new2cruisin18

We are going on our first cruise to the Caribbeans. We will be going to Princess Cays (Bahamas), St Thomas, St Kitts, St Lucia, Antigua, and St Maarten. We are in our 60s - enjoy sightseeing, cultural stuff, walking. Couple of questions, appreciate your feedback.

1) any good ideas for excursions that we can do ourselves (trying to avoid higher cost of ship excursions)

2) Caribbeans mean beaches and swimming. Do you bring a backpack with clothes to change into at the beach?

3) are towels, chairs, ... available at the beaches? What are your suggested beaches - trying for quieter beaches.

4) if you go snorkeling, where can we we safely keep our cellphones, wallets, ....

Thank you much. Feedback for us newbies would be great.

We are cruising on Royal Caribbean in June and I have been researching too. We are going to a few of the same islands..St.Kitts - I have seen recommendations for South Friars Beach, Antigua - I found out from another cruiser that you can take a local bus (#17) for about $1.50 a person to Nelson's Dockyard and admission is $8.00 a person. In St. Lucia we booked a highly recommended tour (from a few different sources) from Cosol tours.

We went to South Friars Bay, on the recommendation on this thread, lovely beach, saw Lobster, Octopus, stone fish, porcupine fish (Small) and a beautiful Lion Fish, all by just snorkilling around the small lagoon, thanks for the posting about this great plcae,

Cocktails in the bar were not bad either, he gave generous amount, I jokey said I was not driving, so he added more!

Good to know! We are going in June and are first time cruisers. Nice to know we don't have to pay for all those expensive excursions!

We’re going with Adventure Antigua and doing the Eco tour. They have a video on their website and it looked fun! But I think at the other ports we will just enjoy the beaches.

Hello! We are going in June and that looked like a great excursion! What did you think? Was it worth it?