Photo Review: Celebrity Summit 4/26/14 REPO Cruise – Caribbean & Bermuda

Just off the Summit on Sunday! I’ll start off by saying we had another great cruise! During the course of my review, I’ll do my best to divulge as many details & photos as possible. I’m sure there are plenty of CC members like myself who enjoy fixating on every detail (as I do) pre-cruise. Long winded photo reviews are always my favorite to read, so I do my best to provide the same to like-minded cruisers.

Here I am…your storyteller (Heather).

Also worth noting before I begin, I’m a glass half full kind of cruiser so you’re not going to read complaint after complaint from me. To me, I’m going to thoroughly enjoy my entire cruise unless something disastrous happens. I’ll mention any areas of improvement when necessary though.

If you missed my last photo review of the Summit a few months ago (February 2014) which included the ports of call: St. Croix, St. Kitts, Dominica, Grenada & St. Thomas, the link is below. My last review included more photos onboard the various areas inside the ship. Most of the photos taken onboard this cruise were from the top decks. I came home with over 1,800 photos on my camera & 180 prints from the photo package onboard, so I’m sure this review will not be lacking in the photo department.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=41632069#post41632069

Below is the itinerary of this cruise:

Saturday, April 26th – San Juan

Sunday, April 27th – St. Maarten

Monday, April 28th – St. Thomas

Tuesday, April 29th – Tortola

Wednesday, April 30th – At Sea

Thursday, May 1st– Bermuda

Friday, May 2nd – Bermuda

Saturday, May 3rd – At Sea

Sunday, May 4th – New Jersey

Background:

This was my 2nd Celebrity cruise – and my 13th cruise overall. I’m Platinum on Carnival (10 cruises) and have sailed on one NCL cruise in the past. We weren’t wild about our NCL experience, but we’ve enjoyed all of our Carnival cruises. I really enjoyed my first Celebrity cruise a few months back, and I can say with confidence that Celebrity is my preferred cruise line at this point. That’s not to say I won’t book another Carnival cruise in the future for the right itinerary or price, but I much prefer cruising with the demographics found on Celebrity as opposed to Carnival.

I just recently turned 33 a few days before this cruise. I’ll be traveling on this cruise with my mom (in her 50s). This cruise was between my birthday and mother’s day, and it was a great itinerary. I was especially excited about Bermuda (being a new port for me). The best part about the itinerary of this repo cruise was that it included three Caribbean ports as well as two days in Bermuda. We had booked the 123go promo for this cruise that included the classic beverage package. This is what made myself & DH decide to venture out of our comfort zone and give Celebrity a try on our last cruise. Needless to say, we really enjoyed all that Celebrity has to offer. While onboard our last cruise, we booked next year’s cruise on the Summit (same room, different itinerary).

For my own sanity, I’ll be posting all photos in the order in which they are taken so I can keep track of where I am in the review over the course of the next week or so.

We flew from Pittsburgh on a 6:30am Southwest flight Friday morning (4/25). We had one connection in Baltimore before reaching our final destination of San Juan. Our flight arrived in San Juan at 12:15pm. The flights were relatively uneventful. We gathered our luggage at baggage claim and made our way to the taxi line. This line only had a handful of people. The cost of the taxi is dependent upon what zone you’re traveling to. The cost of our taxi was $19 total for the both of us and our two suitcases. It wasn’t long before we were in a taxi on our way to our hotel.

I had booked our hotel room using Hotwire. I had selected the Hot Rate unknown hotel deal by selecting a 4-Star Hotel in the Condado area. I was hoping for something on the beach, but no such luck. We were given the Sheraton Puerto Rico Hotel and Casino next to the Convention Center. For the one night, the rate was $126, plus an additional $26.19 in tax recovery charges & fees. I received a $25 discount by downloading the hotwire app and receiving a promo code for bookings using the app. My total charge for the one night was $127.19. There would also be a $15 resort fee charged upon check in. For the price paid, I couldn’t be happier with our pre-cruise room for the night. Most of the 4-Star Hotels in the area were in the $250-300 range for one night.

It was about 1:30-2:00 when we arrived. We arrived before the 3:00 check in and luckily our room was already ready for us. We were given a room on the 8th floor. Below are some photos of the room and our view from inside the room.

The only downside of this hotel is that you need to take a taxi into Old San Juan or if you wanted to visit a beach in the Condado area. The Sheraton had everything we needed for our one day/night stay before our cruise. We were especially happy with the reduced rate.

Here are photos from the elevator bank of the hotel – showing the Convention Center across the street and the Sheraton’s pool area.

Thanks for the review!

We quickly changed clothes, and then made our way to hotel entrance. The hotel staff was there to hail you a taxi if/when you need it. The taxi’s waited down the street, and they would whistle or yell for the taxi’s to come to the entrance. We took a taxi to Old San Juan. The ride was only about 5 minutes or so and cost $16 each way from the hotel.

I would have liked to explore the forts, but my mother told me she had no interest in doing so. I suppose I’ll be saving that for next year’s cruise out of San Juan with my DH. So, the taxi driver dropped us off next to San Cristobal at the start of the area that was best for shopping. He said that if we were going to explore El Morro, it would have been best to start there and work our way down from there (instead of having to walk uphill to that fort).

I found a map of Old San Juan on wiki to chart out where Barrachina “home of the pina colada” (104 Fortaleza St) & Café Mallorca (300 San Francisco) were located. These were two stops I definitely wanted to make when exploring Old San Juan. Other than those two stops, I figured we would just walk around and explore.

Where we were dropped off by the taxi...

We were only about five minutes into our walk and we stumbled upon Café Mallorca. I’m a huge Samantha Brown fan (from the travel channel) and made a note about a year ago when I saw one of her shows that included her stay in San Juan. During that episode, she went to Café Mallorca for their Mallorca and I had full intention on doing the same. My mom and I both had the ham and cheese one, it was delicious! I’ll definitely be adding this stop to future visits in San Juan.

Pastries in the front window...

Great start!! Looking forward to the rest of your review and beautiful puctures!!! Thanks for taking the time to share your cruise with us.😀

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San Juan Gate - Traditional entrance to San Juan

Awesome! Can't wait to see more!

After walking around Old San Juan for several hours and asking several people for directions (and asking them to point out where we were on my map) we eventually found Barrachina. Once we found it, we realized we had walked right past the street several times without seeing it. Once inside, we sat inside the outdoor area. We both had a pina colada and shared an appetizer of the chicken nachos. We really enjoyed our visit here as well.

After Barrachina, we decided to start heading back to the area in Old San Juan where the taxi had dropped us off in order to get another taxi back to the hotel.

Once back at the hotel, we dropped off our shopping purchases in the room and heading to the hotel’s pool. There we both enjoyed an overpriced frozen drink and enjoyed the sites. The pool at the hotel was much larger and nicer than I had expected.

We noticed that there was a Mexican place right outside the hotel so we decided to go there for dinner – it was called Ficus Mexican Bar & Grill. It was packed when we arrived! We barely found a table. It was all outside seating. They played loud music and had more of a bar atmosphere than a restaurant. The food was good though, and after a day of walking it was convenient to the hotel. Mom and I shared the Mexican chicken wings and tacos. Afterwards, we were pretty tired from a long day of travel and exploring Old San Juan, so we headed back to the hotel to call it a night.

One random photo of the hotel lobby (I thought it was cool) how it lit up at night. The colors kept changing too!

Here are a few pictures from outside the hotel the next morning (next to the convention center). There's the Summit...