Wednesday and Thursday, March 30 and 31, 2011

After another lovely sea day, we arrived in Basseterre, St. Kitts. St. Kitts is 68 square miles and has a population of 32,000 people. It was originally known as St. Christopher and formed a colony with Nevis. The name change occurred in 1988.
They use to trade in sugar, but there are no more mills or fields. Tourism is their main livelihood. There is a lot of poverty here against a backdrop of hotels and beaches.
We took a tour of a former plantation that is now gardens and a museum. It was quite interesting as was the woman who owns it. You can't help but have a good feeling walking through the gardens as she decorates with many whimsical statues and art work.

After a complimentary rum punch (which gave quite a punch) ;) we arrived at an overlook showing us where the Atlantic and the Caribbean meet. It was a lovely spot and I have posted 2 pics from there. Afterwards we went to Frigate Beach.The sand was very coarse and uncomfortable. There were many rocks and stones as you enter the water and when trying to get back out, Joe and I lost our balance as a wave or two struck us. Boy, did that ever hurt ,not to mention how embarrassing it was to roll up on the beach.

We are going out to the Crown Grill for filet mignon and lobster tonight. The food has been excellent so far. Some of the dinners we had were prime rib, halibut, cornish hen,
Luau Pork, beef fajitas and veal shank.

We have seen two good comedians so far and hope to see the third one tonight.
Tomorrow we will be in Barbados.

A Glorius Day

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

We are out at sea today and Mother Nature gave us a winner. It is sunny and warm, with calm seas and a slight breeze. This is the 8th cruise we have taken and the first one that had stormy weather before we left the dock. I thought we would be long gone before the cold front reached Ft. Lauderdale, but it arrived around noon on Monday just as we were boarding. We rode around some pretty big thunderstorms last night as the Captain changed course to avoid some of the worst of the storms. The lightning show was quite a spectacle.

We are on the Emerald Princess for the second time. She is a grand ship carrying 3100 passengers. For this trip, we booked a balcony cabin on the Caribe deck instead of a mini-suite. The balcony cabin is small but has a much larger balcony than the mini-suites or the cabins on other decks. It is half covered so we have the choice of sun or shade. We were totally uncovered on the mini-suite balcony and lacked privacy from the cabins above. This will probably be our cabin of choice on Princess in the future.

We went for a swim, did a little Zumba, (well I did ), and got some sun on the balcony.
Tonight is formal night, so Joe is napping so he can stay up past dinner. :)
Dinner last night was excellent and we had very nice table companions. Same for breakfast this morning.

We signed up for the Chef's Table dinner and hoped we would get picked. We were!
The Chef's Table is only served twice on this cruise and 10 people are chosen per dinner. You have to sign up as soon as you get on board and hope that it isn't full already. It is a gourmet extravaganza and I will write a review of it on Sunday. We are scheduled for it on Saturday.

Caribbean Cruise 2011

It's that time again..time to pack our bags and head out to sea for a relaxing cruise in the Caribbean.




We will be embarking the Emerald Princess on Monday, March 28.
We will be visiting the islands of St. Thomas, St. Lucia, St. Kitts, Barbados, Antigua and stopping at Princess Cays, Princess's private island.



Four of the islands are new for us and I will try and post pictures if the internet cooperates. I am curious to compare them to the South Pacific Islands of Bora Bora and Moorea that we visited on a previous cruise. These two were absolutely breathtaking and it will be difficult to find another island that can surpass their beauty.