sissyfromcab

When we go to Christmas Cove, we tied the boats together and about half the people got into the water to snorkel. One of the guides got in the water with us to point out the different fish and such.

The beach - wasn't much to enjoy

After about a 20 minute ride (back past our ship), we made it to the mini-boats. There was a small group waiting. We got into our swimsuits and the provided life jackets. We left our bags at the dock, since they said everything in the boat might get wet. They provided snorkel equipment for those that wanted it, but we used our own.

After everyone was ready, we were loaded into the boats. They put two people per boat and the second person could sit behind the driver or on a seat in the back, but they suggested that it was more comfortable to sit behind the driver.

Captain Travis

After some final instructions, we were off. On the way to Christmas Cove (on Christmas Day!), we crossed the path of a ferry and had to slow down and wait. The mini-boats mostly stayed in line on the way over and didn't go too fast.

Christmas Cove

When researching what to do in St. Thomas, I found out that there would be seven ships in port! And three of those were mega-ships! (Allure of the Seas, Norwegian Epic, and Royal Princess) There were a total of more than 20,000 people in port for Christmas Day. Based on the number of people and the fact that it was a holiday, we definitely wanted to have an excursion booked ahead of time. We debated between a kayak tour and mini-boat tour and ended up deciding to go on the mini-boat tour.

I booked the mini-boat tour through an independent site. It was offered by the ship with transportation, but was about $20 more per person and I figured that it couldn't possibly cost $20 per person to get there. I was sort of right... if we could have found a driver who knew where the heck it was!

After the ship docked, we got off and headed to the shops to look for a Christmas tree to get a picture with, but couldn't find one. :( We saw a guy managing taxis and figured it was about time to head towards our excursion, since we weren't sure exactly how long it would take. The guy managing the taxis didn't know where we were headed, but the driver said he did, so we got in and headed out. When we stopped to let a couple people off in town, we could see the four ships that were at Havensight. There wasn't enough room at the pier and Norwegian Sun had to tender.

The taxi driver didn't know where we were going. He dropped us off at Crown Bay. We did find a Christmas tree, so we got our picture.

There was also a cool row of Christmas trees.

I was fairly confident that we were in the wrong spot, but Travis thought that the taxi driver wouldn't have knowingly left us in the wrong place. We wandered around and tried to find someone who knew where we were supposed to be. We asked in the shops, at the taxi stand, anyone who looked like they might have a clue. The few people who did seem to know what we were talking about, told us to look for the guy in the green shirt, but the only guy we could find with a green shirt looked at us like we were speaking Chinese when we asked him. I was getting really frustrated thinking we were going to miss our excursion.

We had a phone number on our paper, but no way to call, since we left our phones on the ship. We finally came across a police officer who let us use her phone. We were just hoping that we could get more specific directions that we could give to a taxi driver, but it turned out to be the elusive man in the green shirt. He was right around the corner with the excursion from the Allure! Travis found him and he put us on the taxi with the Allure group and we made it to the mini boats!:D

After all that stress and the extra taxi ride, we only saved about $2 per person. Next time, we'll just take the tour with the transportation included!

I wanted to get a picture of us with the funnel in the background, so we made our way to the upper decks after breakfast and noticed that the pool deck was deserted!

We got our picture (though we both look a little wind blown).

By this time St. Thomas was in sight.

We weren't scheduled to arrive in St. Thomas until late morning, so we were able to sleep in a bit and have a leisurely morning.

We noticed that Allure of the Seas was still following us.

The skies alternated between sunny...

and not so sunny...

We thought about going to the MDR for breakfast, but our morning was a little too leisurely and we weren't sure we would have enough time to eat, so we just headed to the buffet. At home, my mom always makes a nice breakfast for us on Christmas Day, so I had to laugh when my Christmas breakfast was a bowl of cereal, a chocolate muffin, and some melon. Sorry Mom, I'll trade your nice Christmas breakfast for spending the day in St. Thomas!

We never did get to the towel animals on all the deck chairs, but this morning, we did see one sitting by the pool.

The poster explained that 'life got in the way.' She's done most of the posting recently and I believe she will finish it eventually.

I don't know what world you're living in where you think everyone has frivolous free time to do things like this.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums mobile app

Thanks for your patience! In the last month, I have had two tests, a project, and an exam, as well as regular homework assignments. But it was worth it, since I earned an A in the class. I will try to finish up in the next week or so, before summer semester starts. :)

After dinner, we got our nightly picture. I made Travis wear one of his Christmas ties and it looked good!

