K&B's Excellent Adventure to the S Caribbean on the Valor (Sept 19-30) *pic heavy*

[Limeia]

Katie, glad your back to posting. I hope to see the entire review before we leave on our Valor cruise in December.

 

Thanks so much for the review, love it and the pictures!

[randompanda31]

cant wait to see more :)

[agc291]

me too this was our first itinerary and our favorite thus far- hard to beat

[kittycrusin08]

Great review, Katie. Your pictures are wonderful and capture old San Juan's personality. Cannot wait for more and your pictures from the different ports. Thank you for sharing with us. We will be in San Juan in about 4 weeks on the Conquest and now I wish we could stay longer. ;)

[Katemusical]

If you have time, would someone please personal message me and tell me what the site "that must not be named" is? Im so curious!

 

Keep going with the review. Love it!

[GreytRacer]

If you have time, would someone please personal message me and tell me what the site "that must not be named" is? Im so curious!

 

Keep going with the review. Love it!

 

The initials are Eff Bee. I can't spell it out or use the initials or I'll get in trouble. :-).

[Windinmahair]

If you have time, would someone please personal message me and tell me what the site "that must not be named" is? Im so curious!

 

Keep going with the review. Love it!

 

I too would love to know what and where to find the "site that must not be named" please.

[Windinmahair]

The initials are Eff Bee. I can't spell it out or use the initials or I'll get in trouble. :-).

 

I should have kept reading lol. Got it thanks!

[ch27088]

Thank you for sharing your review. I know I'm a little late reading it, but can't wait.

[WeatherBoy]

Looks like this one flamed out:confused:

[agc291]

I do wish she would come back... i enjoyed her review but she did say she was busy busy

[GreytRacer]

She's a photographer and this is her very busy time of year. I'm sure she'll be back to finish her review, once her work settles down. :-)

[pbhgirlforever]

We leave on the Valor in 43 days!! I hope you can post some more info. You are doing a great job. Keep up the good work!

[ktinnc]

Hey y'all I promise u haven't seen the last of me and this trip report...I worked 18 plus hours a day up til Christmas and then I crashed for a couple weeks....getting back into the daily routine now so finishing this is on my to do list...pinky promise. Besides I just booked a cruise for Nov so ill be back in cruise mode :)

 

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[ChelleBee]

Hey y'all I promise u haven't seen the last of me and this trip report...I worked 18 plus hours a day up til Christmas and then I crashed for a couple weeks....getting back into the daily routine now so finishing this is on my to do list...pinky promise. Besides I just booked a cruise for Nov so ill be back in cruise mode :)

 

Sent from my Kindle Fire using Tapatalk 2

 

i'm on the valor in 24 days. i can hardly wait for you to finish! thanks for letting us know you're back. :D

[CruisingWChrist]

Hey y'all I promise u haven't seen the last of me and this trip report...I worked 18 plus hours a day up til Christmas and then I crashed for a couple weeks....getting back into the daily routine now so finishing this is on my to do list...pinky promise. Besides I just booked a cruise for Nov so ill be back in cruise mode :)

 

Sent from my Kindle Fire using Tapatalk 2

 

Great Review, you are the real deal1 If I could afford it I would pay for you to take pictures and do my review.:D

[Bringonthesun01]

Both my mother and I have been following your posts since you started this review. We leave on the cruise on Feb 16th, and have been looking to your posts for great places to go.

[ktinnc]

Alright y'all..I'm feelin the guilt..haha. We live at the beach in North Carolina and we got hit with a winter storm ....2 inches of ice is covering everything - and we're not used to this/don't have the equipment for it....soooo...we are iced in today and tomorrow at least. Soooo...I should probably be doing some work but I decided I'd rather "go to St Thomas"...in my pics/cruise review at least...sooo..hoping to get an installment up tonight :)

[zumbaguy]

Part 3/Saturday, Sept 21, 2013 (continued)

 

An albino red devil….

 



 

An oscar..

 



 

Another red devil..

 



 

Brian’s big peacock bass..

 



 

And another big one for me..a jaguar.. (You notice I don't hold my fish..haha)

 

 

Nice! I have all of those in my home aquarium.

