My Miracle Review 1/5/12- 1/13/12 with pictures! Wish I Could Go Back!!

[amdmsk]

You have any pics of the slides? I want to show my kids to get them excited.

Thanks.

 

Here's the water slide...from two different angles. That is the only slide on board (unless it was changed/more were added during the dry dock- someone else reading this can probably answer that?), but it was still fun, even for adults!! I went on the first day at sea maybe once, and the second to last day at sea, I went on PLENTY of times! There was no one in line and we were sitting right there, I couldn't resist! ;)

 

 

[amdmsk]

Do you have any views from your cabin? Or of the cabin? I'm booked in 7111 in April, which I think is right near where you were.

 

Can't wait to see/read more!

 

thank you!

karen

 

Here's a pic of cabin 7106, the inside room. I don't have any of the balcony room. When you're looking at the picture, the connecting door from the inside to the balcony room is on the left just in front of the bed.

Just FYI- with the connecting door, the balcony room did not have the usual sofa, but had two individual chairs instead.

 

 

Here's some pics from the balcony...it's really close to the bridge, so I ended up with part of the bridge in most of the pictures I took from out there, but I kind of liked the way it looked! I'm sure it's the same for room 7111.

This one was taken before we set sail in Fort Lauderdale:

 

 

This one was taken looking over the railing on the balcony even though it's a little crooked:

 

[amdmsk]

This morning we woke up to some off and on rain showers and clouds, which made for a beautiful rainbow at sea...

It was such an awesome thing to wake up to! The pictures don't do it justice. There were several different rainbows that morning and the one of them was so bright and colorful and you could see almost the entire thing, from end to end, from the top of the ship!

 

Here's the first time I saw the rainbow:

 

And then it got sooo much brighter and fuller!

 

 

 

It pretty much rained off and on throughout the morning, but as the morning went on, the sun started coming out. It was also very warm out, so we decided to go sit outside again and dodge the rain. Spent quite a bit of time relaxing on deck again today and putting my towel over my head each time it rained, though it never rained for more than five minutes at a time. By the time we went in as the afternoon came around, it looked like this outside:

 

 

It turned into a beautiful, sunny afternoon and evening at sea. I got this picture of a seagull as it was flying around.

 

 

We had dinner in the dining room again and I think the show was some kind of comedy show. With the weather shaping up in the afternoon though, we were hopeful that the next three days in port would be just as nice!

Coming up: St. Maarten!!

[amdmsk]

The next morning turned out to be beautiful, warm, and sunny and it looked like it would be a good day. As I got out on the balcony in the morning, we were pulling into St. Maarten!

 

 

Getting closer...

 

As we got up to the pier, there were some other ships already there:

 

 

We had room service for breakfast and had an early tour- we had pre-booked all of our excursions through Carnival for this trip. In St. Maarten we decided on doing the St. Maarten Island Tour in the morning and then when we returned, going off on our own to Maho Beach for the afternoon to hopefully catch a plane landing.

Up next will be the St. Maarten tour and then the famous Maho Beach!! :)

[Lipz]

Living vicariously through you until my turn in August!!!!! :D

[prg2101]

Awesome review with Pics!!!! Cant wait to board the Miracle in a few months.....Thanks for doing this;)

[amdmsk]

When we got off the ship in St. Maarten, we went off on the tour and figured we could walk around the port area and do some shopping when we got back.

 

I don't remember where I took this picture, probably around the area where the ships dock, but I really liked it! Gotta love those palm trees!

 

 

On the tour, which was very good, we pretty much got to drive around the entire island and stopped or slowed down a few times for pictures, looking around, etc.

 

The first stop we made was at a lookout point on one of the higher peaks of the island. There were really beautiful views:

 

 

We then made our way over the border to the French side of the island, where we stopped in Marigot, the capital, for about an hour. We walked around a bit and did some shopping. Unfortunately, because it was a Sunday, many of the shops and restaurants, except for the straw market, were closed. It would have been better if they were open, but oh well, it was still nice to walk around.

 

Here's some pictures from Marigot:

 

 

I thought this one was neat...

[amdmsk]

From there, we continued to drive around the island and crossed back over to the Dutch side. Before we knew it, we were back in town and the tour was over! We all really enjoyed being able to see the entire island and since the tour was only about 3 hours, we still had the afternoon to do whatever we wanted.

 

Before coming on this trip, I had read a lot about Maho Beach and we were planning on going there for a bit to hopefully see some of the planes landing. We learned from the tour though that the beach is a bit of a drive from where we were and with traffic, it could take about 40 minutes or so to get there. But, we had time and really wanted to see it, so we got a taxi and set off as soon as we returned from the tour!

It was really easy to get a taxi in St. Maarten to wherever you wanted to go and the more people there are in the taxi, the cheaper the trip is, so we ended up with some others from the other ships who were also going to Maho Beach.

 

In all, there wasn't that much traffic (maybe because it was Sunday) and it only took about 25-30 minutes to get there. The beach itself was pretty tiny and crowded and there is the Sunset Bar and Grill which was packed with people, but it was very nice! And yes, the airport sits directly behind the beach. There is the beach, a road, and then the airport runway, fenced in of course. Since we were not prepared to go swimming or sit on the beach, we just stayed along the road and walked on the beach, but we were really there for seeing the planes, as were many others.