We made our way back to our room to relax. We found our towel animal of the night.

I read on the balcony for a while, and Travis went to sleep.

On the balcony we could see Allure sailing with us to St. Thomas.

Finally, we were off to dinner. For our appetizers, I had the spring rolls and Travis had the shrimp cocktail.

For our entrees, I had the penne mariscos and Travis had the chicken Sicilian style.

For dessert, we both had more warm chocolate melting cake.

Nothing stood out as great or awful, but it was decent.

While getting ready for dinner, we watched the sunset.

Snow in the Caribbean?

Our first stop of the night was the Atrium, where it was supposed to snow! There were a bunch of kids down on the 3rd deck, but we stayed up on a higher deck. There was a bit of a technical difficulty getting the snow started, but eventually it came down. As someone who had grown up in Michigan, it was disappointing snow, but the kids seemed to love it and be having a blast, so we watched them for a few minutes.

After the snow, before dinner, we went to the Hasbro show. It was fun to watch, but I wish that it was in addition to a regular show, not replacing a regular show.

They played Connect 4 and Simon. At the end each winning team go to pick a Monopoly card and stick it into the bank to see who had won. The winner ended up being a guy in his early 20's and he gave the grand prize to the young kid on his team, which was really nice to see!

At some point I wandered around the ship and took more pictures.

Along Impressionist Boulevard

Renoir Restaurant (mid-ship)

Exterior Deck

Lobby

I saw the word, "Christmas," and knew I had to read your review. We will not be on the ship on Christmas, but I've never seen ships that are decorated for the holidays. We will be on the Freedom 12-13-14, returning, 12-21, so I know our ship will be decorated !

 

Your photos are beautiful. I'm so glad you are back. When I saw only three pages, I thought, Oh, oh, this won't be much. Wrong ! Can't wait to read more. We all understand how life kicks in. Thank you for coming back to continue the reveiw.

Thank you for your kind words!

Tuesday was our first sea day. Our goal for today was fairly simple: relax!

This is how our morning started off:

While I ate breakfast, I noticed the nice view:

The boat was still really moving and we were both feeling it, so even if our goal hadn't been to relax, we probably still would have ended up relaxing for most of the day.

I was going to post some more, but photobucket is acting up, so I will try again tonight!

I forgot the Fun Times last night for Monday, so here they are:

That really is a spectacular shot!

Thanks! I don't have a big fancy camera, but I do like to take lots of pictures. I was disappointed that I forgot to play around with the settings on this cruise, since I got some really neat shots on our last cruise.

Did the letter from carnival explain why it was so rocky?

No, that just said they were going to wash the balconies during the sea day. The captain did say something on the morning of St. Thomas, but we couldn't understand most of what he said. It was something about having to go fast to get all the way to St. Thomas in time, as best as we could understand.

Before bed, we had to get our nightly picture with a Christmas tree. If you look closely, Travis' tie has a bunch of math formulas:).

And tonight's towel animal was ... an elephant?

After Nassau, we had a pretty lazy afternoon. I took a nap and Travis went up to the gym to workout, then came back to chill in the room. The ship was rocking and rolling! The waves didn't look bad, but we were booking it towards St. Thomas, so that probably didn't help. Whatever was causing it, we both felt a little seasick.

I was determined to get dressed up for formal night, so we put on our nice clothes and went to see the family comedy show before dinner. It was just ok and seemed like the comedian didn't want to do "clean" comedy.

Being in the aft dining room was not helping our stomachs, but I was determined to have my lobster, so off to dinner we went. I couldn't decide on my appetizer, so had the spaghetti carbonara and the strawberry bisque. I thought spaghetti carbonara was a little bland and didn't eat much of it, but the strawberry bisque was like a smoothie in a bowl. Travis had the stuffed mushrooms and said you can't go wrong with mushrooms and cheese.

I had the lobster and shrimp and Travis had the prime rib. My lobster and shrimp was very good, but my stomach was not enjoying it as much as me and I didn't eat much of it. Travis said the prime rib was just ok, because it was too rare for his taste.

Both of us were feeling the motion and left without having dessert.

Shortly after lunch, we sailed away. Our balcony was on the city side, so we stayed on the upper decks to see Atlantis and the lighthouse. We both thought the AquaDuck on the Disney ship looked neat and watched few people on it.

I noticed that there was a hidden Mickey on the front of the Disney ship.

Travis noticed the hoard of birds sitting on the pier and told me I had to take a picture.

I also got some nice pictures of Nassau as we sailed away.

I love this last one, since you can see Atlantis, the lighthouse, and the ships!

