travels, races, and other musings

Disembarkation, Travel Home, and Final Thoughts Disembarkation day. This day is always the pits. I dragged myself out of bed and showered and then woke up Roger and Emmaline and we finished packing the few remaining items before heading up for breakfast. Regrettably, our assistant server wasn’t feeling well so another assistant helped out. It was too bad we didn’t get to say goodbye because she had done a good job and was very sweet. We lingered as long as we could over breakfast before we wandered to Azure to wait for our group to be called to disembark.  Disembarkation and customs were uneventful and not too busy and we were out at the curb in a few minutes. A friendly port employee directed us to the Uber waiting area and I requested a ride which arrived in about five minutes time. We went to a small coffee house halfway between the port and the airport and none of us were hungry, but we had nothing else to do so we ordered coffee and some oatmeal. The server was super f...

At Sea Oh bittersweet day. Our only sea day this trip and a day full of fun but with the knowledge that it was our last day on board. I woke up at 7:45 and went up to the gym, finding my same little corner and doing a workout. I came back to the room around 8:45 and Roger and Emmaline were still sleeping so I went back to Deck 9 and had a croissant and some hot chocolate and read a book. By 9:30 I was hungry for a real breakfast and went back to the room and woke everyone up and we all went and ate. At 10:15, Emmaline had a reservation to meet the princesses in the atrium so we went to that. I felt slightly wistful in that I suspect we are nearing the end of meeting princesses. After that I needed to shower (I was wandering around the ship apologizing to people for my workout aroma) and Emmaline wanted to go make a Mardi Gras mask in the French Quarter Lounge and Roger went with her to that.  They returned to the room and Emmaline wanted to do the next activity ther...

St. Lucia Our final port day dawned and I was up at 7:15. I showered and got myself ready and then woke up Emmaline and Roger around 7:30 and we all went up to breakfast. At 8:45 we went to meet for our DCL excursion in the Walt Disney Theatre. This was our second of two DCL sponsored Port Adventures we signed up for. This was our seventh cruise with DCL and only our third ever excursion booked through the cruise line. When we arrived at the Walt Disney Theatre, I remembered why that was. There was a HUGE line of people waiting to be checked in for a variety of excursions.  Once they got going, though, the line moved fairly well and we left the ship around 9 AM and got right on to the bus for our trip to the rainforest. It was about an hour drive, a lot of that was stuck in traffic in Castries. Finally we arrived at Rainforest Adventures for our combo tram ride, hike and zip line adventure. They got us geared up with our zip line gear and we did a short training line before...

Barbados I slept in until 7:45 (but still got up before everyone else) and went to the gym. I found myself a little corner for a workout. I sent Roger a message when I was done around 8:45 and he said that he was up and hungry so I went back to the room and woke up Emmaline and the three of us went to breakfast in Cabana’s. After breakfast we came back to the room and everyone got ready for the day.  Our excursion wasn’t until a little later so we went up to open house in Edge to try out the Jedi training VR game they were offering during that time. It was cool, but a little bit difficult and we really didn’t have the opportunity to play for long as we needed to get going for our excursion and there was a line forming behind us.  Again, I had posted in our Facebook group to see if anyone wanted to book a private tour and two families would be joining us for this one making the cheapest excursion of the trip. We started the tour by leaving Bridgetown and making abou...

Martinique I set my alarm correctly! Yay! We got up, got ready and ate breakfast before meeting up with another family from our Facebook meet group. I had put out the call on the group that we were looking for another family to split a private tour with us in Martinique and so we all set off from the town of Fort-de-France for our tour with our guide, Meri. We all piled into Meri’s tour van and set off for Sacre-Coeur de Balata (Balata Cathedral). This church was a smaller direct copy of the big Sacre-Coeur in Paris. It was built in the 20’s and had an art deco theme going on in the inside which was sort of unique. The setting was also beautiful with an amazing view. The Disney Wonder is in this picture on the water just left of center. We climbed back into the van and Meri drove us through the beautiful and lush rainforest on the way to a beautiful little waterfall. We had to hike down a little ways and across some slippery rocks to get there. Once we arrived, there were...

Antigua I set my alarm the night before for 7:15. PM . Oops. I woke up at 7:45, which is pretty late for me, but I was pretty tired. I quickly roused everyone and we tossed on some clothes and went up to Cabana’s. We raced through breakfast, returned to the room and grabbed all our stuff and were out the door on time at 8:35. Whew! We met up with our boat at 8:50 for our day with Adventure Antigua on their Eco Tour. As we made our way along the coastline, the guides pointed out interesting things along the way. We made one more stop at a large resort to pick up a couple more people, bringing our total number on the boat to 16, which just about the right number of people for the size of the boat. Our first stop of the morning was Hell’s Gate, which is a really cool rock formation with a natural bridge. We were given the option to explore the cave and natural bridge, snorkel, swim, or just chill on the boat. Everyone decided to head for the island. We all hopped off the boat a...