M&JfromSDL

Sorry ya'll been closing out the month at work. I will post an update later today. Thanks for following along!

I've taken the Megabus between NYC and DC once before. There are no taxis at the White Marsh stop. It's like a big Park and Ride lot. Have you considered taking an Amtrak train from Penn to Baltimore? Downtown Baltimore is much closer to Cruise Maryland than the White Marsh Megabus stop.

Did you happen to notice how much a bag of laundry was onboard and if they offered a special at any point during the cruise? We are sailing on her in a few weeks and are considering a B2B.

Thanks!!!

 

 

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I did not do laundry on the ship. I did use the dry cleaning service though. The prices were kind of high. If I remember it was something like $3.50 a shirt to press. I washed the dress shirts I planned to wear at home, then had them pressed on the ship. I had them dry clean my tuxedo as well.

Loving your review, I thought the over the water cabanas are over the water? Yours looks like it is up on the beach. I am curious as we have over the water one booked in March and

it looks different. Can you tell me what your cabana number was. Thanks again for such a great review so far.

Dawn

We had an "accessible" over-the-water bungalow (notice the ramp). I believe it was cabana #10. You're correct...it was not "over-the-water" but I actually preferred how it entered into the water as compared to cabanas that were actually "over-the-water."

We were treated to an amazing sunset the last time we were in Labadee. This visit did not disappoint.

Here's a sneak preview of our sail away pics. I will post more later, right now it's time for Sunday Brunch. Need to find some Moet and Chandon mimosas. :D

By now the Grandeur was beginning to back out. We were treated to a little horn blast competition.

Mickey arranged for the golf cart to take us back to the security booth.

We stopped for a few minutes on the pier to capture a few more photos to preserve the memories of the day and listen to the Haitian performers.

By now our day was coming to a close. We walked back to the cabana and started to pack up our stuff.

We also got to meet this little guy on the rocks.

We walked out of the Nellie's Beach area and over to Adrenline Beach. We spent a good amount of time towards the end of the beach last time watching the waves crash into the rocks.

The area at the end of the beach affords a great view of the zipliners.

Our view of the cabanas across the way.

At some point we handed Mickey our SeaPass cards and told him to hang onto them. Just keep the Labadoozies coming. There was one round where we asked for a floater of Bacardi in them. Not sure if he understood what we were asking for, but he brought out 2 Labadoozies and a cup of Bacardi.

We spent a fair amount of time floating in the water on the water mats they provide. My wife took a 45 minute nap, I nodded off for about 15 and then relocated back to the water mat. I'm having a difficult time articulating what a great day we had in Labadee.

Soon enough the sun was starting to set and the Grandeur passengers were beginning to return to their ship. All aboard for us was 5:30 so we had some time to explore.

Stuffed Porter enjoyed the view too!

Everyone else apparently had the same idea. We waited on line for a few minutes.

My wife made herself a cheesburger, grabbed a small piece of ribs and some potato salad.

I grabbed a piece of steak and made a cheesesteak sandwich, some ribs and a shrimp skewer.

The food was not that great. The shrimp were so overcooked they were inedible. The ribs were just okay, pretty dry as well. The steak sandwich was the best part and even that was sort of ho hum.

We ate, drank some water and walked back to the cabana. We returned to a cute towel animal and a PACKED Nellie's beach.

Interior of the cabana. Loved the ceiling fan.

Taking a break from the sun. Can't let my pale legs get too tan!

By 12ish we were hungry. I thought we were restricted to the regular buffet areas but Mickey presented us with Cabana VIP wristbands to get into the Barefoot buffet area. Sweet!

And off we went!

We had a quick bite to eat in the Windjammer, changed into our suits and headed out.

While walking over to Nellie's beach my wife kept pointing towards Adrenaline Beach saying "but that's where we sat last time. Where are we going?" As we walked past Barefoot Beach she noticed the exculusivity of the area. She commented that next time we cruise to Labadee we should splurge on a suite. HA! Little did she know...

At this point in the morning there were a ton of people everywhere. I know Indy + Grandeur is somewhat close to Allure, but it just seemed more packed. Maybe all of the Marylanders on Grandeur went running off the ship considering there was snow on the pool deck when they left Baltimore.

As we walked onto Nellie's Beach I said, "Wow those cabanas look really cool." My wife agreed and I looked at her, pulled out the shore excursion tickets and said, "Just need to figure out which one is ours."

Easy enough...it was the one right in front of us.

She was very surprised. Mickey our attendant came over to introduce himself, wished her a Happy Birthday and quickly brought us 2 Labadoozies!

This my Cruise Critic friends, is what vacation is all about.

Friday, January 9, 2015

Labadee

We were both equally excited to spend the day on Labadee. It was my wife's birthday and I had somehow finagled a special birthday surprise for her.

