K&B's Excellent Adventure to the S Caribbean on the Valor (Sept 19-30) *pic heavy*

[ktinnc]

Part 5/Monday, Sept 23, 2013 (cont)

 

On the way back down we made one more stop at an overlook for a quick pic! Ooooh look at that water! So pretty!

 



 



 



The last part of the tour (and what I was looking forward to most) was the beach stop! We had a choice of going to Magen’s Bay ($4 entry fee and no snorkeling/water sports), Coki Beach (near Coral World) or Sapphire Beach (Sunny’s recommendation and I had read a lot of good things about it so I pushed for that one). Sapphire Beach it is! Wooo hoo! (It was majority rules).





Sunny dropped us off at Sapphire at 1:30pm and said he’d be back at 3:30pm to pick us up. The beach was gorgeous and pretty quiet. Are you ready to see pics of this tropical paradise??

[ktinnc]

Part 5/Monday, Sept 23, 2013 (cont)

 

You could rent beach chairs but we just found a shady spot under a tree and made a home for our stuff. There were a couple of iguanas close by – so weird. They just roam around!

 



 



 



 

After taking a few pics I could wait no longer…I had to go feel the water! It was very rocky when you first walk in, but once you get past that it’s better, but you also have to look for the coral and not step on that (that’d hurt!) While I was making some “OMG this is amazing” sounds Brian grabbed his snorkel gear and started exploring under the water. He got so excited about what he was seeing that I decided I better grab mine too. I had bought us each a mask/snorkel set before we left. They weren’t the most expensive but they also weren’t the cheapest. I even tried mine out in my sister’s pool before we left..but guess what happened? I go to stretch the plastic part of the mask over my head and the strap busted. Ugh…now what? So my hubby who is “Macgyver” looks at me wearing a pair of hoop earrings and says, “give me your earring.” “What? why?” “Just do it!” Ok so I give him my earring and somehow he used the earring and the broken strap and managed to temporarily fix it and off we went into the water together. Yay…glad I brought him along.haha.

 



 



 

[ktinnc]

Part 5/Monday, Sept 23, 2013 (cont)

 

It must be really rough to live here ...I mean look at how ugly it is (haha).

 

Actually I have friends that live on St John (the island in this pic). You can see that half the island has houses and the other half doesn't - that's because it's a national park. Cool huh? Anyways they regularly post pics online to make the rest of us jealous of their views!

 



 

My snorkeling hubby....as the week goes on you'll see that this became a pretty regular thing for him. We live at the beach in NC and we get my red headed hubby to the beach maybe once or twice in the summer if we're lucky. But in the caribbean where he can explore - he was all over that! Who knew?

 



 



 



 

 

[ktinnc]

Part 5/Monday, Sept 23, 2013 (cont)

 

We snorkeled for a long time – we only took one break and then we went back in and further out. We probably snorkeled for about an hour. It was so fun! Nobody was around us either so we didn’t have to worry about getting in anyone’s way or vice versa. Here’s a bunch of pics of some of the things we saw…

 



 



 



 



 



 

[ktinnc]

Part 5/Monday, Sept 23, 2013 (cont)

 

 



 



 



 

[ktinnc]

Part 5/Monday, Sept 23, 2013 (cont)

 

After snorkeling we just floated in the water for a while… I took a few more beach pics…and then we were pretty worn out. That snorkeling is a workout (and I was battling a cold/sinus infection so breathing through the snorkel was tiring).

 



 



 



 



 



 

[ktinnc]

Part 5/Monday, Sept 23, 2013 (cont)

 

What was that? You want to see more beach pics?!? Well, ok I've got a few more :)

 



 



 



 

 

We dried off/got dressed and headed back to meet the group. Everyone was tired, hot and sandy – and hungry too! There was a little shack of a bar with a few drinks (i.e. water, few types of soda, rum punch and pain killers) and that was it. No food that we could see so we just waited til we got back on the ship to eat. It was kind of a quiet ride back to the ship (in comparison to the rest of the day).



We got back to the ship and said our good byes to Sunny. The tour was $35 per person and we left a tip as well. We really enjoyed it and felt it was well worth it. We had never been to St Thomas before so we got to see a lot.

 

[ktinnc]

Part 5/Monday, Sept 23, 2013 (cont)

 

Once we got back on board (I believe it was close to 4:15pm) we rushed up to Lido to grab a quick snack. We didn’t want to eat too much because we had 6pm dinner but we hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast at 8:30 so we were starving! We went back to our cabin and showered and changed for dinner. Just before and during sail away I took a few more pics from our balcony…I couldn’t help myself!

