for a quick lunch and then attended the afternoon trivia. We teamed up new people, Fred and Jannine and Ken and Tam. Fred and Ken both were a bit aggressive with answers they knew, but didn’t really, reversing our correct answers on 3 questions. We bombed that trivia pretty bad, scoring 11/20. Guess we really miss Judy, Rick and Joanne. We’ve got to get us some wine bottle stoppers before this cruise is over.

This was the first formal evening. We got dressed up and headed for the dining room right as it opened, and avoided the long lines. Service was pretty slow, but the food was good. Ben had leg of lamb and Janet had prawns. The best part was a new raspberry Chocolate Journey dessert.

The evening show featured Princess singers and dancers doing songs by Billy Joel, Barry Manilow and Elton John called “The Piano Man”. It was a good show. We had seen it on an earlier cruise. The stage decor was slightly simplified as the last time we saw the show, there were a few digital screens suspended above the stage with stylized portraits of Billy Joel, Barry Manilow and Elton John. These screens were omitted. The dancing and singing were good. It was notable that the dancers and singers were all racially diversified- not all tall blond Ukranian imports. There were two black, two asian, and two caucasian female dancers. The male dancers also looked quite diverse, although it was hard to exactly pinpoint their racial make-up because most appeared to have some mixed racial features. The lead singers were two tall blond caucasians (male and female) and a pair of asian singers (tall male, very petite female- Princess must have had to invest in an entirely custom wardrobe for her because she was tiny).

After the show we dropped in on a gameshow for just a little bit where the cruise staff put up a scenario, and then competing teams would write out answers and turn them in. The answers would be tallied and the most common answer would be deemed correct and a point would be awarded. The question we saw was “If your wife came home with a new hair style, what would be the worst thing you could say to her?” The answers varied from “Did you get the license plate?” to “Don’t worry, it’ll grow back”. The winning answer was along the lines of “what happened to your hair?”. We didn’t stick around, opting to go just a little further astern to the fitness center to ease some of our guilt.

Tomorrow we arrive in St. Maarten, our first port of call. We have an ATV tour booked through the Shipmate App. St. Maarten was 80% destroyed during the last hurricane season, and our ship is only the second to return to St. Maarten since then. It’ll be interesting to see how the islanders have managed to get the cruise port opened, and to see if they’ve cleaned up the tourist sites. One of the most popular destinations is a beach at the aproach of the international airport where jets swoop very low over the sandy beach to the delight of drunken tourists on the sand below. After the Hurricane, much of the sand was gone and replaced with wrecked boats. They say the islanders have worked tirelessly to get thing things back open for tourist business since that is the lifeblood of the local economy. We’re hoping the ATV’s will allow us to get a closer look at what’s been fixed, and what’s still destroyed.

Thursday, January 25, 2018

Thursday, January 25, 2018- At Sea

We must still be on west coast time because we had a hard time rolling out of bed even at 8:30. We had breakfast in the dining room by ourselves. It was hard to imagine trying to carry on a conversation before having coffee. We missed the destination expert lecture at 9am but that should end up rebroadcast on the TV. We did make it for the first trivia game of the cruise. We were joined by Bob from New Jersey, Carl from the San Francisco Bay area, and Jackie from St. Louis. Overall, it was a pretty easy game, but we scored 15/20. there were 5 teams that scored 16/20. The tie breaker was “How tall is the Eiffel Tower in meters? Two teams guessed 300m, and they were awarded prizes, which were Princess wine bottle stoppers. We would have guessed 318m, while the answer was 320m, so we could have won if we had gotten just one more answer.

We sat with a large group of Canadian’s at lunch. The majority of the passengers we have encountered have been either American or Canadian, with a lot of the Canadian’s coming from Vancouver.

Although we told ourselves we would not spend so much time on trivia this cruise, we ended up going to afternoon trivia to keep us busy. We joined a couple from Chicago, a gentleman from Vancouver BC, and Bob from New Jersey, whom we had teamed up with in the morning. We ended up with 14 points, two points off the top, although there was one winning team with 16 points, so no tie breakers. The winning team got aluminum water bottles.

We had afternoon tea, and have to mention dining room procedure changes made due to the recent Norovirus outbreak on this ship. There are no salt and pepper shakers, bread basket with rolls or butter on the tables at dinner. The waiters come around and serve the rolls individually, along with butter pats. If you want salt or pepper, they will bring the shakers out, but probably have to disinfect them between uses now. The buffet now has a line of sinks for hand washing and the line has been restructured so there is only one way into the buffet area. Once you exit the serving area, staff don’t let you re-enter the serving area unless you go back through the entrance. Hopefully, these changes will keep us all safe and healthy, but it takes longer for the dining room staff to serve meals.

We attended the early Showtime Princess Theatre show featuring vocalist and dancer Lovena Fox, who did a very entertaining and energy filled show.

There was a long line for the dining room after the early show, so we retired to our room for a half hour to freshen up, but when we returned, the dining room line was just as long. So we ended waiting another 10 minutes to be seated. We ended up on a 2 top next to a couple from Naples Florida, who had moved there from Baltimore. The husband is a fraud investigator, so it was interesting to learn about the scams that he has uncovered. This couple was the first we have encountered who are getting off the ship in Buenos Aires, rather than completing the 60 day round trip to Fort Lauderdale. Later in the evening, Ben met a woman from Vancouver who flew to Los Angeles to board the ship. It then sailed through the Panama Canal to Fort Lauderdale, where we boarded. Then she will do the 60 days with us, and then stay on the ship as it goes from Fort Lauderdale back through the Panama Canal to Los Angeles, so she will be on this ship for 90 days. She says she hates to fly.

