Sailing the Es-cap-ay (Escape)- Western Caribbean Review June 24, 2017

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Awesome review! Thanks for sharing with us!

St Augustine

It took us 4 hours of driving (not including the stop for lunch at Steak and Shake) to get from Miami to our hotel in St Augustine, the La Quinta on Outlet Mall Blvd. This was a much better hotel choice than our stop in Jacksonville. The hotel facilities were well kept up, the room was lovely, the hotel was right off of i-95 and was only a 10 minute drive to downtown St Augustine. And it’s a dog friendly hotel. In fact, St Augustine’s is one of the most dog friendly places that I’ve been to. Here’s a photo of our room.

Once we arrived in St. Augustine's we didn’t have any plans so we went exploring. On the way, the kids started pointing and laughing at this car. Who ya gonna call?

We ended up on the A1A going towards a lighthouse that I head heard about. The Lighthouse was gorgeous but as we were getting to the visitor center, the thunder started from an evening storm that had just popped up which means no more climbing the staircase to the top. Here’s a few photos walking up to the lighthouse grounds.

We’re still on cruise time where you eat every 2-3 hours, so by now we were all really ready for some dinner. I saw a small sign for the Conch House off of A1A heading back to downtown St Augustine and I remembered it being recommended on the travel sites, so we took a few backstreets and ended up at one of the neatest restaurants!

The entrance

They had these fun tables that jutted over the water or raised up like little treehouses.

We didn’t get a fancy stilted table but we were seated right away at a picnic-like table by the water. The kids loved the carvings.

Our view

Between the live music (there was a reggae band playing on the pier, the fun cabana table, the marina view, the funny carvings, and the tiki torches, this restaurant gets an A+ for atmosphere but what about the food? Let me present the shrimp and grits. MMMmmmmm.

It was delicious and a really neat recipe. The corn added a nice flavor. My husband, who helped me finish off this giant bowl after eating his steak, thought it was the best shrimp and grits he’s ever had. The food was a little on the pricey side but I kind of expected that from such a fun vacation spot. And after all, everyone left full and happy.

Before we headed back to the hotel, we decided to walk down the marina pier. So many pretty boats.

Looking back at the tables.

Sunset over the water

Here’s the storm from earlier that seemed to be dropping some rain on some very unlucky Floridians.

The kids took a dip in the hotel pool which was warm like bathwater and then it was off to bed!.

Tomorrow, a full day of exploring St Augustine's!

Day 9- St Augustine (Post cruise fun)

The first place we headed this morning was to the lighthouse because we didn’t want to miss the opportunity to climb it if more storms came along. Plus, it seemed like a good idea to start the physically demanding part of our day (climbing all those stairs) before the afternoon summer heat kicked in.

You do have to buy tickets to get on the lighthouse grounds ($12.95 for adults, $10.95 for kids) but that included being able to climb to the top, the outdoor playground area, any daytime tours, nature trails and the Museum. I wish I had looked into the Lighthouse ghost tour earlier because that would have been fun but they were all booked for the 8:30pm slot. Maybe next time.

We read some of the information about carrying heavy buckets of lamp oil up the 219 stairs to the top of the lighthouse and then we started the trek up, up and up!

A view from the bottom

Looking through the window on the way up

The view from the top though was totally worth the sweaty walk up.

I love how this technique makes everything look tiny.

The Museum

A view of the lighthouse from the museum

Some cool looking model ships in the museum

The playground

After our explorations on our own were complete, we decided to head to downtown St Augustine’s to start our tour there.

From research before the trip, I knew that we wanted to take the trolley tour that allowed you to jump on and off so we google mapped the Old Town Trolley headquarter and headed to buy tickets. The trolley tour itself (including hop on or off) was $24.99 for adults and $10 for kids. The cool features of this tour is that they narrate a historical tour as they drive you around so you get some background on the city along the way, buses stop at each stop every 15 minutes so you shouldn’t have to wait long to get a ride, and the tickets are good for 3 consecutive days.