 

There were pretty many flights coming in during the day, which the bar has posted on this nice little arriving flights board:

 

 

Then there was this sign by the fence:

 

 

We hung out around the area for maybe 2 hours and saw pretty many planes landing and a few take off...most of them were small planes, but there were one of two bigger ones, like this one:

 

 

This one took off while we were there...it was amazing to watch how strong the jet blast really is. We were off on the side pretty far, but as the plane began to start the engines to take off, it was amazing to see all the sand blow up into the air at the other end of the beach. It was also amazing to see the people who stood in the water with their arms out waiting to be blown in as well as the people who stood up against the fence directly behind the plane :eek:

 

 

Shortly before we got ready to leave, this plane came in, which definitely made the trip worthwhile (I'm so mad that I cut the end of it off the picture)!!!

 

 

We left shortly after that and had an interesting taxi experience getting back to the ship...we ended up in a taxi with some other people also returning to the ships when the driver just stopped at a random McDonalds, got out, and disappeared for 10 minutes (still not sure what was up with that...we wanted to get out and get a different taxi, but there weren't any other around).

But, we made it back without much traffic again and went back on board to have lunch. We figured that if we had time, we would come back out again and hang out around the port area, which is what we did...coming up next!

[amdmsk]

We had some more time so we went back out to walk around the port area and do some shopping. We ended up having a Guavaberry Colada, which was delicious, and buying a bottle of the Guavaberry Rum as well as some Guavaberry jelly to take home. Got back on board around the time we had to be back and pretty soon, we set sail for St. Lucia, which was our favorite port of call.

All in all, St. Maarten was probably our least favorite of the three stops, but we still enjoyed it and I would go back anytime.

 

Here's some photos around the port area and sailing away from St. Maarten...

 

 

 

Loved the island Christmas decorations!

 

Some of the other ships left just before us...

 

 

 

In the morning we would find ourselves about ready to pull into beautiful St. Lucia, which was our favorite of the three islands.

[Regulus13]

Very nice review so far!! =D Looking forward to the rest!!...well, sort of, cause now I miss my cruise...lolz

 

 

If I'm thinking of the right room (otherwise I'm sorry if I'm mistaken!!)... is this Laura or Gina?? It's Megan lol...haha got excited when I saw a poster from my cruise! :p

 

And agreed! Can't believe it's been just over a month since we got off, so its nice to see pics and a review! :)

 

lolz - its Gina! And yea, I can't believe one month has gone by already! I still actually have my tan!

[mulvihill]

We leave in 6 days so any information about the islands will help.

 

Thanks

[MegLib]

love the pics!! Cant wait to read and see more!!

 

 

lolz - its Gina! And yea, I can't believe one month has gone by already! I still actually have my tan!

 

haha heyy!! yeaa still a bit tan here too lol...just bring back the warm weather!! :)

[Relayer]

Thanks for the preview and pics. Looking forward to our second Mircale cruise in just 28 days. As if I needed and more pumping up!:D

[JordansMom83]

Can't wait for more! love a good review with pictures. we are on the miracle in 79days and cant wait!

[The_ZOO]

we were on this ship with you. Loved the ship and the ports we were in. So sad to be home but already looking forward to our trip in Feb 2013. Love the review!

[amdmsk]

Thanks for the comments everyone! Glad you all are reading this...writing it brings back so many good memories! It was a busy day so I didn't get to write at all, so I'll just post this now and continue tomorrow!

 

The next morning, it was again a beautiful day and soon after I got up, St. Lucia came into view from our balcony!

 

 

Then we got closer...

 

We passed a small airport coming in and before I knew it, we were up against the dock.

 

 

 

 

We had booked the Land and Sea Combo to Sourfriere tour, which was pretty much all day, but so worth it! We got to see so much and had a really great time. St. Lucia was by far our favorite port of the cruise and I'd love to go back again!! The island was so lush and tropical, it just felt very relaxing and was all around a nice place. Pictures and shore excursion info coming tomorrow!

[amdmsk]

We got off the ship soon after we saw that the gangway was open and we had a few minutes to spare before meeting the group for our tour, so I took some pictures around the port area.

Here's the entrance sign to the main port/shopping area:

 

Soon we went off on our tour and made our way up the many hills to a beautiful lookout point. On this tour, we took a bus all the way to the village of Soufriere, where we got on a catamaran to take us back to the ship! In all, it was about 6 hours long, with 2 1/2 hours on the catamaran and the rest of the time on the bus on the way to Soufriere, making several stops along the way.

The roads in St. Lucia were VERY windy as we first started going up the different mountains on the bus...

 

 

Soon we made our first stop, which was about a 10-15 minute stop at a scenic overlook. There were such nice views of the Castries harbor and all of the ships in port, I could have easily spent more time just looking out at the views!

 

 

 

We then kept going and we drove past some interesting places, including a banana plantation and the community college on the island, which was neat to see. Soon we stopped at a mountaintop overlooking Marigot Bay, which they told us has been voted one of the most beautiful bays in the Caribbean. Well, it certainly was beautiful!! The only negative thing about the island was that there were many people around trying to sell you their things. They weren't pushy or anything after you told them no and were friendly, just an observations because I could see that others could be annoyed by this. It didn't really bother us though- how could we let that bother us when everything was so beautiful!!

 

 

From Marigot, we continued traveling, and made our way to the first place where we were able to stop and get out to view the Pitons!! We stopped a few places along the way as well for photos and then got on the catamaran.

[nyctravel]

I was also on this cruise with you. Great weather, great ports, especially St. Kitts. Not such a fan of this class of ship, too small for my liking. Many times at night it was like walking through a ghost town, I'd think, where did everyone go? Ah, who cares, the ports were fabulous! Glad you had a great time. Interesting to hear about what other people did at the ports. Can't wait for the next installment...