Liberty's Memorial Day Review (photo heavy) - Including Extra Days in San Juan!!

[jagger16]

Tripp, Thank you for your review. I am enjoying it very much but don't know if I'm going to finish it before embarking on the Liberty with my husband on Sunday! At some point I have to stop and pack. I do have a couple questions:

1. I wanted to confirm that even though our boarding time is 2:30 p.m., you did say people were going on board at 12:00? We do have priority check-in.

 

2. Besides the Pina Colada place that you mentioned in San Juan, do you (or anyone else) have any other recommendations for a restaurant in San Juan for dinner on Saturday?

 

3. Any beach recommendations from you (or anyone else) for St. Kitts?

 

Thank you so much for all of the information that you have provided. This is the last Liberty review we'll read before embarking on Sunday so we really appreciate the current information that you have shared. Glad that you and your family had an awesome trip.

[trippingpara]

Tripp, Thank you for your review. I am enjoying it very much but don't know if I'm going to finish it before embarking on the Liberty with my husband on Sunday! At some point I have to stop and pack. I do have a couple questions:

1. I wanted to confirm that even though our boarding time is 2:30 p.m., you did say people were going on board at 12:00? We do have priority check-in.

 

2. Besides the Pina Colada place that you mentioned in San Juan, do you (or anyone else) have any other recommendations for a restaurant in San Juan for dinner on Saturday?

 

3. Any beach recommendations from you (or anyone else) for St. Kitts?

 

Thank you so much for all of the information that you have provided. This is the last Liberty review we'll read before embarking on Sunday so we really appreciate the current information that you have shared. Glad that you and your family had an awesome trip.

 

 

I wish I could get this review done faster for you but this thing called work keeps getting in the way. I think I need to become a travel writer so I can travel and write for a living! Nonetheless, thank you for reading along and for the kind words. I will do my best to go as fast as possible for you. Here are my responses to your questions:

 

1. Priority check-in (Diamond and Platinum and Suite guests) started at 12:00 pm. FTTF guests immediately followed that. The remaining guests were scheduled to start at 2:30 pm. I don't know if they actually did wait until 2:30 of if they started boarding them immediately following the FTTF guests.

 

2. There are several great restaurants in Old San Juan: along with Barrachina, there's Marmalade, Dragonfly, and Aquaviva are our favorites.

 

3. We think the top beaches in St. Kitts are: Cockleshell, Frigate Bay and Friar's. A couple great, off the beaten path ones are Major's and Whitehouse.

 

I hope this helps!! Cheers :)

[jagger16]

Thank you, Tripp. I'll keep all of those new facts with me when we leave. Please don't hurry up writing on my account, I'm the one that is behind. I think I just finished reading about your St. Thomas day. Glad you could FF for me to St. Kitts because that is the only day that we have no plan. Back to packing and thanks again! :):)

[jmcancruise]

OK I am dying to know. I see the group Summer Breeze played in the Atrium during your cruise. We came across a duo on a couple of our cruises with the same name and loved them. Were they a youngish couple with a real mellow sound? I believe they were brother and sister. Would love to find out it was the same ones. They were a highlight of those cruises for us.

[aztekpm]

Jagger, we were on the Liberty at the beginning of May, we're not platinum, etc., just regular ole passengers ;) and we were on the ship and on the Lido before noon! The ship was obviously released for boarding timely and was the easiest, quickest check-in & embark ever.

 

We stayed at the Sheraton, left at 11:15, walked down the street, gave the porters our luggage, into the terminal, up the escalator, took departure pic, no line up to check in, did so and I'd say we sat for 5 mins. before they called Platinum, FTTF and then regular boarding all within the next 15 minutes! It was my sisters second time via PR and she said it was just as quick her previous time.

 

I think due to the late departure everyone just seems to spread out checking-in. If it suits your plans, I would head in earlier to take advantage, drop your stuff, grab lunch and then tour PR or just explore the ship and relax. Our group of 8 did some of each!

[trippingpara]

I completely lost track of time so I can’t tell you how long we were here. However long it was, it seemed to be the right amount of time. Not too long that we were getting bored nor too short that we didn’t get to see everything.