Here’s the stops they made and she even highlighted some of the things that are free to do.

They had different package options that included certain museums, etc. but I wasn’t sure how long the kids would last in museums so we decided to handle that part on our own. I also felt a little pressured to decide of all of that while standing in line with people behind us. Plus, we had coupons from the hotel travel books for $1-2 off the museum prices anyways. I’m sure tour prices are subject to change but I thought this would be helpful if you wanted to see if it was a good value for your needs before you were standing in line.

The first trolley that came to pick us up around 11am was pretty full but there was enough bench room for everyone waiting to get on and there was another trolley pulling in right behind us with even more seats.

We rode from stop 1 (Old Jail) to stop 6 where the Pirate Museum was. Yesterday, looking through the hotel brochures, we had marked a few favorites and both the kids chose the pirate museum. Here’s the front of the museum. You walk around the side to the gift shop to purchase your tickets.

Adult tickets were $13.99 and kids were $6.99 and our coupon took a dollar or two off that price. There’s a little treasure hunt map that the kids enjoyed and they get a prize at the end if they find all the treasure. Nathan and I found the exhibits themselves to be entertaining and interactive in places. There was some slightly scary imagery but it is a Pirate’s museum, so we expected that. Here’s DS firing off the pirate cannon.

We toured the museum for about an hour and the kids collected their prize in the gift shop on their way out.

That looks fun! Thanks for you great trip report

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It was getting close to lunch time, so we checked out some of the menu posted along the pedestrian walkway on St George St, but they were all more than we wanted to spend ($12 for a cheeseburger). So we took a side street to get back to the bus stop and ran across the White Lion restaurant. Their prices looked pretty good so we gave them a try. Low and behold there was a Sunday special for 1/2 off wings and appetizers. I felt like this was our lucky day!

Here’s a photo of our garlic parmesan wings and nachos.

The food was delicious! Their ranch dressing is so yummy. And the bill didn’t even break the bank. I highly recommend this restaurant as a quick, affordable and delicious lunch stop.

After lunch, we headed back to stop 6 which turned out to be right in front of the restaurant and caught a new trolley. I’ll post some photos of the pretty sights along this part of the tour.

Our next destination was the Spanish Military Hospital around stop 16. This was my must see for the tour. I love history and I find imagining how it was to live in colonial times to be fascinating- so a tour that talks about colonial age medical procedures and apothecary was right up my alley! In fact, it was literally on an alley. Here’s a photo of the Spanish Hospital building which really was on the site of the old Spanish hospital!

The admission to this tour was $10 for adults and $5 for kids and we had another coupon from the travel book. The lady let us know that the tour started in about 20 minutes so we walked around for a bit and checked out the antique shop next door.

The tour lasted about 45 minutes and discussed what Spanish procedures military doctors might have used and what plants/animals were available as medicines.

I found the tour really interesting. DH was turned off a little bit because he felt like the apothecary part of the tour was an herb remedies sales pitch, but I thought it was just fun information about what resources colonial doctors had on hand, and I think it was all a little over the kid’s heads. I’m still glad we stopped by. The gift shop sold items by local artists and we decided to make some of our “frivolous vacation purchases” there. I got a necklace, DD picked out some “monkey fart” banana scented soap, and DS picked out a hard candy.

We rode the trolley through the rest of the tour. The winery and brewery would have been fun stops but it was nearing 4pm and I think they trolleys only run through 4:30 or 5:30 so we didn’t want to push our luck. Next time we tour, we may also stop at the Fort but having been to the Fort in San Juan and forked out a lot of cash so far for tours, and it was just getting hotter outside, we decided we could wait on that attraction.

Here’s the temperature when we got back to the car.

It wasn’t too late for one more on our own adventure though. I wandered down the A1A highway and came across Frank Butler County Park East. We let the kids splash in the waves for a while.

It was a pretty beach with some facilities that you could change clothes in, but the bathroom floors were pretty wet and sandy.

