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

[Liz54]

I love to swim and snorkel but am a hefty old woman and don't find ladders easy. Do you know how the Ambrose snorkel trips are set up for getting in and out of the boat?

[debi56]

Enjoying your review & pictures, thank you so much for Sharing!

[BarbinMich]

Jamie, I'm enjoying your photos very much! So sharp/clear. What kind of camera do you use? We did this same cruise in Jan 2016--a great itinerary and beautiful ship.

[jaycruising]

Enjoying your review. Love your photographs. Thank you

 

Thank you! I am enjoying reliving it too!

[jaycruising]

Your photos are stunning! Bringing back memories of trips in the past on this same itinerary' date=' and looking forward to repeating these same islands in December 2018. Thanks![/quote']

 

Thanks Zak! I loved his itinerary and will definitely do it again. Next time I would like to go further south, or we also haven't done the western side either. So much to see!

[jaycruising]

Love your reports; I’ve got the same itinerary in January!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

 

Thank you! Enjoy this itinerary, I loved it! All of the islands are amazing in their own way. I hope to have St Kitts posted this evening.

[jaycruising]

I love to swim and snorkel but am a hefty old woman and don't find ladders easy. Do you know how the Ambrose snorkel trips are set up for getting in and out of the boat?

 

My mom is a hefty lady too and loves the water. Fort his particular trip, and any of the ones that went the same day as us, we got on to the boat at the marina, so you just had to step into the boat, and they help you in and out. Then when we got to Sugar Bay / Jalousie you step up out of the boat and on to a dock again. So no ladders! If you are planning this excursion, then the snorkelling is right off of the beach and you can just walk right in.

 

This is the dock at Sugar Bay.

 

Spencer's boat is the one on the far side of the dock, so it is pretty level with the dock, just the step up, which they will help you with. Then you walk in to snorkel on the right side of the picture.

 

Let me know if you have more questions, I really recommend a tour with them.

[jaycruising]

Jamie, I'm enjoying your photos very much! So sharp/clear. What kind of camera do you use? We did this same cruise in Jan 2016--a great itinerary and beautiful ship.

 

 

Thanks Barb! She definitely is beautiful and the itinerary is great. I actually use a variety of camera's. For this day in St Lucia I used 3 actually... the ones in port were taken with my Sony A6000, the underwater ones and the ones at Sugar Bay were taken with my Olympus Tough TG-870, and then the ones on the water while on the way back to the ship were taken with my iPhone 6s. I don't like to take my Sony all of the time and the battery died in my Olympus, I took about a 100 more pictures this day that I didn't post!

[jaycruising]

Day 10 (November 23, 2016) St Kitts

 

We were scheduled to be in St Kitts today between 9:00am and 6:00pm. The lines were all tied by 8:20 and we were given the all clear to go ashore shortly after.

 

When it came time to plan our day in St Kitts, I just couldn’t find anything that I really wanted to do through a tour, all I knew was that we wanted some beach time and I wanted to go by Timothy Hill. So, I was just not feeling motivated so we booked the ship tour – Cockleshell Beach, Timothy Hill and scenic drive. The cost for the tour was $44.95 each, and was probably the least worth it excursion we took all day. Our tour wasn’t scheduled until 12:30 today so we had plenty of time to relax before heading out to meet our tour.

 

Of course I was up before we made it into port so I had to take some pictures of us heading in. Uh-oh those clouds sure were not looking inviting, but that rainbow was beautiful… if you look closely you can see the double rainbow. It really looked like we were coming in at night, it was so dark!

 

 

Hercules was helping us find our way into our spot today.

 

 

Since we were able to take our time this morning we had a relaxing breakfast from the buffet out at our usual spot at Horizon Court. I got a few more pictures of the rainbows.

 

 

 

[jaycruising]

Back to the room to veg out for a while and finish getting our bags ready before we had to head out and meet our tour.

 

We found the meeting place and found the person holding the sign with our tour number. We waited around for a bit and then they directed us to the bus that we would be riding in today. The put us on the bus, the driver closed the door and walked away. We sat there for at least 15 minutes waiting for him to come back. Then we were on our way.

 

The police were in the formal wear today, as we were not the only visitors on the island today, Prince Harry was in St Kitts today as well. We heard later that he had actually spent some time walking around the port, since we took our time we missed him.

 

 

Here are some pics along the way, sorry about the blurriness they were taken from a moving bus!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[jaycruising]

This is the Atlantic side of the island. The yellow building is the Marriott Royal Beach Resort.

