Cruise-trip & Miami visit

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Goodday everyone,

This will be the second and last blog from this trip.
After a couple of days in Orlando we drove back to Miami where we stayed one night. We stayed at a Marriott hotel just at the parking lot of the Dolphin Mall; famous mall for those from Curaçao who go to Miami to shop. The mall is very big and we strolled around the mall. I didn’t buy anything though, just food and some creams I had to buy for someone. In Miami we also met with the rest of the group from Curaçao and Bonaire making it a total of more than 60 persons.

The next day the buses came and picked us up and we went to the harbour where the cruise-ships dock. After a long line for security and check-in, we finally stepped on board!

Carnival Glory
That’s the name of our ship, property of Carnival Cruise Lines, “The Fun Ships” as they call themselves. The ship carries almost 3000 passengers, it was made in Italy and sailed for the first time in 2003. When we went onboard we couldn’t go to the rooms yet since they were not ready. We went to the pool-deck where there was a band playing Caribbean music (k-dance, soca etc.) and many of our group went on the pool-deck to dance....immediately starting of the ambience on the ship. The singer was saying “greetings to the people from Bonaire and Curaçao” so everybody knew where we were from.

I stayed in the room with Timothy V. and Christopher on deck 8. Timothy’s mom became 50 years old on Monday and therefore they made this trip, together with a whole group of friends and family. This day we all wear a white t-shirt with her picture on it. The day we boarded we were al dressed in yellow.
Deck 9 was the buffet deck: all you can eat, the whole day! Late in the evening and during the whole night there is always ice cream and pizza available! Only for drinks you had to pay, except lemonade (lemon juice), orange juice during breakfast and ice tea. Deck 5 was the entertainment deck with the casino, game room, disco, bars and also shops. The theatre was on deck 4 where they give nice shows every evening! The ship has also a gymnasium on deck 11 which I visited 3 times during my stay. On deck 12 there is the basketball and volleyball court. The volleyball court was small though. We won a volleyball tournament last Saturday. Near the casino they held trivia’s (quizz) which I won once and became second place twice. You receive like a cup in the shape of the ship and with the name of the ship which is a great souvenir. The slide outside was also lot of fun as I always wet those sitting down next to the slide.
Everyday you get a piece of paper which tells you what activities there will be onboard, at what time and which deck. It also informs you about excursions to do on shore etc. I never booked any tours on board as the prices are double of what you get when on shore.

Many nationalities work on the ship which is a great thing. Once a cruise-employee said that there has never been one single fight among the employees, so why do countries fight each other and declare was all the time? The employees are a good example and shows that we are all equal as human beings and that different nationalities can live in peace with each other. The top-3 countries working on the ship were Indonesia, India and Philippines.

This was a great vacation and I’d definitely do a cruise again. These kind of trips of course you should do it with a group (family / friends) and not alone. There is always something to do on the ship: activities, eat, swim, sleep, relax, being lazy etc. 😊
Our ships itinerary was like this:
Day 1 – Departure Miami
Day 2 – Half Moon Cay (Bahamas)
Day 3 – Fun day at sea
Day 4 – St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands
Day 5 – San Juan, Puerto Rico
Day 6 – Grand Turk, Turks & Caicos
Day 7 – Fun day at sea
Day 8 – Arrival Miami (early)

Half Moon Cay
This was a small island which is part of the Bahamas. It’s a private island, property of Carnival Cruise Lines. It has a beautiful beach. We went onshore for a while and had the free Island-BBQ. There was no beach-volleyball going on so we decided to leave the island back to the ship. For those who don’t have beaches at home, the island was “WOW”, but not for us.

St. Thomas
Our ship docked at Charlotte Amalie, capital of the US Virgin Islands which consists of St. John, St. Thomas and St. Croix. The US Virgin Islands have an area of 346 square km and has about 125 000 inhabitants. St. Thomas has an area of 83 square km with a population of around 55 000. The USA bought these islands from the United Kingdom back in 1912 so today everyone from the US Virgin Islands is an American citizen. The island has very beautiful beaches; it’s hilly and green which is also beautiful. But other than that, I wasn’t impressed at all! Downtown is full of jewellery-stores, all of them next to each other and once a while you see a different kind of store between them, such as perfumeries, souvenir-stores etc. The day we docked at St. Thomas there were 5 cruise-ships at the island, which caused enormous traffic congestion in downtown and also a lack of parking spots at the different places our mini-tour bus stopped. The tour we took was so bad, I seriously disliked it. First of all, the woman driving us around was a Dominican who didn’t speak much English. She wasn’t telling us anything and many times when she did, she was telling things that weren’t true (for example, that the island is 36km long). We drove around the island and we could see some of it, but the tour was very disappointing!!! The only good thing about the tour was that there was calypso/soca music while we were driving which gave me a feeling like being in the Caribbean 😊