On yet another whim, we stopped at La Strada, an Italian Restaurant on A1A. At first I thought it might be a little fancy for our family, but we were very pleased that we stayed. It’s a small restaurant and everything that they brought out was homemade including the bread, bruschetta spread, calamari and my seafood canoli.

DH got the sea bass and loved it.

The kids got chicken nuggets so they do have those regular kid options even though they’re not printed on the menu.

No more evening buffet runs, but I wanted to get some fudge and I remembered seeing the Whetstone Chocolate shop. The one of the A1A was closed but we saw the one on St George Street was open. We drove around and amazingly found a spot to park, fed the pay meter and then realized you don’t have to pay for parking on Sundays! St George Street was a great nightlife spot. There were people walking around and touring everywhere.

The area next to Whetstones. The fudge was amazing by the way!

Such a pretty area of town.

Please be aware of your surroundings because this crowded walkway with lots of distracts was a pickpocket's dream. After a great day in St Augustine's, we headed back to the hotel to prepare for our departure home tomorrow.

Day 10- Head Home

Our last stop before heading home was St Augustine Beach. Since we were so close to the ocean, we wanted to let the kids have one more romp in the sand before we left Florida. We woke up early and started out to the beach around 6am so we had time to get back and take showers before we had to check out. It took maybe 20-25 minutes to get to the beach.

After our beach fun, we took showers, checked out and started the 5 hour drive home.

As the fish at the end of Finding Nemo say, what’s next?

I’d love to say that we have another cruise booked, but the next travel goal in our sights is an adults trip to Europe so that’ll take a little more saving up. Not sure if we’ll do a cruise or a land tour but I’d love to see Spain and Italy. Who knows, maybe we can get an extra good deal on a winter cruise and do both, but we’ll just have to wait and see. Would I sail NCL again? Yes, definitely. The Escape was a great ship with an amazing, talented crew and I can’t wait to see what other ships have to offer.

Thanks so much for keeping with me to the end of this giant review and I appreciate all the kind comments that let me know I wasn’t just talking to myself, although that wouldn’t be completely out of character either. :) I hope that this review might help some of you who are considering the Escape or just keep the excitement going if your Escape cruise is booked and coming up! Let me know if there’s any questions I didn’t answer and Happy Sailing!

What a wonderful post-cruise review of your family's time in St. Augustine! Thanks for sharing that AND your cruise with us! Enjoy Europe... however you decide to get there :D

Thanks for your report - what a wonderful family adventure

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Thanks for the wonderful review. I loved seeing St. Augistine as well.

Thanks for your comments! St Augustine's was well worth the drive. We'll be going back there sometime!

Sure, I use cruise photos as the cover on my phone too! Thank you for asking! Sure, I'll see if I can figure out how to message it to you or if you message me your email, I can send it there. We did Chacchoben Ruins with Native's Choice and the ruins were amazing, but we weren't totally satisfied with the tour. I'll try to get into that soon!

 

Now to pick a room! I love having a balcony for a few romantic reasons- you can step out of bed and feel the ocean breeze, you can sit and soak up the rays of a glowing orange sunset- and for a few practical reasons- swimsuits never seem to dry in the bathroom, sometimes there’s odors in a cabin where it would really be nice to crack a window. Come on, you know that’s true.

 

To go a little extra OCD, I also looked at the ship's travel path and picked the side of the ship that would be showing the coast as we sailed from port to port (which happened to be left or port), so that, and limited 4-person room availability at the almost 90 day mark, set us with room 9284 if you’re curious.

 

 

We booked through AAA because we have a membership and they offer good travel insurance. It was the exact same price as booking ourselves online. Our office didn’t have discounts on NCL, but they did take care of all the reminders and they printed our luggage tags and documents for us. It also made me feel better that if we had any issues, our local agent would be there to help and they sent me travel books on Florida so that we could plan a post-cruise fun stop on the way back home.

 

 

Now comes the part that I love and the part that may bore other people to tears- planning! If you’re already starting to zone out, just skip this section- I promise I’ll get to the Es-cap-ay part soon! For those who share my deep appreciation for tripadvisor, spreadsheets, and checklists, jump on in!