 

Our next stop was up to Cayon, one the largest towns on St. Kitts. We drove through the narrow streets and made our way to the rainforest that lined the western edge of town along the Cayon Ghaut (river system). We were going to hike up the ghaut into the rainforest along the riverbed and through a bamboo forest. Lady Trip was really hoping to see some Green Vervet monkeys along the way. Meanwhile, I was praying that we didn’t. I had some rather unpleasant experiences with monkeys while in Central America in the Marines. I’d be a happy man if I never saw another monkey in my life. Of course, I had to marry an amazing woman that loves monkeys!

 

 

 

Javin

 

 

 

 

We hiked through the rainforest for about 30 minutes following the ghaut. Unfortunately, we were in the dry season so the ghaut was pretty much dried up. We stopped to rest and Javin asked us if we wanted to press on or to head back. We could hike for about another 30-45 minutes to where a pool should be that we could swim in (but it would be very shallow now) or we could turn back and have more time snorkeling and swimming. Everyone selected to turn around and have more water time.

 

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[trippingpara]

We hiked our way back to his truck where we brought out the grub and had a tailgate picnic right there at the edge of the rainforest.

 

 

I don’t recall what all of the options were but I do remember that they were delicious! We also had some various fruit drinks available which were very refreshing. A pair of puppies came out of hiding and watched us eat. Of course it didn’t take too long before everyone was throwing scraps over to them. Once everyone had their fill, we loaded back up and headed south along the coast for some snorkeling. After a bit we arrived at Whitehouse Bay. Javin pointed out where we were going to be snorkeling to. It was quite a ways out. He advised everyone to take a snorkeling vest as the swim out could be very tiring for some. It was a heck of a swim but not too bad. Once we got out to where Javin was waiting for us, we turned and headed north to see a sunken wreck.

 

 

 

 

 

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[trippingpara]

 

 

 

 

After cruising around the wreck for a few minutes we headed back in towards shore. As we were heading back I noticed that Lady Trip was quite a ways back with the young couple from Kansas. I let Trippette know that I was turning around and swam back to where they were. The young lady was suffering from a nasty leg cramp. I tried to show her a couple tricks that divers use to stretch out leg cramps to no avail. It was being a bugger. I suggested that it would probably be best to tow her back in. Luckily, her husband was a strapping young lad and he jumped to it towing her all the way back in. Well, at least until we bumped back into Javin who was waiting for us with Trippette. He wanted to show us a few things before we made the final push to shore.

 

 

 

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[trippingpara]

A sea cucumber

 

 

 

Hey, this is interesting…a little octopus living inside a conch shell. “Hey Trippette, come check this out…”

 

 

 

 

Not sure who was more disturbed by this discovery, the octopus or Trippette?

 

Hee-hee, I’m still cracking up over that!! And cue the stinkeye from Trippette as she reads this in…one…two…and…

 

“DAAAAAD!!!” Is it bad that I’m still giggling over this?

 

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[sgfun]

Thanks for such a fun and informative review. We arrived in PR yesterday and leave on the same iternary Sunday. Are doing many of the same outings but with different operators, hope ours go as well as yours. We kayaked Bio bay last night and had a great time. Thanks again.

[SoloSailorII]

We had a very similar experience with our daughter in St. Thomas last year. Your girl is a lovely young lady, congratulations on all the achievements and thank you for your service.

 

Fair winds and Following seas....

Edited June 26, 2015 by SoloSailorII

[wbrownmtsu]

I'm loving your review. The pictures are awesome!

[jagger16]

Jagger, we were on the Liberty at the beginning of May, we're not platinum, etc., just regular ole passengers ;) and we were on the ship and on the Lido before noon! The ship was obviously released for boarding timely and was the easiest, quickest check-in & embark ever.

 

Thanks, Aztek. We have priority boarding but the time on the boarding pass is 2:30-8:30. I agree with you, the earlier you embark the better! The first day on the ship is the best and most exciting so we really like to relax and stretch it out.

[Dirkgun]

Love the St Kitts pics. Especially the one of Trippette with conch shell and the Octopus.....very funny and cool all at the same time.