 



 



 



 



 



 

[ktinnc]

Part 5/Monday, Sept 23, 2013 (cont)

 

At 6pm we headed to the Washington Dining Room for our first night of “assigned seating.” We have always enjoyed getting to sit with the same people every night and have the same wait staff etc so we’ve never tried the “anytime dining” (where you go when you want to and they seat you wherever is available). On this port intensive of a cruise I kind of wish we wouldn’t have picked the 6pm time – but more on that later. So we get to our table and it’s right by the window (nice) and it’s a table for 8 (4 couples). 2 couples were already seated and they were very quiet. Like awkward quiet. The last couple arrived and they were a lot chattier like us so they helped get the conversation going. Everyone was nice enough it just wasn’t like we had experienced in the past. Our wait staff was nice enough too but none of them really stood out as being overly friendly/funny…but it was just the first night so maybe it’ll get better. The food was good and for dessert I had to have my warm chocolate melting cake with 2 scoops of vanilla ice cream – yum.

 

After dinner we went to the casino for a bit. We aren’t big spenders at all but we still like to play a little. We'll play the penny slots and if we’re feelin crazy we’ll play a few quarters!

 

At 9:15pm we went to the adult comedy show and it was hysterical. I can’t remember laughing that hard in a long time!

 

 

 



 

After the comedy show we went to the Welcome Aboard show. It was busy!!

 



 



 

We’ve seen it before but it was still fun……and then we snuck out a few minutes early from that to get seats for the 2nd adult comedy show! I didn’t think he was that funny. Towards the end he got a little better but I think the first guy was just so good that this guy didn’t compare.

 



 

By the end of the night I was feeling absolutely miserable – full on cough, sore throat, headache and I’m guessing sinus infection at this point (I’ve had them many times before). We stopped by the Lido to grab a slice of pizza (yum) to bring back to our cabin and called it a night!

This little guy was waiting for us when we got back!





Next up….our one and only sea day!

[chipandsteph]

I can't wait to see more! We took this cruise in August. I love reliving it, and it passes the time until our honeymoon on the Splendor in May! Your pictures of the fort in San Juan are so much better than mine! I also loved the pictures of Sapphire Beach! We did Magen's Bay our first time in St. Thomas and Coki Beach our second time. I have already told my fiancee that I want to hit Sapphire Beach whenever we end up there again! Looking forward to more!

[girlscruise2011]

Thanks for coming back to finish your review. I subscribed when you first began to help with my Valor cruise. I got back a few weeks ago and now that your are back to the review, its helping me relive it again. St Thomas was beautiful wasn't it? I can't wait to see what you did in the other ports.

 

I guess I'll be seeing you on the Splendor. We have a great group of people on the rollcall and the other page. I can't wait to read all the reviews from that one :)

[ktinnc]

I can't wait to see more! We took this cruise in August. I love reliving it, and it passes the time until our honeymoon on the Splendor in May! Your pictures of the fort in San Juan are so much better than mine! I also loved the pictures of Sapphire Beach! We did Magen's Bay our first time in St. Thomas and Coki Beach our second time. I have already told my fiancee that I want to hit Sapphire Beach whenever we end up there again! Looking forward to more!

 

Thanks for stopping by and posting! Wasn't it an amazing itinerary? :) We're going on the Splendor in Nov to some great/unique ports and I'm still wondering if it will measure up to this cruise..it was just awesome! Sapphire was gorgeous! (as you can see from the pics :))

[ktinnc]

Thanks for coming back to finish your review. I subscribed when you first began to help with my Valor cruise. I got back a few weeks ago and now that your are back to the review, its helping me relive it again. St Thomas was beautiful wasn't it? I can't wait to see what you did in the other ports.

 

I guess I'll be seeing you on the Splendor. We have a great group of people on the rollcall and the other page. I can't wait to read all the reviews from that one :)

 

Hi! Thanks for coming back and reading!! Believe me there was nobody more bummed than me that I had to take such a long hiatus on sharing our cruise with everyone. Most people work 9-5 jobs and say on here plenty that they work on their reviews at work...and/or can leave the job at the office at 5 and have the evening to do whatever. Not me...being a business owner during my busy season means there are no such things as days off....many times I wouldn't even get a shower (I'd work from home) and I would eat while I was working 18+ hour days. Anyways I'm just happy that I can get back to it now. Hopefully people will still be interested, but regardless I'm doing it for myself (I committed to it and I want to finish it, and it'll make scrapbooking it easy). whew- gettin wordy here..haha. That's awesome we'll both be on the Splendor Repo cruise - it was peer pressure that got me - from the folks I met while on the Valor. Having cruise friends is going to be dangerous I think.haha.

