(Slightly less so) Cheapo dad's trip report on Independence of the Seas

[Coralc]

Happy Chinese New Year Harry!

Quick side topic. You may recall that I was convinced to download Grammarly as a browser extension after watching one of the You Tube videos in your trip report. Grammarly was supposed to improve writing, punctuation and of course, grammar. It seemed to work okay....

 

Until Saturday night when I was returning some email correspondence. My cursor in Outlook took on a mind of its own and started writing a bunch of odd things without me touching the keys or cursor. Fascinating to watch, but a little alarming. :eek: After rebooting and running the cleaners, Grammarly is now gone. :) Good concept, poor execution.

~Patti

[harryfat1]

After some time in the water, the younger one started to build a sand thing with 2 eyes and a smiley face.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

Happy Chinese New Year Harry!

Quick side topic. You may recall that I was convinced to download Grammarly as a browser extension after watching one of the You Tube videos in your trip report. Grammarly was supposed to improve writing, punctuation and of course, grammar. It seemed to work okay....

 

Until Saturday night when I was returning some email correspondence. My cursor in Outlook took on a mind of its own and started writing a bunch of odd things without me touching the keys or cursor. Fascinating to watch, but a little alarming. :eek: After rebooting and running the cleaners, Grammarly is now gone. :) Good concept, poor execution.

~Patti

 

Wow, that sounds scary. Hopefully nobody took over your computer remotely and took some important info from the drive.

[harryfat1]

 

 

[harryfat1]

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

After 2:30 and enough sun on the skin, time to head back to the main building and be picked up by the weatherman and back to the cruise terminal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

The drive back to cruise terminal

 

 

Always happy to see the ship on the way back

 

 

Weatherman dropped us off at the cruise terminal

 

 

We made it back to the cruise terminal by 3. These stores are best located as it’s exactly where ALL the mini buses are dropped off and many people felt the need to stop by and visit the uncle in prison. Especially those of us from the Indy sailing as this would be our LAST stop so this is the last chance to buy whatever souvenir you want from the ports.

 

The way they design all the cruise terminals, they have the van drop off at one end of the terminal and forces you to walk pass ALL the shops on the way back to the ship.

 

Another family getting dropped off as everyone is coming back from the tours around the same time

 

[harryfat1]

These shops have GREAT location as they are just next to where the drop off site is. So they get all the foot traffic as these are the first two stores people see after getting off the van

 

 

 

In terms of general souvenirs, St. Kitts has a good price. Get your stuff there. We bought 3 polo shirts for $20 total (that’s less than $7 per polo shirt!). All says St. Kitts on it. As matter of fact, wore our brand spanking new polo shirts for dinner that night. Will wear it again for the next cruise.

 

Inside the store. Lots of people visiting their uncles in prison

 

 

Here is where we bought the polo shirts

 

[harryfat1]

Follow the sign. Everybody coming back now

 

 

Stilt Walker

 

 

Like I said, ST. Kitts has good souvenir prices. Some routes make this island their first stop so if this is your first stop, be sure to load up.

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

I was in too much of hurry to get back to the ship so I didn't realize they had a casino there until I uploaded the pictures after coming home. This is the first casino I have seen at the cruise terminal anywhere. Others can chime in if you have seen it elsewhere

 

 

As I said earlier, Celebrity is docked next to us. So I already said their towel system looks better than ours. Now checking out our liquid refreshment options.

 

RCI have 2 options – water or lemonade. Then looking over at the OTHER side for Celebrity, let’s see what they have. WHOA NELLIE. Check out the four water options with actual fruits inside. Dang. Water envy here. Oh, yeah, I had to cross over the line to the Celebrity side to take this picture with a whole lot of Celebrity people looking at me weird…

 

Maybe I should have gone in the Celebrity line and gotten their water instead. Not that they check sea pass or anything in order to get their water…

 

This is Royal. Note the water and lemonade in the back side of the tent

 

 

Now check out the Celebrity water options

 

 

Somebody mentioned earlier that he never saw anyone sitting at these chairs. That made me double check the RCI chairs and then I looked back at the Celebrity chairs.

 

Notice the difference even in the quality of the chairs of the picture below and the picture from RCI 2 pictures above? One has cushion and much wider. The other one, well....

 

Yeah, the little touches difference between the 2 sister cruise lines...

 

[harryfat1]

OK, back to our own ship. They may have better water and nicer towels but we have bigger butt so we are all good.

 

Can’t help but feeling a tad sad as we walk up seeing this is the last port for this cruise. Next time we touch land, we will be done with the cruise and be back to the real world.

 

Time to eat the late lunch once again at WJ

 

 

You see all the bus/van by the dock side? In theory they could have the drop off point of all the tours to be right there by the yellow arch building and people can just hang a quick left from there to get back to the ship. But of course they won't do that as then people will bypass all the stores in the cruise terminal and they want all the tourist dollars.

 

So they block off the route with a chain fence and make people walk back from the other side

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

As I recall, the spicy shrimp salad from the Jade section was pretty tasty. If you see that, give it a try

 

 

 

Art work inside WJ

 

 

 

As before, we are among the last ones in the WJ at 4:20 since they physically close the door at 4 and won't open again until 6

 

 

Empty tables as far as the eye can see. Not a common site for those who always complains about the crowd at WJ

 

[fletch1027]

OK, off to the last stop at the beach. The standard 90 minute stop.

 

As always, we go for the cheap seats away from the crowd. The brother in law got his typical 2 chairs in the middle section.

 

This beach doesn’t have the WOW blue color as the Antigua beach but it’s nice. I’m not picky. Anytime you can stick your feet in the water at the end of December without it freezing off, you are fine.