[pghsteelerfan]

I have to tell you how much I'm loving your St. Kitts section and love the pictures you got with the mountains in the background. On our Valor cruise, St. Kitts was our rainy day and not just a passing shower...we had rain much of the day and couldn't even see the top 2/3 of the mountains because of low cloud cover. Your snorkeling pictures came out great too. Here's why I'm commenting before you finish...I am laughing like crazy right now (and getting some strange looks from one of our cats) at the pictures of your daughter with that "octopus-filled" conch shell. It's so obvious she wanted no part of that. It is so cool though and something I'd actually like to see. I know a couple people, one being a grown man, who'd literally be screaming bloody murder while fleeing at the same time and scaring all the fish away. :D

Edited June 26, 2015 by pghsteelerfan

[trippingpara]

Great review and pics (so far). Love the Cliff Notes report card version up front. Reading your review makes me want to do another southern caribbean cruise. Also enjoy seeing our old friend the Carnival Liberty who we have sailed on 4 times. Thanks for posting your review.

 

Thank you so much for the kind words and for reading along. I appreciate it!

[trippingpara]

OK I am dying to know. I see the group Summer Breeze played in the Atrium during your cruise. We came across a duo on a couple of our cruises with the same name and loved them. Were they a youngish couple with a real mellow sound? I believe they were brother and sister. Would love to find out it was the same ones. They were a highlight of those cruises for us.

 

This sounds like them but I can't say with any degree of certainly. They were fairly young and they were mellow. I have no idea if they were siblings or not. Never spoke to them but did listen to them once while we sat at the atrium bar.

[trippingpara]

Thanks for such a fun and informative review. We arrived in PR yesterday and leave on the same iternary Sunday. Are doing many of the same outings but with different operators, hope ours go as well as yours. We kayaked Bio bay last night and had a great time. Thanks again.

 

I am SOOOO jealous that you're in San Juan right now! You are going to have a great time on this cruise!:D

[trippingpara]

We had a very similar experience with our daughter in St. Thomas last year. Your girl is a lovely young lady, congratulations on all the achievements and thank you for your service.

 

Fair winds and Following seas....

 

Thank you so much for the kind words and it was my pleasure and honor to serve!

[trippingpara]

Any ways, where was I? Ah yes, we eventually made it all the way back to shore and loaded back into the truck for our next stop. Yep, we’re not done yet! Now we’re heading to Timothy Hill for the famous overlook of the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.

 

 

 

 

We spent a few minutes here collecting photos and then it was off to our final stop for the day, Cockleshell Beach. I’ve always wanted to go here from all of the reviews I’ve read on Cruise Critic so I was pretty pumped that it was included on this tour. As we pulled into the beach area, Javin pulled a little too far off to the side to let another truck pass and got stuck. It took about 15 minutes for one of Javin’s friends pull us out with his truck. I guess it’s good to have plenty of friends! Once we were free, the tailgate came back down for some more food and drinks. This time, the drink options included some really tasty rum and coke with raw sugar cane. Yum! There’s just something special about frolicking around a tropical beach in the Caribbean sipping on a local rum with a stick of sugar cane sticking out of it. Why do I suddenly have Snoop Dog’s “Gin and Juice” stuck in my head?

 

 

The ladies giving me their best diva pose!

 

 

Somebody really needs to invent a way to freeze time! I could have stayed here forever…well at least until the rum ran out. Then it might have been time to head somewhere else! We were having so much fun, they actually had to come into the water to come and get us. I told ya, we’re like little kids in the water! We finally gave in and headed back to the truck, loaded up and made our way back to Port Zante and eventually the Liberty.

 

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[Shih-tzu]

Glad to have read the latest installment -

Note to self: Do NOT pick up conch shells - they may have inhabitants and someone with a camera close by... (Tripette is a good sport)

[mommio]

We sail on Sunday, 6/28/15. Your review has already made our trip delightful! Thank you for such a great read.

[trippingpara]

Looks like the Splendor has 2 bows!

 

Javin and his two cousins that assisted him. And of course, Trippette.

 

 

Goodbye St. Kitts, thanks for such a great time!

 

Once we were back on the ship, we decided that we wanted some more pool time. Did I mention that we love water?

 

 

 

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[trippingpara]

We continued to play around in the pool during sail away. It was neat sitting in the pool watching the two whale tails pass each other as the two ships honked their goodbyes. Finally it was time to get out of the pool. When you start mistaking your fingers for prunes, it’s a good idea to get out!