[ktinnc]

Part 6/Tuesday, Sept 24, 2013

 

Today was our one and only day at sea. When I booked this cruise one of the reasons for it was because we were in new ports all but one day. Hubby doesn’t know how to sit still and do the lay in the sun/relax thing so I needed to keep him busy. Although when we got back he said he wished we would’ve had more beach days..lol. Anyways….I slept in until 9am …Brian got up earlier and had showered and watched tv etc. Unfortunately I woke up feeling even worse than the night before. Fabulous. Well, it’s vacation and I’m not letting it stop me from having a great time! I got a shower and then we headed to brunch in the main dining room (MDR). I’m a total people person and like meeting other people but I was feeling so crappy I just didn’t have the energy to socialize so we requested a table for two. Turns out I absolutely loved it. We had such a nice/quiet brunch just the two of us. We are boring creatures of habit and got the same thing every day…. eggs/bacon/toast for Brian….omelet, sausage and fruit for me.

 

After brunch we went to the casino for awhile – wasn’t paying out much at all but we still had fun!





 

Just before noon we played Scattegories in the Atrium….we came in 2nd place but the lady who won was sitting next to us. We we had been chatting with her and her husband before the game started…they were an older couple and very sweet. We had said that we were on our “2nd honeymoon” and our “souvenir” from our first honeymoon was home with the Grandparents. So when she won the game she gave us her ship on a stick to bring home to our “souvenir.” Nice couple!

 

After that we went to the Casino for a few more minutes (I swear we didn’t spend very much…haha) and then it was time for TV Theme Song trivia. We didn’t do so hot but it was still a good time.























 

We went up to Lido deck to grab some lunch and then went to another game….”Sea Feud.” As I’ve mentioned before Brian isn’t a big lay in the sun kinda guy….I had been looking forward to spending some time up on the Serenity Deck on this cruise but since I wasn’t feeling that good and it was quieter inside the ship vs on Lido I was content to go to all the games/casino etc. It was actually relaxing and it was fun to hang out and play games with the hubs. In the late afternoon it was time for one of our favorite activities….The Love and Marriage Show. We go to it on every cruise but I don’t think I have ever laughed harder than at this one. The game even went long because it was so funny that the cruise director said he didn’t care that it ran over. Good stuff! The couple on the far right had been married over 50 years or something like that….they were from Puerto Rico and only spoke Spanish so the cruise director had to translate EVERYTHING which made it even funnier because some things got lost in translation!

[ktinnc]

Part 6/Tuesday, Sept 24, 2013 (continued)

After the show we went back to our cabin to rest for a little bit (around 4:30ish). I decided to journal instead of taking a nap because I was afraid I wouldn’t wake up for dinner if I laid down. But Brian (Mr I don’t nap) took a nap! I went out on the balcony with my journal and my diet coke, put my feet up and enjoyed the sounds of the waves crashing and got some writing done. I enjoyed every single second.

 



 



 



 



 

[ktinnc]

Part 6/Tuesday, Sept 24, 2013 (continued)

 

I woke Brian up and we got showered and dressed for Elegant Night. Dinner was at 6pm again. Our table was a bit chattier tonight and everyone looked nice all dressed up. Both of us were planning to dress up a little more than we did but at the last minute I just didn’t feel like it..lol.

 



We had planned to get at least one pic taken by the ship photographers but never got around to it – the lines were kinda long and we just didn’t’ feel like waiting…so these quick snapshots had to suffice! I should mention this is about the dressiest my husband ever gets and only once or twice a year!





 



 

After dinner we stopped by the casino for a few minutes before going to a show. Brian was the big winner with winning 6060 credits!!





 

Too bad we were playing the penny slots lol. But really that pretty much meant we won back all we had spent so far in the casino and then some (told ya we didn’t play/spend much!)





 

After the casino we went to the show – Nightclub Express. I forgot until it started that we had seen it before so we watched most of it but I was actually kind of bored. We really aren’t very hard to please and usually love seeing the shows (even repeats) but it just wasn’t great. It could’ve also been because I still wasn’t feeling very well at all. I don’t know about you but when I’m sick I always feel the worst first thing in the morning and the later into the night it gets….that was definitely the case on the cruise. Good thing I didn’t feel too bad during the day when we were actually exploring the ports!

 



We left a few minutes early to head to the comedy show (which I was really looking forward to – it was the really funny guy from the night before), but on the way Brian looked at me and said, “You’re going to bed.” I looked (and felt) terrible. I argued half halfheartedly that I was fine and then eventually agreed with him and we decided to call it a night. We stopped by the Lido for a snack and a drink to bring back to the cabin where we found our newest towel friend. One of my favorite parts of a cruise is the turn down service and finding the nightly towel animal and reading through the fun times for the next day!





