Puerto Rico @ MindSay 
Here is a view from the top deck of the ship, just before we left port.
That night we saw a show in the ships main theater. Here are some pics.
The next day we saw an ice carving show on deck.
Here is the deck.
We went to the Confederate Railroad Band's acoustic show. The guy on the left is Rusty Hendrix, their new lead guitar player. He toured with Sammy Kershaw for many years.
Here is our group with the leader of the band, Danny Shirley.
Our first stop was in Puerto Rico, near where Christopher Columbus first landed. Here is a statue of him.
This is the old fort.
And here is the ship in the dock in Puerto Rico.
This will be my SECOND attempt to blog my Caribbean adventures last month. The first draft, pictures and all flew away somewhere. Talk about being PO'd! Grrr! So I've resorted to using part of a review I posted on Cruise critic.
We flew out of Burbank at 6:55 AM to Dallas to San Juan, PR. The hotel we booked through Priceline was absolutely awful! Don't stay at the San Juan Beach Hotel. Ever! The only good thing about it was the view when we awoke the first day.
Unfortunately, the hotel had had a party the night before and I didn't get more than about 2 hrs sleep. Let's just say the windows weren't all that secure in their frames. Kind of like the broken night stand, the shredded bathroom cabinet that held the sink and the fact that we got only two bath towels. No face cloths, no hand towels, no mat for the floor. The phone was broken and the light over the night stand was hanging by it's wires. Oh, and the bed was short sheeted.
We saw loads and loads of PR families out for a night on the Condado area. No offense against PR women, but tight clothing does nothing to make your Muffin Top look better! And shiny tight clothing does even less.
St Thomas: Lovely island. So beautiful on so many different levels. Great shopping, if you have $$$! There were just too many high end jewelry stores there for me! I did find a silver shop that made me very happy though. K got nabbed by a saleswoman in one of those other shops and I had to rescue him by saying I really didn't like the piece she was showing him. It was ugly, so I wasn't lying!
We had lunch at Cuzzin's in Charlotte Amalie. It was recommended to us by the lady in the silver shop. Great food! I highly recommend it! I can't remember the drink I had (it was at the bottom of the drink menu) but it was potent. Wow! Our server wasn't great and seemed to have his mind elsewhere, but everything else was fantastic! Now I think of it, I want to try to make some of the things we had that day for dinner tomorrow. Curry chicken, fried plantain, rice and peas...
Our tour took us up and down the island, showing us the sights and telling us about the island's history the end of the tour was our stop at Emerald Beach and it was beautiful. Incredible stuff for someone from LA! Fabulous place, but we were only there for an hour before we had to head back to the ship. Emerald Beach. Gorgeous!
Dominica: We had booked the River Tubing excursion through the ship and had a really good time. They had to corral us together several times along the way so the guys could run ahead and station themselves where we were likely to get into trouble. One gentleman took a bad spill along the way and was all scraped up. That was kind of surprising to me as I didn't really think the river was that violent. This is at the Layou River.
Dominica is very beautiful and rural. I wondered how the houses we saw made it through hurricane Dean. I only bought one souvenir from the warehouse-like bldg. set up as a market for the ship. Most tables had all the same stuff--mostly hematite necklaces (hundreds and hundreds of them!). I opted for a Caribe-made small basket.
Barbados: The excursion we booked for this port was the Catamaran Sea Turtle and Snorkeling tour. Great trip on the catamaran! We absolutely loved sailing up the coast. The sea turtle swimming thing was pretty crowded and I'm really glad they didn't allow fins to be used as I'm sure someone would have been hurt-probably the turtles.
This pic was totally unexpected. Isn't that so cool???
From there, we went on to an area to snorkel. The beach we dropped anchor on was very nice and I got quite a collection of sea glass there. They fed us on the catamaran and had an open bar, so that was pretty nice. K didn't have the best time snorkeling since he couldn't see a thing past arm's length. I felt bad for him. My big souvenir from this island was a coffee cup w/the Caribbean screened on it.
Our 2nd best day of the cruise. Look at this! Isn't it gorgeous?
St. Lucia: K is a tall ship fan, so we booked the Pirate ship excursion through the ship. The Brig Unicorn took us from the dock along the coast to Pigeon Island where some did the treasure hunt and some hiked and some went to the beach. We did the beach, such as it was. It was an OK excursion, but I much preferred the catamaran in Barbados. The diesel fumes from the motor gave me a huge headache.
Antigua: The shops are very close to the port here, but the taxi drivers won't take no for an answer and we had to duck into the market stalls to get away from them so we could shop. I found another silver shop!
On this island, we had booked the Sail Around Antigua by catamaran though the ship. What a great time!!! This was the best day of our entire cruise. The water was beautiful, the skies with enough cloud to make beautiful patterns and the island was gorgeous. We snorkeled off of Green Island and then had lunch of BBQ chicken or grilled fish, rice and salads. We could have wine or a refreshing adult beverage from the open bar. The rum punch was great. They sailed us past Devil's Bridge, through Nelson's Harbor and Jolly Harbor. We saw homes of the rich and famous. One of the crew gave a running commentary of various sights and beaches and landmarks. I cannot recommend this tour _highly_ enough. And that rum punch has a kick that you just don't notice at first! Whooo! This the Excellence cat on Green Island.
Imagine 4 hrs on a catamaran in the bluest water you've ever seen and 2 hrs snorkeling and beach combing. I ventured further afield than the rest of the people, hoping for a decent shell or two. I must have found some fisherman's leftovers. At least 2 dozen conch shells with holes drilled near the spiral to get the critter out. I didn't care they weren't perfect. On the way back to the boat, I encountered K who wanted to know if I found anything good... I pulled my 7lb conch shell out from under my sarong and said, yeah, I found a shell. LOL! He about died. He also has a shell, but I think his is 5lbs. Isn't it pretty? It's far prettier now after it's week spent in a bleach bath.
We spent our last day in the Caribbean looking around Old San Juan. K wanted to see the El Morro fort, so we caught a tram up the hill to see it. Thank goodness the parks service has trams or I would have died. He would have keeled over way before me since I can outwalk him, but it wouldn't have been pretty. We had dinner at a local PR restaurant that was very popular with the locals on the recommendation of one of the bell hops at the Sheraton OSJ. This was a MUCH better place to stay! I preferred the food in St Thomas, but it was better than our first night in SJ when we ate pizza at Subway. This is part of El Morro.
The "Jolly Green Giant" drove us to the airport the next morning. That taxi driver was a trip and had us laughing the whole way. I wish we'd had as good a time in San Juan's airport. Not a nice place.
Flying home on the 22nd was sobering. We could see all the wildfires in San Diego, Santa Clarita and other areas on the flight back to Burbank. It kind of looked like Mordor as our friend commented. If that weren't bad enough, the fwy was closed in Santa Clarita when we were on our way back home that night. It was around Midnight and we noticed a Hwy patrol car doing a traffic break about 4 cars in front of us. We didn't think it was a fire since the fire we'd seen from the air was on the other side of the valley from where we were. Then we saw the ash falling and smelled the smoke. A whole hillside was glowing embers when they let us continue on.
Bienvenidos a Puerto Rico
The pictures from our trip are up!!! I still haven't written everything down but I will... fear not!
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