Allow me to rewind here a bit. We booked this cruise roughly 3 weeks before sailing. I knew her birthday would be celebrated while onboard so I wanted to do something special for her. I thought about a special dinner at Chops or maybe a cupcake class together. But we eat out a lot at home and she really doesn't like cupcakes. While reading CC one day, I noticed a thread on Nellie's Beach Cabanas.

I remembered seeing cabanas under construction when we were in Labadee on our Allure cruise in 2011. After booking the cruise I went to the shore excursion page each day and the option never opened up. Then I learned my chances of securing a cabana would be even slimmer since we were sharing Labadee with the Grandeur of the Seas that day.

Somewhere buried in a post was a suggestion to go to the shore excursion desk as soon as we board. So my mission on sailaway day was to get onboard as earlier as possible, and we did if you remember (11am).

After signing up for our drink packages and grabbing our first glass of Moet and Chandon, I snuck away to the shore excursion desk. The nice gentleman there explained he had 50% of the inventory and the likelihood is they were all booked. He punched a few things into his computer and voila! He had 1 cabana left. The way he explained it though was that it was set up on the hill and not over water. I hesitated but figured if I decided not to go forward with it I could either cancel it or sell it off to another passenger.

I had a lot of heartburn about the cabana leading up to our arrival in Haiti. Let's face it, it's $253 for a day on the beach. I considered switching over and doing a massage on Labadee. Later in the week, I would say Wednesday or Thursday, I went back to the shore excursion desk and asked one of ladies to show me where the cabin was on a map. She actually had a great book with photos and a well drawn map that showed our cabana was indeed an overwater one. She smiled and said, "This is an excellent location. You will love it!"

And we did! Stay tuned...

Thanks for your review! Indeed, the Indy looks much like the Freedom, my go-to ship-- which is in dry dock right now. This morning I managed to get the last room on the Indy, so I'm leaving tomorrow...too bored and chilly here in Central Fl. We go on the refurbished Freedom on March 1 together (hubby and I), but I LOVE cruising alone, so this is a last-minute, just for me cruise. :cool:

Freedom and Indy are our favorite ships. You will have a wonderful time on your cruise.

Where in north jersey are you from? We are in Bergen county!

 

 

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I grew up in Hudson County but worked in Paramus for a few years. I know the Bergen county area well.

Besides the Windjammer, what else was open for lunch on embarkation day?

Windjammer, Sorrentos and the Cafe Promenade were all open for lunch.

On our 8-day Indy cruise they had different flights each day. One day the flights would all be Italian, the next Australian, and so on and so forth. I think there was one day where they did not have a flight but were featuring a special sangria.

Was the beach in St Kitts nice? Cockelshell? We are taking a tour with Thenford Grey & will be stopping there in March..

Beach was really nice. I wish we could have stayed longer. If we can repeat this itinerary again we will. We love the combo of eastern caribbean with a stop in Labadee.

Thank you for the Photos. They brought back a lot of happy Memoires.:):)

Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment!

Were the tapas at Vintages an extra charge? I'm sad to say we never made it to Vintages on our Freedom cruise, we pretty much hung out at the pub, but after reading your review, we will definitely spend some time there when we're on Indy in July!

Yes they were free. Each night they had a different selection. Some night it was ham and a couple of different cheeses.

I proposed to my now wife on the Freedom of the Seas. I originally planned to pop the question before we left home at a special spot in our town. But Hurricane Sandy delayed the arrival of her ring AND wiped out the spot which sits on the bank of the Potomac River.

So I ended up putting the ring in the front pocket of my backpack and carrying it on the ship. No metal detector issues though the TSA agent at Dulles airport almost ruined the surprise by looking at me and saying "nice ring." To this day I'm not sure how she didn't find the box. We stood on line for almost 2 hours waiting to board and then our room wasn't ready until 2pm or so.

I chose to propose while still in Port Canaveral for a couple of reasons:

a.) I knew she would want to call her family.

b.) I knew she would want the entire vacation to enjoy the moment and wearing her new ring

c.) I couldn't contain my own excitement.

I chose to do it in our room because we're private people and I didn't want 3000 people to be apart of my proposal. We had an aft balcony which afforded a little extra room to setup my camera for a "selfie." I positioned the camera, set the timer and took a picture to be sure the camera had the entire balcony within range. I walked back over to the camera to check the picture but actually hit the video record button. I sat back down next to her, poured a glass of champagne and proceeded to do the deed.

Best of luck to the both of you!

Soon enough it was midnight and that meant my lovely, now only slightly younger other half could start her birthday celebration! So we headed back up to see Jayesh to take advantage of our Moet and Chandon privilege for a little birthday toast!

While Jayesh poured the bubbly I ran down to the Cafe Promenade to grab a sweet little dessert to sing happy birthday with! The sweet dessert was soon replaced by Sorrento's. LOL

After enjoying late-night pizza we returned to our cabin, tucked in our towel bat and fell asleep. I had a birthday surprise instore for my Mrs. and I needed her to be in top condition to enjoy it.

