Trip Report - Royal Princess 10 Day Eastern Caribbean November 16 - 26, 2016

In each of the elevators the carpets have different quotes about travel, I tried to take a picture of one whenever I could get the chance, but you don't often get an elevator to yourself, but here are a few.

This is truly the end of the ship tour. I will be back tomorrow with some more port day reviews.

 

 

Ending deck 16 with a view too!

Just discovered your thread today and am enjoying the photos so much--reminds me of what I did photo-wise on our first cruise on the Royal: getting up early before many people were about ;p Your snorkeling shots were outstanding--much better than I ever got with a "throwaway" underwater camera (no surprise!). I loved the area pictured in photo above, esp. on our Caribbean cruise on the Royal. The outdoor spaces are a bit (?) cool and windy on TAs :D

Hi Jay,

Thanks for posting this wonderful review, the photographs are amazing. What camera and lenses did you use for these?

Your photos brought back great memories of our last cruise on regal.

There is a mistake though; Crooner's is on the port side of the side. Not sure if all your port/starboard references are backwards but no big deal they are enjoyed the no matter which side they are on.

Thanks

Just discovered your thread today and am enjoying the photos so much--reminds me of what I did photo-wise on our first cruise on the Royal: getting up early before many people were about ;p Your snorkeling shots were outstanding--much better than I ever got with a "throwaway" underwater camera (no surprise!). I loved the area pictured in photo above, esp. on our Caribbean cruise on the Royal. The outdoor spaces are a bit (?) cool and windy on TAs :D

Thank you so much, I am glad you are enjoying it.

Hi Jay,

Thanks for posting this wonderful review, the photographs are amazing. What camera and lenses did you use for these?

Your photos brought back great memories of our last cruise on regal.

 

There is a mistake though; Crooner's is on the port side of the side. Not sure if all your port/starboard references are backwards but no big deal they are enjoyed the no matter which side they are on.

Thanks

Thank you, my underwater ones are with my Olympus Tg-870, this was my first trip with it, and I really need to spend some more time with it and for the others I recently switched from a DSLR to the Sony A6000 mirrorless system, and for most of these I just used the lens that came with. It is so much easier to travel with then my big DSLR and the picture quality is just as good, or better, I think.

Yep, I am pretty sure I made that mistake through the whole thing... that's what happens when you are directionaly challenged ;p Thanks for letting me know!

Your photos are the most beautiful I have ever seen on cc or any other review. Thanks for sharing your review and your cruise with us! I wish I was sailing on the Royal Princess... maybe next time :)

Your photos are the most beautiful I have ever seen on cc or any other review. Thanks for sharing your review and your cruise with us! I wish I was sailing on the Royal Princess... maybe next time :)

Thank you so much! I am happy to share them, I love taking them! Royal Princess is so beautiful and I really can't wait to go back on her again.

Day 6 (Nov 19, 2016) - St Thomas

I am writing this post with a hint of sadness for the devastation this beautiful island has faced, but with hope that they will recover. The people of this island are amazing and resilient. I wish them all the best.

We docked just before 8am at Havensight, about 10 minutes from downtown Charlotte Amalie. We were the only ship in port today. We took our time today getting ready, headed down to our usual spot for breakfast. Then back to our cabin and took a few pictures from our balcony and a few other spots around the ship. I really do love the landscape of St. Thomas.

On our first visit to St. Thomas we had done a ship tour, so this time decided to go with a private tour, our first ever, and well, it did not start out great. I wanted something that included some shopping, there is a great little book store in Downtown Charlotte Amalie that we had visited before and really wanted to go back to (Waterfront Trading Co), not only do they have books they have a lot of art from local artists. I have bought beautiful Christmas decorations, etc from there. I really suggest a visit. Then we also wanted a bit of an island tour (not a huge one) and then some beach time. There are so many vendors that offer this type of tour, but we decided to go with Godfrey Tours. I paid our deposit and we booked it a few months in advance. Just before 10am, we headed down and found the meeting area, but there was no one there. Note, we didn’t receive any sort of communication just before our arrival. We waited a bit and some other people arrived, and a tour guide, but he worked for a different company then we booked with. This was our first private tour so I was a little bit sceptical when he said, oh Godfrey told me to take you with us. He didn’t have us on any list or anything, so I asked him to call our operator, he says he called him, but I am not sure, but whoever he talked to said, he didn’t know he had a tour booked or that there was even a ship in port, so we decided to get on Elvis’ truck and go with the flow. Elvis drives with Sonny Liston Tours and I will recommend him. He gave us bracelets and dropped us off downtown, we had just over an hour to shop downtown, which was fine for us, since we had been here before and knew what we were looking for.

We were ready to go early, so we went and waited in the park while we waited for our ride to show up. however the weather wasn’t great so we tried to hide under a tree to not get rained on. Once we were all back we hopped back onto the truck, then we decided that it was exactly a great beach day (everyone on the truck), so we just decided to go for an island tour instead. Kicking myself about that later. We were heading up to Mountain Top, which is quite the drive, I did manage to take some pictures along the way. I don’t actually remember if we stopped at Drake’s Seat or not.