We docked near Senor Frogs and noticed that we had been joined by another ship - the Carnival Splendor.

We only had about an hour left in port and we were still in wet swimsuits, so we just headed back to the ship. As we were getting off the catamaran, Allure was leaving. It was so hard to get a picture of the whole ship, since she's so BIG! I want to sail on her or Oasis one day, but they are way out of budget for Christmas, so it will have to wait for now.

Back on the ship we changed into dry clothes and headed up to the Lido deck for some lunch. Travis LOVES Chipotle, so we tried Blue Iguana. I had chicken tacos and he had two burritos (one chicken and one shrimp). I thought the tacos were pretty good, but I'm not a huge Mexican fan in general, so never tried anything else. The watermelon, however, was awesome! It was perfectly ripe and sweet. So sad that I never made it around to get some more. Travis thought the chicken burrito was just ok and didn't like the shrimp at all, so he went to get some pizza and was happily full (at least for a little while).

More fish:

Gotta love what salt water does to my hair...

We sailed around the other side of the island on the way back. That meant we were basically on Atlantis' beach. I was on the wrong side of the boat though and couldn't get any good pictures. They promised us that we would use the sail on the way back, but it took them about half the ride back to get it untangled.

We also got a snack - some plain punch or rum punch and a fun size bag of chips. They turned on the music and a Bruno Mars song came on. Travis was waiting to get our drinks and the lady in front of him started complaining that it wasn't appropriate for her 6 year old to listen to. Travis wanted to point out to her that 1. her child didn't understand what the song was about and 2. her child got here by what he was singing about! Maybe that's why we sail on Carnival instead of Disney?

After about 45 minutes, we ended up at our snorkeling spot. There were 3 other boats there with large numbers of people on them, but fortunately they were mostly leaving as we got there.

Our catamaran - The Seahorse

They provided us with snorkel equipment, but we have our own. I actually found mine fairly cheap on clearance at Target and figured it would be nice to not have to worry about how clean the equipment they provided might be, so picked it up. I was so glad that I had it, because it had a special spout on the top to keep water from splashing into the snorkel. Travis has a super snorkel that my stepdad got him and it actually closes when he swims under water! If you are going to snorkel frequently, buy your own equipment - it's not that expensive and is SO much nicer!

We hopped in the water and it was a little chilly at first, but once we got used to it, the temperature was fairly comfortable.

Us:

There weren't a lot of fish around. I don't know if the previous groups had scared them away or if we were just in a bad spot.

Some fish:

We ended up waiting with about a dozen people for the excursion when another lady led up a large group that she was calling the Chippendales. We were really confused until we figured out that it was the Chip 'N Dales and they were from the Disney ship to join us on the excursion. That meant we didn't get the small private excursion we were hoping for, which was a little annoying, but not the end of the world.

We boarded the catamaran and sailed around the island for a bit to get to the snorkeling spot. I took a bunch of pictures on the way out.

Monday morning came bright and early as we pulled into Nassau at 7am! In five cruises, this was our first time in Nassau. We originally weren't planning to do anything, but when I was looking at excursions a few weeks before we left, I found a catamaran snorkel cruise that wasn't too expensive and decided that would give us something to do for the short time in port.

While we were getting ready, we didn't even notice that we pulled into port! By the time we looked out onto the balcony, we were almost docked. From our balcony, we could see a Bahamian Navy ship:

and watched the Carnival Fantasy pull in next to us:

After a quick breakfast, we got off the ship. We watched the Disney ship come into port.

And got our picture taken with the touristy Bahamas sign.

We had two missions (aside from any excursions) in each port.

1. Find a magnet to add to our collection on the fridge.

2. Get a picture of the two of us with something Christmas-y.

Since we weren't sure how much time we would have after our snorkel cruise, we set out to see if we could accomplish our missions before the cruise. 7am is apparently not time to be up and have your shop open in the Bahamas (can't blame them!), so we only found a couple shops and straw market vendors open. The first shop we went into had a cute magnet, but they wanted $8 for it! No way! We went a couple shops down and they had the same magnet for $4. Sold! We also found a Christmas tree, so we had someone take a picture of us with it.

We also found a t-shirt Travis liked in the straw market and he bargained the price down from $20 to $10, so he was happy.

After about an hour, we made our way back to the "green gate" in the port area to meet with our excursion. We chatted with another couple from the Fantasy, who said they were on their first cruise to escape from their family over Christmas. While we were waiting, I took their picture with Atlantis in the background. It turned out really cool, so they took a similar one for us.