 

Kids- to passport or not to passport. That is the question.

 

Our kids have been on 2 Caribbean cruises prior to this one with just birth certificates including one out of San Juan, so I didn’t plan on getting them passports until my travel agent pointed out in a lot of foreign countries, if you get sick while you’re there, you cannot fly back home until arrangements for a passport are made, which could potentially delay you getting appropriate medical care. Eek, that’s a scary thought. Considering a few years back when my son was very close to requiring emergency hernia surgery, I figured that I’d rather be safe than sorry. It’s pricey but we went to the post office right after the reservation was booked and filed the paperwork to get the kid’s passports. The passports arrive in 3 weeks.

 

Excursions- use ship or not use ship. That is the other question.

 

I’m having too much fun with my new info-graphic app (Adobe Spark) so here’s another one!

 

So, our promotional shore excursion credit gave us a whopping $50 per port to use on shore excursions so you’d think we’d book all our trips through the ship, right? Let’s do some research! My main starting point for research was the Ports of Call forums and google. I found a list of place we might want to go for each port and then researched the reviews for the places/excursion companies on trip advisor as well as the potential timelines (did they give us plenty of time to get back to the ship on time), stress levels (would I be jumping on buses in a country that I didn’t speak the language, etc.), and cost. I’ll talk about it more as I review each port but I looked at the pros and cons and costs of independent vs ship excursions at every port, except Harvest Caye where it’s go ship or go home.

 

So that I can ease you slowing into my neurotical cruise planning world, I’ll just start with the daily chart that I make for each vacation that includes the ports we’ll visit, times in port and what excursion we plan to take (organize level beginning). If you want to totally geek out, also add in the times of all the dinners that you pre-booked (organized level medium) because even though it has freestyle dining, it’s good to plan ahead, and finally the possible activity times based on all the past freestyle dailies that you’ve dug through cruise critic to find like Gollum looking for “my precious” (organized level expert)- double geek points for that one!

 

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Let me know if you want a copy of this Word document template and I’ll send it your way!

Yes, my 11YO daughter, spouse and myself did the deluxe tour through the ship excursions on the very same day and found plenty of running water and the tip bucket for those that were keeping the restrooms clean and stocked. Maybe if you use the less expensive tour companies you do not get told about the public restrooms and are lead to the backroom restrooms. Our restrooms even had a Mexican cat snoozing in front of them to the delight of my cat loving daughter.

 

However, the Carnival ship was just coming in when we returned to the Escape versus the outstanding reviewer apparently coming back after the thing was already docked. So it is possible if you go too late in the day they run out of water.

 

Also, in our tour van it would been impossible to snooze for the 50 minutes or so trip to the ruins. The guide was constantly speaking and passing pictures providing a detailed history of the former people and culture in the area.

Just something intangible offered by companies that would not be allowed to service the ship directly unless they offer more.

We toured Chacchoben last week, there was only 1 set of bathrooms, and there were signs posted everywhere not to flush paper of any type sinks were working for us, but the toilets didn't always flush. The bus ride for us also had tour guides talking on the way there and the way back. Although several people were dozing off. On the ride back they passed out Mexican candy talked a bit and then invited us to take part in a traditional Mexican siesta. We started our walking tour with Hugo, but shortly after another tour guide came along and asked Hugo if he wanted to split up our group as there were 30 or more of us and he only had a group of 5. My family moved to him (8of us) and has the best experience ever. Francisco gives an excellent presentation, you truly felt as if you just had a Mayan history lecture from a college professor. He had a backpack filled with visual aids and used a white board frequently as well. we had an awesome experience and would highly recommend. We saved $350 by booking our tour direct with Native Choice, instead of the basic tour offered by the ship, and saved almost $600 by not booking the deluxe tour offered by the ship (deluxe offers beer and soda and a 12 passenger van instead of bus) a little time and research saved us a lot of money!

Can you please send me a template of your spreadsheet?