 

We headed back to our cabin and did our ritual showers and change into our evening wear. Tonight was the second elegant night. Lady Trip was pretty well bushed and just wanted to rest. So Trippette and I got all fancied up (not as fancy as the first elegant night) and headed down to the MDR. We figured we’ve give Wayan and his team a third shot. Mistake! It got even worse. There was only two of us but they still sat us at our same table (set for four) but never removed the other settings.

 

Normally, as soon as you sit down, they remove all of the settings that will not be used. Not this time! Of course, this isn’t really a big deal but it was a clear sign of the level of service that we could expect to be receiving this evening. We had to grab the waiter to get our waters topped off, had to wait quite a while to give our orders (very unusual for what we were normally getting) and then to top it off, the food was not good either. I ordered the filet mignon thinking the one that Trippette had at the steakhouse was just a fluke. Nope. We both ordered the key lime brulee for desert which ended up being slightly above inedible.

 

The offending filet mignon

 

The equally offending key lime brulee

 

Trippette had a pasta in a mushroom based sauce. She declared that as quite tasty.

 

A very surprising and very disappointing end to what was otherwise a spectacular day. Ok, so it wasn’t quite the “end” of the day, but you get the picture! After dinner, Trippette and I headed back to our room to check in with Lady Trip who was still feeling a bit worn out. So we opted to let her rest some more and we went out to watch the dive-in movie, The Other Woman. As Trippette and I chowed down on some popcorn (one of our favorite past times!), Lady Trip had enough rest and joined us for the rest of the movie. The rapid pace of this itinerary and our adventurous excursions was starting to catch up to us as our bedtimes kept getting earlier and earlier! Until next time….

 

Next up: St. Maarten and Bernard’s island tour!

 

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[trippingpara]

Saturday, May 30th – Phillipsburg, St. Maarten

 

Ha! I have finally defeated the evil alarm clock once and for all! No longer shall it startle me awake in a pool of sweat and fear! My family can now rest in peace knowing that they are safe and secure from this villainous contraption! Of course, this actually just means that my internal clock is waking me up before the stupid device has a chance to go off and annoy me. Sigh! But hey, we’re in St. Maarten!!

 

 

On our last trip here we actually didn’t make it here. Wait…does that make sense? Okay, on our last cruise that should have stopped here didn’t due to a little thing called Tropical Storm Rafael. When a storm is big enough to be named, I really don’t want to mess with it. Of course then again, there was the so called “Snowmaggedon” a couple years ago that was supposed to terrorize and freeze New England into submission. I recall I spent the entire day on nationwide conference calls in preparation of shutting my office down and shifting all production over to our facilities in other locations across the country. I think I counted a total of 4 snowflakes that day. What a letdown!

 

Nonetheless, TS Rafael did not disappoint and forced the Carnival Victory to run for the sun the whole day. No port of call at all. The point of all this rambling was that we have not been to St. Maarten before so we were very excited. I guess I should have just said that. Sorry.

 

Our normal morning routine followed and we were off the ship in no time and met our guide from Bernard’s over by the Claude Wathey statue (very easy to find!).

 

This is NOT the Claude Wathey statue

 

 

 

Since it was our first time to St. Maarten, we were looking for a tour that would show us a glimpse at all of the great things that St. Maarten/St. Martin have to offer. This is an extremely popular tour so we were divided up into groups. There was a very large group that was all traveling together (group celebrating a 50 year wedding anniversary) so they were all put together into one bus. The rest of us were divided into 2 groups and placed into two separate vans.

 

what's you talking about Willis?

 

Being a photo geek, I wasn’t too pleased with this set up as it really hampered my ability to take photos like crazy as we drove around (it’s hard to get a clear picture through glass without a reflection bouncing back of you). The 3 of us were the last to board the van initially so we ended up sitting in the back seat which took some maneuvering to get to. We soon departed and were on our way. Our first stop (well, technically I guess it was a “stop” since the driver did apply the brakes briefly but we not afforded the opportunity to get out of the vehicle) was at the French and Dutch border.

 

 

It’s a sign. That’s it. I see why we didn’t get out. If you blink you missed it. Sorta like driving through Rhode Island!

 

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