 

Ahhhh…took some medicine and crawled into bed…..read for a little bit and I gave in to sleep around 10:30pm. Next up….Barbados and the best excursion ever!

[agc291]

Is your dress from elegant night from Kiki La'Rue? I have one similar that I plan on bringing for our cruise this week. Glad you are back to finish your review! I dont know why people get bent out of shape that you have a life but I look forward to the rest. This was our first and most favorite cruise.

[chipandsteph]

Thanks for stopping by and posting! Wasn't it an amazing itinerary? :) We're going on the Splendor in Nov to some great/unique ports and I'm still wondering if it will measure up to this cruise..it was just awesome! Sapphire was gorgeous! (as you can see from the pics :))

 

The ports were amazing! My favorite was Barbados, with St. Maarten coming in a close second! I wish we could do the November Splendor cruise. It looks amazing! We are going on the Splendor ourselves in May for our honeymoon! I love having the sea days and going out of NYC. I don't think the ports will measure up to the Valor ones, though. I'm sure we will have a wonderful time anyway! We always do!

[ktinnc]

Is your dress from elegant night from Kiki La'Rue? I have one similar that I plan on bringing for our cruise this week. Glad you are back to finish your review! I dont know why people get bent out of shape that you have a life but I look forward to the rest. This was our first and most favorite cruise.

 

Hi!

I had my eye on it at Kiki La'Rue but then ended up finding a similar one on ebay of all places...still had tags on it so that's the one I got....:) Have fun on your cruise - I'm jealous....we have to wait til Nov for the next one :)

[ktinnc]

The ports were amazing! My favorite was Barbados, with St. Maarten coming in a close second! I wish we could do the November Splendor cruise. It looks amazing! We are going on the Splendor ourselves in May for our honeymoon! I love having the sea days and going out of NYC. I don't think the ports will measure up to the Valor ones, though. I'm sure we will have a wonderful time anyway! We always do!

 

Ahhh - we agreed....had an awesome day in Barbados and St Maarten! I'm working on going through the pics for the Barbados portion but there's almost 400 to weed through!! lol It's fun to go through though - it really feels like I'm there again :)

[valsdancin]

Part 5/Monday, Sept 23, 2013 (cont)

 

What was that? You want to see more beach pics?!? Well, ok I've got a few more :)

 



 



 



 

 

We dried off/got dressed and headed back to meet the group. Everyone was tired, hot and sandy – and hungry too! There was a little shack of a bar with a few drinks (i.e. water, few types of soda, rum punch and pain killers) and that was it. No food that we could see so we just waited til we got back on the ship to eat. It was kind of a quiet ride back to the ship (in comparison to the rest of the day).



We got back to the ship and said our good byes to Sunny. The tour was $35 per person and we left a tip as well. We really enjoyed it and felt it was well worth it. We had never been to St Thomas before so we got to see a lot.

 

 

I just got back from my Conquest cruise. We were told Sapphire Beach is now closed. You can still go there, but there are no services. We went to Secret Harbor Beach. It was nice. There were rocks getting into the water, but after that the water was great! We even saw a sea turtle while snorkleing. It wasn't very crowded. There were 6 total ship in port that day. I thought it might be worse. They have a full bar/ food service/ restrooms/ dive shop, etc.

 

By the way, thank you for doing this review. I started reading when you first started posting. Since I got back from my cruise I've been trying to decide on my next one. I definitely want to do the Southern route. I'm just trying to decide on dates. I'm not sure if I can pull off the one you are going on in Nov., although I'm sure it will be a blast! :)

[pbhgirlforever]

We leave on the Valor in 13 days! 5 more inches of snow in Maryland and 2 more storms on the way this week :eek: Thanks for more pictures. Keep them coming!:p

[Ematic81]

Part 5/Monday, Sept 23, 2013 (cont)

 



 



 



 

 

We had ordered room service the night before to arrive between 6:30 and 6:40 – they came close to 7am. It was just a “pre-breakfast.” Toast & jelly and milk for Brian, a bagel/cream cheese for me and some ice for my diet coke! We had a little something to eat (in between taking pics) and got ready for the day including getting the beach bag packed and Brian (my red headed husband) doused himself in his first round of sunscreen.