We made our way to Mountain Top and it had started to pour. Many of the utilities at mountain top were not working, so we went into the store and it had no lights, and the toilets wouldn’t flush, so it was interesting.

Mom was slightly afraid of her new friend, I think.

This is what you should be able to see from that viewpoint.

This is what we could see...

Not really the same.

From here we toured the island a bit more and decided to head down to Coki beach and take a bit of time and have a look around.

The red truck is what we rode around in, the open air vehicles definitely are a nice option here.

Next stop was Sapphire Beach.

I am really kicking myself that we didn't spend much time at either of the beaches, and I really wanted to do some snorkelling. Oh well, next time. These 2 beaches were beautiful, but not as beautiful as Magen's Bay. After visiting Sapphire for a while we headed back to the ship. Our day did turn out pretty great. Elvis from Sonny Liston Tours was a lot of fun, and if I was going to do a tour again, I could consider booking with him again. Except if we visit again I think we would skip the tour.

We got back to the ship and we were hungry, so we decided to go and grab a pizza, big shocker! But it was so good! We still had some time before we were leaving port so I decided to head down and take a look at some of the port shops. Mom stayed on the ship.

I didn't buy anything, because I had gotten everything I wanted from town. All aboard time was 5:30, and we were departing at 6:00, I believe they called for a few people who weren't on board, but they were not very far, as the lines were up by 5:50 and we were making our way to Antigua.

We then got dressed and made our way down to the main dining room for dinner. I did get a picture of my dinner buy had already started eating, so I am not going to share. It was beef with Yorkshire pudding, and it was amazing.

After dinner we went back up to our room and changed, grabbed our cards and headed up to Deck 16 to enjoy the beautiful night and play some cribbage. We actually use an app on the iPad for the cribbage board and you would not believe how many people stopped by and commented on the board.

We called in an early night, as we were docking in Antigua bright and early at 7am the next morning.

I'm going to stop here as I need to get the next days done, hopefully will get posted tomorrow.

Thank you for the review and great pictures. We haven't been on the Royal but will be on her sister ship Regal next year and are really looking forward to it.

Sent from my iPad using Forums

Thank you for the review and great pictures. We haven't been on the Royal but will be on her sister ship Regal next year and are really looking forward to it.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

Thanks so much, I hope you enjoy as much as we did!

Day 7 (November 20, 2016) Antigua

This morning we were arriving in Antigua, we arrived in port at 7:00am and would be here until 4:00pm. I did a lot of research on what to do in this port, none of the ship tours where appealing to me. After a lot of research we decided to go with Lawrence of Antigua, we would go on an island tour and then finish our day off at one of Antigua’s 365 beaches. Lawrence was so easy to work with, he answered my original email right away. Island tour was $40 US, and Island tour with beach time was $50 US. Of course we wanted some beach time as well. He also sent us an email confirmation a few days ahead as well.

We weren’t in a big rush to get off of the ship as we were not meeting Lawrence until 8:45, so we took our time getting ready and then as usual headed up to the buffet to get some breakfast and then take it out to our usual spot and enjoy our morning.

Lawrence told us he would be standing on the dock with his Lawrence of Antigua sign at 8:45 sharp, we of course were a few minutes early and we had no problem finding him. He also wears a colourful vest, so he is easy to pick out of the crowd. Originally we were the only ones booked with him for the day, but another couple recognized him as they were getting off of the ship and asked if they could join, so there were only 4 of us on the tour that day, it was great we pretty much had a private tour.

We started out just seeing the different sights of Antigua as we were making our way to English Harbour and Shirley Heights. The quality is not the best, since these were taking from a moving vehicle out a window.

This was a cute little colourful church, I wish I could have got a better picture of it.

Then we arrived at the National Park, there is a fee of $8 per person to enter the park, which includes all parts of the park. The views from here are some of the most stunning I have ever seen.

The house in the above picture, just above my signature belongs to Eric Clapton's.

Then we headed further up to the amazing views of English Harbour. This little building had a few little things that you could buy. They also held a part in the area every week, it was open to everyone.

Here is some proof that we were actually there too! I am terrible, I hate selfies, so I never take them and I tend to forget to take pictures of other people and I spend so much time taking pictures of scenery.

From there we began the journey down to Nelson’s Dockyard. It is a very neat site, but I am just not enough of a history buff to follow along on the tours, so I took off and did my own exploring. Mom did go off and do some exploring.

While were there, there were also some ceremonies going on, as this was the time that Price Harry was touring around the Caribbean and he was scheduled to be in Antigua on the same day as us, unfortunately I didn’t find him. So we did see the Governor General of Antigua, as he was attending some event at Nelson’s Dockyard. I wasn’t sure who he was when I took his picture, but it seemed he was important.

It was so hot out today, so I tried to get as close to the water as I could, so I wend and did some exploring of the Harbour. There is also a bakery and a couple of souvenir shops, I was able to find a cute Christmas ornament in one of the shops here. When I was young my great-aunt would give me a different Christmas decoration from a different country each year. Now that I am travelling on my own, I have carried it on and pick up my own.