 

Do note there is a good steep drop after you go out few feet and the sand area is very soft and your feet will sink at least 4 inches deep into the sand under water. I saw few small white fishes swimming by but was never able to capture it on camera due to the sun reflection.

 

 

Hey Harry! - great report as always!! :cool:

 

Do you remember if there was a charge for the umbrella chairs at the beach and if so how much it was?

[harryfat1]

Hey Harry! - great report as always!! :cool:

 

Do you remember if there was a charge for the umbrella chairs at the beach and if so how much it was?

 

Oh, wow. Fletch, it's you!

 

How you have been? I was worried about you as you stopped posting awhile back in the middle of your Freedom report. Happy to see you back at CC.

 

As for the beach chairs, I didn't rent them as we were only there for 90 minutes so it wasn't worth it for us. But here is what trip advisor said, sounds like $10?

 

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g147374-d148268-Reviews-South_Friars_Beach-St_Kitts_St_Kitts_and_Nevis.html

[h20skibum]

Hey Harry,

 

Hé qì jí xiáng quán jiā lè

 

Hope I got that right. Just sent the same message to my Daughter-in-law this morning.

 

Have a happy new year.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

[HeyJut]

Hi,

 

Thanks for the compliment.

 

So is this like the "Attack of the Giant Iguanas" or "Iguana-zilla" movie?

 

Maybe you need to do some yoga exercise to clear your mind after reading this trip report nightly before going to sleep...

 

Haha! Sounds like a good idea. Also enjoying all the breathtaking rock pix.

[SenatorsFan]

Happy Chinese New Year, Harry. Enjoy the feasting and family time. :)

Heather

[seaair100]

Happy Chinese New Year ,Harry.Enjoy.

As far as travel brochures/ magazines pics vs “ tourists” pics ,hahha.

And my question is where are the “ hot “ guys in those ads? An enquiring mind, wants to know.

[Moz]

I really have enjoyed your review of the Independence we just got off of the Independence and really enjoyed it so much that we booked a cruise on the Allure for the fall. Since I had noticed that you had cruised the Allure how did the two cruises compare? Do you think the Allure will be as enjoyable as the Independence as we really thought it was wonderful. Thank you for your opinion.

[AmyJA]

Happy Chinese New Year to you and your family Harry.

 

Will you be posting some of your New Years food spread? Hope so!

[harryfat1]

Hey Harry,

 

Hé qì jí xiáng quán jiā lè

 

Hope I got that right. Just sent the same message to my Daughter-in-law this morning.

 

Have a happy new year.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

 

Hi,

 

Happy new year to you as well.

 

What language is text in? Is your daughter in-law Chinese or Vietnamese? We both celebrate the same lunar New Year along with other Southern Asian countries. Run it through Google translate to make sure it’s what you want it to be.

[harryfat1]

Happy Chinese New Year, Harry. Enjoy the feasting and family time. :)

Heather

 

 

Hi, Heather,

 

Happy new year to you as well.

 

The family/relatives are coming over to our house tomorrow night for dinner. This year’s New Year is on a Friday and I had to work as well as the kids had school so we didn’t make it to San Francisco to be with the relatives who lives in San Francisco and they get the day off.

 

 

So my kids' cousins got the day off because they are in SF but since we are not, our school district doesn't give today off.

[harryfat1]

Happy Chinese New Year ,Harry.Enjoy.

As far as travel brochures/ magazines pics vs “ tourists” pics ,hahha.

And my question is where are the “ hot “ guys in those ads? An enquiring mind, wants to know.

 

 

Happy New Year to you as well.

 

You are free to drop in any “hot guys” from any travel web site you like. I am fine with that. Just make sure you get their names so they can be added to the model rotation list.

 

Speaking of attractive models, I‘m like the biggest sucker to all the “click baits” models on the Internet. You know all the ads at the bottom of the web site that features some attractive model and you know in the back of your head when you click on it, you will never see that model in the ad itself but still you click on it and then you get some totally unrelated info/model trying to sell you some protein drinks or whatever.

[harryfat1]

I really have enjoyed your review of the Independence we just got off of the Independence and really enjoyed it so much that we booked a cruise on the Allure for the fall. Since I had noticed that you had cruised the Allure how did the two cruises compare? Do you think the Allure will be as enjoyable as the Independence as we really thought it was wonderful. Thank you for your opinion.

 

 

Hi,

 

Thanks for the compliment. Glad to hear that you had a great cruise on the Indy.

 

Now it’s hard for me to compare the two ships/cruises as these are my personal preferences. They may not be what you like. I think the whole world knows my personal bias by now with my Sir Mix A Lot song reference.

 

In case you haven’t noticed in all my trip reports, I try my best to stick to the facts with occasional personal bias thrown in. But I really dislike people that has the attitude of “This is what I think is the best and if you disagree with me, you must be an idiot”.

 

My Allure trip report is pretty outdated by now. I’m sure most of the stuff I talked about is no longer true. Look at the pictures for the eye candy on the size of the ship. That won’t change. You will have different neighborhoods to explore. The Royal Promenade will be much wider and bigger. For someone like me that has the Texas mentality of bigger is better, I like it the extra width space of the mega ships but I’m sure there are people that will say the Oasis class ships are too big/crowded.

 

But bigger ships offer you more entertainment choices like the water show and parades. If being entertained is high on your requirement, then Oasis class ships provide plenty of that.

 

I think it’s worth a try at least once to see if that’s what you want from a cruise. Have a great time. Somewhere down the road, we will go back on another Oasis class ship since I like them big and round…