Thank you all for reading. Good night!

I honestly cannot remember what we did inbetween sailaway and getting ready for dinner. If I had to guess it involved Vintages, Boleros, the casino, walking around the promenade and maybe a quick nap.

Nevertheless tonight was our 2nd formal night. So we showered and got all fancified and headed up to the Promenade. We started out at Vintages and enjoyed a nice glass of white wine.

But I was in the mood for a Martini and we wanted a change of scenery so we relocated to the Schooner Bar.

The bartender (whose name escapes me) makes easily one of the best Grey goose martinis I've ever had. I'm not a martini snob but I've had a few in my life to be able to discern a good one from a bad one and a great one from a good one.

Bond...

After our cocktail hour we headed into dinner. Again, we had great dinner mates tonight. Actually, we had great dinner mates the entire week. We pretty much sat in the same section each night which was good because we enjoyed having Fernando as our server. It seemed we dined with the same pool of folks each night too!

Keeping with my forgettable culinary experience on this cruise, I cannot tell you what I ate for dinner. No photos either. I have the menus downloaded but can't remember which one was in effect tonight.

We took another set of formal photos after dinner. The first evening's set were taken on the lighted bridge near guest services. The background seemed really dark. The lighting there is tough. For the 2nd set we took our photos on the stairs leading down to the On-Air club across from Boleros.

These came out much better except for the shots that showed the wear in the carpet. It was kind of awkward. I'm surprised they don't replace this area of carpet more frequently. But I digress.

The sounds from the band playing at Boleros were too good to pass up. But it was far too warm to dance in my tux. So we jammed back to the cabin, put on more comfortable clothes and returned to dance.

And after a few martinis my salsa and merengue skills are actually halfway decent. So we danced for a good hour or so. I enjoyed a couple of Lorenzo's AWESOME mojitos too!

We shot up to Olive and Twist where we caught the tail end of the Jazz Cabaret band. I have to say the music on this cruise was awesome. We're not big into the production shows but we enjoy live music and dancing. It's not something we do at home so being able to go from a latin lounge to another where a jazz band is playing within 5 minutes or so is pretty neat. It's one of those things that makes cruising so special. It affords the opportunity to break out of the norm and try new things.

Unfortunately the jazz band stopped playing just before midnight. In search of something to do we took a stroll through the casino where we promptly won $130 playing Pelican Pete! Woot! Not looking to try our luck any more we headed towards On-Air to check out karaoke. The karaoke crowd was going pretty strong so we stopped and watched for a bit.

It's a shame the San Juan call was such a short day. All Aboard was at 1:30pm. I arrived back at the pier around 12:30 and waited on a LONG line. It took almost 30 minutes to get back on the ship. I'm glad my wife's heat issues presented earlier in the day because she most likely would have had an issue waiting on the line in the direct sun.

By the time I made it back to the cabin she was up and feeling much better. I was disappointed she missed the 2 ports of call we were most excited for, but glad she was feeling okay and in good spirits.

She was hungry (I was not) so we headed up to the Windjammer to grab lunch before sail away.

I ate again of course.

And she had another turkey burger. She said they were great so what the hey!

We went up to deck 12 for sail away. It was nice and breezy up there so we enjoyed the sites and sounds out on deck. There were a bunch of ships in port with us today.

Great views of Isla Verde airport. Got to watch this helicopter and a Blackhawk practice landings.

Away we go!

Old San Juan is beautiful. It's what I imagine Havana was like pre-revolution when my grandparents were growing up. By now I was getting hungry and wanted to take advantage of the cell signal to check in on work.

I bookmarked some places to eat on Yelp before leaving home and decided to check out Cafe Manolin.

Let's just say I was not disappointed.

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Here are some more shots I took while walking around Old San Juan:

Thursday, January 8, 2015

San Juan

We had an early arrival in San Juan. 7:00am to be precise. By now I'd given up on my normal tradition of waking early to watch us pull into port. We were docked and disembarking by the time I pulled the curtains back.

We were both eager to get out and explore Old San Juan. I visited Puerto Rico back in 2005 and wanted to explore Old San Juan on a more indepth level. Plus I was craving good Puerto Rican food. The docking of the Carnival Breeze suspended gangway operations for about 15 or 20 minutes so it gave us some time to run up to the Windjammer and grab some food.

Not looking to repeat the day before we made sure to get to bed at a reasonable hour and stay hydrated. But nevertheless San Juan was stagnant and super hot. So we ended up depositing Mrs. M&JfromSDL back at the cabin pretty early in the morning.

Eager to explore and not wanting to keep her awake by fidgeting in the cabin I set out on my own to explore Old San Juan.

I came across this awesome band playing in one of the parks. Below is a photo and a link to a video I took of them.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/21203547@N07/16242728966/in/set-72157647943679013