 

 

 

 

[jaycruising]

Then we came to Timothy Hill lookout. We stopped for about 5 – 10 minutes. There was someone there with a monkey that you could take pictures with if you wanted. This lookout is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. On the left side is the Atlantic Ocean and the right is the Caribbean Sea.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[jaycruising]

Then we made it to Cockleshell Beach, our package included one drink and a chair at Spice Mill. You could buy food from there as well, but since we were there for so little time we didn’t even check it out. We claimed our seats and they were pretty close together. Luckily we had some nice people around us. Then the ladies came around trying to sell us on a massage. I relented and let them do a sample aloe massage and told them I would think about it. I really wasn’t interested in getting a massage since we only had about 2.5 hours there. They did actually get really annoying coming around and asking.

 

The water in this bay was beautiful, but not really snorkel worthy. We spent some time in the water with other people on the excursion with us. We actually were sitting next to people who were from the same city as me. There were so many Canadians on this ship!

 

After enjoying the water for a while I decided to go and explore the beach.

 

 

 

 

The island across the way is Nevis

 

 

 

[Liz54]

My mom is a hefty lady too and loves the water. Fort his particular trip, and any of the ones that went the same day as us, we got on to the boat at the marina, so you just had to step into the boat, and they help you in and out. Then when we got to Sugar Bay / Jalousie you step up out of the boat and on to a dock again. So no ladders! If you are planning this excursion, then the snorkelling is right off of the beach and you can just walk right in.

 

This is the dock at Sugar Bay.

 

 

 

 

 

Spencer's boat is the one on the far side of the dock, so it is pretty level with the dock, just the step up, which they will help you with. Then you walk in to snorkel on the right side of the picture.

 

Let me know if you have more questions, I really recommend a tour with them.

 

 

Thanks for the quick reply. I think we will do it!

[jaycruising]

 

 

 

 

 

[jaycruising]

Thanks for the quick reply. I think we will do it!

 

I want to go back, just to do another excursion with Spencer, they will take such good care of you! Enjoy it!

[jaycruising]

This almost feels like the perfect beach picture to me... beautiful water, rocks, palm trees blowing in the wind and a cruise ship in the distance!

 

 

 

 

 

It was a very beautiful beach. I headed back to enjoy the water some more. And then headed the other way down the beach. There were a number of beach bars down this way as well, including Reggae Beach Bar, which I had read some about. If we had stayed down at this end I think that there could have been some good snorkelling along the wall.

 

 

[jaycruising]

They also have some water sports that you can rent or take part in down here.

 

 

This is looking back towards where we were sitting, you can see all the different beach bars.

 

 

 

 

Headed back to our spot and enjoyed the water for a bit more and all too soon it was time for us to get back on the bus and make our way back to the port. Our tour was scheduled to end at 4pm.

 

Some more pictures along the way back.

 

 

You can see the ships in port in the distance.

 

[jaycruising]

Then we spent some time doing some shopping in the port shops, and I remembered to get some pictures.

 

 

 

 

I love this picture!

 

 

 

I actually found the least expensive cigarettes and liquor in this port, in the shop with the red canopy. Cigarettes were about $19 US per carton and I believe mom paid about $15 for her Kahlua.

 

[lilfish7]

Your photos are STUNNING! Thank you for sharing!

[jaycruising]

Then it was time for us to board the ship, for the last time this trip!

 

 

 

 

Stopped at the international cafe and grabbed a snack and then headed up to the room to have a shower and relax some, and of course take some more pictures.

 

 

[jaycruising]

We were scheduled to leave port at 6pm, but we were all aboard and pulling out at 5:45pm. We got pulled away from the dock and stopped. Where we waited. Then the other ship that was in port with us, pulled out of port and passed us, and then we started moving back to port. I headed up to the top deck and could see the ambulance heading our way. Unfortunately shortly after we had pulled out the medical team advised that they had a patient that would need on shore medical assistance. It took about 30 minutes before we could get back to the dock because of the other ship. Apparently Prince Harry’s frigate radio’d our ship wondering what was going on and if we needed assistance as they were waiting to send him to shore for the evening.

 

I took the chance for more photos of a beautiful dark sunset!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We headed down to dinner again in the dining room, enjoying our meal and company. After dinner I felt like playing cards again so we headed up to deck 16 and enjoyed our evening. We were getting pretty tired after so many days in port and we were really looking forward to our sea day and day in the Sanctuary tomorrow!

[jaycruising]

Your photos are STUNNING! Thank you for sharing!

 

Thank you! You are welcome, I am enjoying reliving this trip!

[jaycruising]

I just realized that I have the patters, so I will post them as well. Sorry about my shadow :)

 

Day 1 - Embark (Nov 16)

 

 

 

 

[jaycruising]

Day 2 - Princess Cays - November 17