Once we were ready we headed to the Washington Dining Room for breakfast. They have open seating every morning and instead of fighting the crowds at the buffet on lido deck you get to relax and have your food brought to you. We always go to the MDR for breakfast vs Lido. Because I wasn’t feeling well I was moving a little slow getting ready in the cabin so by the time we got to breakfast it was looking pretty iffy on if we would get to eat and get to our excursion on time. We were sat with 2 other couples…both were very nice and we had some nice conversation. After our yummy (but scarfed down) breakfast…. (omelette, fruit and turkey sausage for me; eggs, bacon and toast for Brian) we had to run and get off the ship for our 9am excursion. We didn’t know how far we would have to go when we got off the ship to where our meeting place was since we had never been to St Thomas before, but thankfully there wasn’t much of a walk at all. We had to wait a few minutes anyways so it worked out perfect.





Since we had never been to any of the islands before, we decided to do some type of excursion at each port. For St Thomas we decided on Sunny Liston’s Shopping, Sightseeing and Beach Tour. (Who am I kidding, I decided on all the excursions…hubby just showed up..lol). Sunny picked us up in his open air taxi and drove us into Charlotte Amalie for the first part of the tour – shopping. He dropped us off and we had 3 hours to shop/do what we wanted. So we get dropped off and we’re like hmm..what should we do now? lol We knew we were going to just walk around and browse but I didn’t know where the shops were or anything (guess I should’ve planned this part a little better. So the first thing we did was walk across the street to take a pic of the ship from where we were.

 

 







We were talking about where we should go next and I can’t remember why but for some reason I looked in our beach bag for something. While I was doing that, Brian says…”OMG I can’t find my sail and sign card.” What? You’re kidding me right? Cuz that’s something he would do. No…he said he couldn’t find it. Sooo…let me back up. For those of you that don’t know, the sail and sign card is how you get on/off the ship, it’s your room key and it’s how you spend money on the ship (you charge purchases to your card and at the end of the cruise they charge you for the total to your CC or you can put cash on the acct). In any case…. when we had walked off the ship (had to have the card for it) I had said to Brian, do you want me to hold onto your card with mine? I put mine in our waterproof wallet that we were going to keep our money/id/sail and sign cards in. He says…no I’ll hold on to mine just in case something were to happen at least both of us wouldn’t be out of luck. So he had put his SS card in the back velcro pocket of his swim trunks. He had volunteered to wear the wallet around his neck (that’s how you’re supposed to wear them) but at the last minute decided to tuck it into his pocket too. Well when he pulled out the wallet to pay Sunny (before we got off at the first stop) his sail and sign must have fallen out?!?

 

Sooo…we’ve been off of the ship 10 whole minutes on the very first day and my husband has already lost his sail n sign card. OMG…what do we do? So we went and sat down on a bench and regrouped….looked through our beach bag etc and couldn’t find it. So we decided to just go on about our day and hopefully they would let us back on the ship later! So we take a look at the shopping map they had handed us when we got off the ship and made a plan.

 

We browsed through some of the shops and just tried to have a good time. We aren’t big shoppers but we still had fun. At one point we decided to call the 800 number at Carnival and ask about Brian’s card. After like 20 minutes on hold (on a phone battery that was almost dead because I hadn’t planned to use it except to take a few photos) I talked to a lady who laughed at our panic and said to go have fun and not worry about it…she said it happens all the time. Whew!! Back to shopping.

 

WE got a few little gifts for family and we found a drug store so I could get some cough drops and cold medicine. Wow – expensive! It was $18 for a box of Advil cold and sinus!



We were amused by all the tactics the shops used to try and get shoppers in their doors. Free gifts, free drinks and even use of their private restrooms! I wanted to get one piece of jewelry on this trip instead of a bunch of junky souvenirs so I was happy to find a pretty starfish necklace. Bonus: while we were finalizing our purchase I got to use their restroom..haha.

 



 

I realized the only pic I took during our shopping trip was of Tiffanys….because Brian had no idea what it was..lol. We went in there just for the heck of it and he almost fell over at some of the prices..ha.

 



 

 

At 11:45am we went back to our meeting spot so we could finish the rest of our excursion (sightseeing and beach ahead!). I’m going to stop here for now because the pics aren’t done uploading, but I’ll be back tomorrow with more. The big question is….did we ever find Brian’s sail and sign card?!?

 

lol I remember Sunny had his SS card!!!

[Jeansfanatic]

Another great review!!!!! Yippee! Can't wait to read the rest!!! Such amazing pictures too!

[gracie65]

Great review!! Can't wait to hear more. I too am a photographer on the SC coast. I know all too well what you mean about the Holiday season!!!

We are doing this itinerary in November. It's a nice break in between the summer sessions on the beach and right before the majority of the Holiday sessions start.

I can't wait to hear if you got to feeling better!!