After dinner we saw the Canadian comedian Scott Harris in the Explorer’s Lounge, where he put on another very funny show. The theme of this show was on getting older, and remember when…

Tomorrow, we cross a time zone, but rather than turn our clocks forward at bedtime, the whole ship will simply skip the 12noon hour, going from 11:59am to 1:00pm. That’s the first time we have encountered a mid-day time zone transition in our cruising history, so we’ll see how that goes.

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Wednesday, January 24, 2018- Fort Lauderdale Embarkation

Princess Cruises certainly appears to want its customers to feel at home, even on the land extensions for their cruises. The atrium of the Embassy Suites has two banks of bubble elevators, not unlike the atrium of the cruise ships, and the breakfast buffet was a full American hot made to order breakfast. You could certainly see the majority of guests fit the “Cruiser” profile, including us. We could see the Island Princess docked at Port Everglades from the small balcony of our 4th story room. The bell staff came and picked up our suitcases right at 9am.

The transfer from the Embassy Suites to the ship took a while because of the number of passengers and bulk of their luggage. The bus ran out of storage space for bags, so they had to arrange an extra bus to carry all the bags and passengers.

This was our first cruise with Platinum status, which entitles us to priority boarding, but this particular cruise, with it’s 60 day itinerary, attracts seasoned cruisers, so probably 80% of the passengers were either platinum or elite status, so there were very few non-priority passengers. This lead to the odd situation where the non-priority lines would be empty, while the priority lines would be jammed. Therefore, they treated everyone the same. We did end up sitting in the cruise terminal for a couple of hours while the ship was prepared for boarding, but they did provide snacks, bottled water and free Port Everglades Wifi.

Once boarding started, things went pretty quick, and we were soon at our room, C301. This is a mid-forward balcony on the starboard side. This was a very familiar room for us, with plenty of storage for even a 60 day cruise. We only had one unused coat hanger in the closet, but we were able to hang everything that needed to be hung. It’s nice to have a real desk with drawers, and night stands with two drawers and a cubby each. The balcony is a decent size and we have a direct view down the side of the ship to the waterline. There was an odd smell in the bathroom, and the TV was missing the remote control There used to be a shelf in the corner where the TV resides, but this was removed (torn off the walls with some unfinished damaged drywall behind the TV) to make room for the much larger flat screen TV.

Ben found a case of bottled water and a bag of cleaning supplies stuffed under one of the beds. At first we thought this stuff was left by prior passengers, but after we met the room attendant Jojan (East Indian), he explained the water and cleaning supplies were his. He had hidden them in our room for some reason that didn’t make a lot of sense, but he did clean up after himself and got us a replacement TV remote control.

We toured the ship and found several unique features compared with most of the other Panamax sized Princess cruise ships we have cruised on in the past. The most notable changes are:

1. No Skywalker’s lounge at the aft of the ship. This looks like a aerodynamic spoiler at the rear of the ship. This has nice views because it wraps around the stern and has wings that allow looking forward along the sides of the ship.

2. The Promenade deck does not wrap around the stern of the ship. On most other Princess ships, you can look out over the wake, but on the Island Princess, you have to cross from one side of the ship to the other through the aft elevator/stair bank. The bow walk is an entirely enclosed hallway, so you can’t see the front of the ship. The Promenade deck is real teak, but is showing wear in areas.

3. The Fitness Center is buried at the aft of the ship at deck 6 aft of the aft elevators/stairs. There are no windows, but it is well air conditioned and equipped.

4. The main buffet is situated at the front of the ship on the Lido deck. It seems like every other cruise ship we have been on to date has this situated at the aft end of the ship. We had lunch in the Horizon Court buffet, but it seemed smaller and had fewer selections than on other Princess ships. However, it never seemed crowded and there were plenty of places to sit, and excellent table service.

5. There is no Club Fusion at the aft of the ship either.

The ship was quite late in pulling away from the dock. We were scheduled to depart at 5pm, but it was nearly 7pm before the ship left Port Everglades. We had dinner in the main dining room (Bordeaux) for anytime dining and shared a table with a group of 4 from Carnation, and a pair of women from Canada who didn’t know each other before boarding the ship, but were matched by a travel agent so they wouldn’t have to pay the single supplement, which essentially doubles the cost of the cruise. One woman was from Vancouver, while the other was from New Brunswick.

The Princess Theatre had a single showing, featuring a Canadian comedian, Scott Harris, who was pretty funny. He was actually a last minute fill in because the originally scheduled comic had the flu. He said he was from Toronto and had a Chinese wife and two dogs. Every evening at dinner, he would count the dogs (insert laughter). He also joked about how in Japan they have these fancy toilets. If you push on button the seat warms up. If you push another button, a convenient water fountain squirts up so you can get a drink. He also found the back scratcher kept by the toilet very handy when he had a peeling, itching sunburn on his back.

The ship was surprisingly dead by 10pm. There was not a soul in the Explorer’s lounge, or any of the bars. There were 3 or 4 people still in the Wheelhouse lounge, but there was no live entertainment or music going on. I guess it’s going to be a quiet and thoughtful kind of cruise.

Wednesday, January 24, 2018- Embassy Suites pictures

Wednesday, January 24, 2018- Fort Lauderdale Pre-Embarkation

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Tuesday, January 23, 2018- pictures of Princess Greeter and Embassy Suites

Princess Greeter at Fort Lauderdale Airport and Embassy Suites room.