San Juan
The capital city of Puerto Rico has a metropolitan area of about 2 million people and is one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the Caribbean (if not the most). Once ashore we took a tour which would take us to the Bacardi Rum factory, the new city and the old city. The tour at the Bacardi was very interesting and worth it! We were also allowed to taste two different drinks at the end of the tour. On our way to the city, the driver just past through a small part of the new city and headed to the old city. At least he was telling is a lot about the island and the city, but in my opinion we didn’t see much of the new city. After we entered the old city, the driver told us a bit about the place and then we jumped off and walked the place by our own. Old San Juan is very beautiful. It’s like the old Panama City but bigger and better maintained. Most of the streets are narrow and are full of Spanish colonial architecture. The ship was leaving at 3:30PM so we didn’t have much time to see more, which I found a pity because in St. Thomas we stayed until 6:00PM! Puerto Rico is definitely a place I’d like to come a visit in the future again and stay a couple of days.

Grand Turk
The island is part of Turks & Caicos, a group of islands which are part of the British Kingdom. Grand Turk has about 6 000 inhabitants and is just 18 square km big. The whole Turks & Caicos consists of about 300 islands and they have a total area of 616 square km with about 22 000 inhabitants.
Grand Turk has just one pier where two cruise-ships can dock at the same time. It’s all the way on the southern part of the island. Once onshore you go through an area with a lot of shops and restaurants. One restaurant called Margaritaville is very popular. It has a big pool and there is a lot of entertainment going on there. We went there just for an half an hour. Together with both Timothy’s and Christopher we rented two scooters and explored the island by ourselves. We grabbed a map, paid the US$ 40 per scooter and went. The beaches on the island are beautiful and the island as a lot of saliña’s (salt lakes) and therefore it seemed a little bit like Bonaire to me (southern Bonaire) and also because there isn’t much going on at Grand Turk. There wasn’t much about the historic town and the downtown. The fact that we rented the scooters made the experience on Grand Turk great though. Obviously it’s not a place I’d love to go once again in my life, neither St. Thomas 😊

Miami
After getting off the ship after a week, almost the whole group flew the same day back to Bonaire and Curaçao. I decided to stay one more night since I haven’t seen much of Miami at all; I didn’t experience it the way I wanted.
Miami has about 2,5 million inhabitants and lies in south-eastern Florida. It’s a top tourist destination for many visitors from the Caribbean and Latin America. Everywhere you go, you’ll hear Spanish as if you’re in Latin America. Cubans and Nicaraguans are the two biggest Latin-ethnic groups living here.
At first I was going to stay at Josue’s place, little brother of my Aruban friend Ralph who is studying here. But he lives a bit far out of the city so I decided to book a hostel in Miami Beach for that one night and I don’t regret. The hostel is located in South Beach, close to all the clubs, bars and restaurants on the Ocean Drive. The place (Ocean Drive) is nice and has a lot of buildings with Art-Deco architecture. The beach itself is nice too. I didn’t go in the water though. The beach was too packed which I hated, but on the other hand there were plenty of girls to look at! Ocean Drive is “crazy” and a lot of crazy people around! All different kind of people you’ll see here and “honestly” in the beginning I didn’t feel very comfortable, but quickly after I was just fine and didn’t worry much because this wasn’t new for me. A lot of nice, expensive cars driving around; one of them with four black guys with loud music and they were all moving their heads at the rhythm of the song and they had their big necklaces on....just like in movies. They were also many girls walking around with little clothes, not only those who went to the beach and had their bikini’s on, but also other ones who didn’t really come to go to the beach. There was a corner which was full of gay men. The restaurant/bar there had the coloured-striped flag which indicated that. I spent most of the afternoon at the beach playing volleyball with some people and it was fun. The time passed by very quickly. Most of the people live just one or two blocks away from the beach so they usually come often to play. I must say that I’m very jealous because I’d love to be able to play beach-volleyball just a few blocks from my place! All in all, Miami Beach is definitely a fun place to spend a couple of days relaxing on the beach, play beach-volleyball, enjoy it’s great nightlife etc.; especially South Beach is popular by locals and both American and international tourists. It’s very touristy and is very expensive though!! In the evening I just went around to walk around the place, took one beer at a bar and spoke to some people but I didn’t stay too long as I was tired.

All right, that was it all for this trip. Don’t know when exactly the next trip will be, hopefully this year again!

Regards,
Elton

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Comments

[Cperez97]

Tip for shuttles in Miami
Your trip looks like a blast!! Just a tip for the next time your are down there, we always use these guys South Florida Shuttles - we dont need to rent cars, or worry about driving. They take us from the airport to the cruise and even do trips to the malls, shopping areas and sightseeing. Great prices for big groups like us. Hope they help you as much as they helped us!