travels, races, and other musings

St. Maarten As per usual, I woke up earlier than Roger and Emmaline. I donned my running costume and headed up to deck 4 for a run on deck. Given that I saw people running in both directions, I knew that the forward part of the deck was already closed down for mooring operations and it would be a u-shaped sort of run. I had hoped that an hour and half prior to “all ashore” would be early enough to be able to run full laps, but alas, no. After my run, I went up to deck 9 to have a little snack and enjoy the quiet of the morning as we made our way into St. Maarten. Eventually Roger and Emmaline got up and we enjoyed a leisurely and slow morning doing a bunch of not much until it was time for our excursion: SeaTrek. We had booked a DCL sponsored excursion this time around, a rarity for us, but it looked like fun so we decided to give the helmet dive a try.  After meeting in Azure at 11:15, we were led off the ship where we signed a bunch of waivers and were given a run d...

Castillo San Felipe del Morro and Embarkation I woke up before the alarm went off and sort of relaxed in bed for awhile before getting everyone up and ready for the day. We went downstairs for our free “breakfast” which was really minimal. Perhaps one of the most minimal hotel breakfasts I’ve yet encountered. They had bread and bagels for toast, blueberry muffins, yogurt, two kinds of cereal, cold ham and sliced cheese. As far as liquids water, orange juice, milk and coffee were available. We ate a little bit before requesting an Uber to take us to Castillo San Felipe del Morro, aka “El Morro.” We arrived at the fort just as they were opening. We had a good time exploring the fort which has a great overview of both the history of Puerto Rico and San Juan as well as the fort. We stayed for a little over an hour before we made our way to a little coffee shop nearby where we had more of a substantial breakfast and some good coffee. After this, we took an Uber back to ou...

Travel To San Juan, Puerto Rico It's time for another cruise with the mouse! Not only that, it's time for another Southern Caribbean cruise. We also took a Southern Caribbean cruise out of Puerto Rico last year, but this time we visit completely different islands. This year we will only spend one night in Puerto Rico before embarking on the Disney Wonder for the islands of St. Maarten, Antigua, Martinique, Barbados and St. Lucia.  We didn't have as early of a start this year (thankfully) but it would mean a later arrival into San Juan. Since we were only staying one night, it ended up being cheaper and simpler to just stay at a hotel.  Our travel day was uneventful with the exception of some minor forgetfulness on my part. My brain was a bit scattered and I didn’t go through my final packing checklist and once at the airport, we realized we had forgotten Emmaline’s iPad. I told her she could watch some things on my computer on the airplane and she had homework ...

DCL vs. RCCL Final Comparisons and Thoughts And now we revisit the big question, are we cruise people or are we Disney cruise people? Well, I will say, I think that my heart does, in fact, belong to Disney. That said, we did have a good time on Royal. There were some ups and downs and it was a lot of fun to have some new experiences. I’ve seen other break down their thoughts category by category and I think that’s helpful, so I’m going to take a stab at it. Ship Feel/Aesthetics/Cleanliness I will say that from the outside, the look of Disney’s fleet are hand-down, the most beautiful cruise ships on the sea. Period. Inside, in the public spaces I thought that the Mariner was quite nice, having just been overhauled and updated. The public areas all seemed really sleek and nice and definitely felt on par with DCL in terms of decor. That said, everything was always LOUD in the public areas. I prefer the bright cheery atrium on DCL with it’s big portholes and quiet music. Promenade was...

Walt Disney World I don’t usually write full on detailed trip reports of WDW. This was our fourth trip with our first being four days in April 2013, then we went again for a few days in June 2014, combined with our first ever cruise on the Disney Dream. Our most recent trip in October 2017 was a full week. So for this trip, we were mostly focused on trying a few new things and hitting our favorites. I’m still a planner, though and I had some detailed plans, but I also had some days that were less planned (*gasp*). As I mentioned in the last entry, we split up, with Roger returning home. He’s not as big on the parks (definitely prefers cruising) so he wasn’t super sad to miss out. The path that leads to the boats at Wilderness Lodge. Since we now know how things work, at this point we can get away with having fewer plans (new folks - don’t try this - I recommend PLANS) and when things don’t go your way, like torrential rain and lightning storms shutting down half the rides for mu...

Debarkation and Walt Disney World Having purchased The Key, we were able to attend a sit down debarkation breakfast. But it sounded long and the selection limited and we decided it just sounded simpler to go to Windjammer instead so that’s what we did. After breakfast, we hopped back to the room to grab our carry on bags and went to where we were supposed to meet for our special “priority” debarkation with The Key. I have to say, we did get to skip the line, but it was sort of awkward and ill handled. I felt really self conscious as we got odd (and a few downright dirty looks) as we were basically just lead to the front of the line to have our cards scanned and get off the ship. Once in the terminal building we found our luggage, reshuffled some items and then got in the line for customs and immigration. And then we waited and waited and waited and waited. And waited. We have debarked in 5 ports: Port Canaveral, Miami, Puerto Rico, Civitavecchia (Rome), and Vancouver. I was going t...

CocoCay Royal Caribbean’s private island of CocoCay certainly looked amazing when I woke up in the morning and went to have a look. Regrettably, our port side stateroom did not look out onto the island, but at the sea instead. I made my way to decks 12 and 13 to get a better look and snap some photos. We got changed, ate breakfast in Windjammer and went ashore as soon as possible. In advance of our sailing, I had purchased all day waterpark passes for us to enjoy the waterpark. Let me pause here to talk about things that cost extra on Royal. There are some thing that are extra that I don’t mind paying extra for: specialty coffee, upcharge restaurants, bottled water, alcohol, and tickets to a water park that cost $250 million dollars to build. That said, I don’t want to be bombarded with these things and I do feel that I was. Before our sailing, I received emails nearly daily about adding on to our trip with these extras. Once onboard the ship, every time we entered Windjammer, so...