[ktinnc]

Part 4/Sunday, Sept 22, 2013

 

I’m back!! After an incredibly busy fall/holiday season I thought I’d finally get back to working on this review. We are “iced in” right now after some very rare weather for our area….a couple inches of ice and some snow… so I thought I’d take a little “mind” trip to someplace warmer and post another installment. Remember in my introduction I said there was a good possibility this could take me months to finish because of my work schedule and that’s exactly what happened. Ok soooo…who’s ready to go to St Thomas??

 

We left off with us staying up late at the sail away party! We both woke up fairly early (Brian by about 6ish and me shortly after). When I woke up I felt terrible! I had a headache, upset stomach and a sore throat. I didn’t know if I was seasick or sick sick or if I just hadn’t had enough sleep (or a combo of everything). In any case I decided I was going to have fun no matter what so I just took my time getting ready.

We docked at 7am. Brian took pics on the balcony of us coming into port. We were both so excited to be docking at our first of many islands!

 

A quick pic through the cabin window of the pilot boat…



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 

[ktinnc]

Part 5/Monday, Sept 23, 2013 (cont)

 



 



 



 

 

We had ordered room service the night before to arrive between 6:30 and 6:40 – they came close to 7am. It was just a “pre-breakfast.” Toast & jelly and milk for Brian, a bagel/cream cheese for me and some ice for my diet coke! We had a little something to eat (in between taking pics) and got ready for the day including getting the beach bag packed and Brian (my red headed husband) doused himself in his first round of sunscreen.

Once we were ready we headed to the Washington Dining Room for breakfast. They have open seating every morning and instead of fighting the crowds at the buffet on lido deck you get to relax and have your food brought to you. We always go to the MDR for breakfast vs Lido. Because I wasn’t feeling well I was moving a little slow getting ready in the cabin so by the time we got to breakfast it was looking pretty iffy on if we would get to eat and get to our excursion on time. We were sat with 2 other couples…both were very nice and we had some nice conversation. After our yummy (but scarfed down) breakfast…. (omelette, fruit and turkey sausage for me; eggs, bacon and toast for Brian) we had to run and get off the ship for our 9am excursion. We didn’t know how far we would have to go when we got off the ship to where our meeting place was since we had never been to St Thomas before, but thankfully there wasn’t much of a walk at all. We had to wait a few minutes anyways so it worked out perfect.





Since we had never been to any of the islands before, we decided to do some type of excursion at each port. For St Thomas we decided on Sunny Liston’s Shopping, Sightseeing and Beach Tour. (Who am I kidding, I decided on all the excursions…hubby just showed up..lol). Sunny picked us up in his open air taxi and drove us into Charlotte Amalie for the first part of the tour – shopping. He dropped us off and we had 3 hours to shop/do what we wanted. So we get dropped off and we’re like hmm..what should we do now? lol We knew we were going to just walk around and browse but I didn’t know where the shops were or anything (guess I should’ve planned this part a little better. So the first thing we did was walk across the street to take a pic of the ship from where we were.

 

 







We were talking about where we should go next and I can’t remember why but for some reason I looked in our beach bag for something. While I was doing that, Brian says…”OMG I can’t find my sail and sign card.” What? You’re kidding me right? Cuz that’s something he would do. No…he said he couldn’t find it. Sooo…let me back up. For those of you that don’t know, the sail and sign card is how you get on/off the ship, it’s your room key and it’s how you spend money on the ship (you charge purchases to your card and at the end of the cruise they charge you for the total to your CC or you can put cash on the acct). In any case…. when we had walked off the ship (had to have the card for it) I had said to Brian, do you want me to hold onto your card with mine? I put mine in our waterproof wallet that we were going to keep our money/id/sail and sign cards in. He says…no I’ll hold on to mine just in case something were to happen at least both of us wouldn’t be out of luck. So he had put his SS card in the back velcro pocket of his swim trunks. He had volunteered to wear the wallet around his neck (that’s how you’re supposed to wear them) but at the last minute decided to tuck it into his pocket too. Well when he pulled out the wallet to pay Sunny (before we got off at the first stop) his sail and sign must have fallen out?!?

 

Sooo…we’ve been off of the ship 10 whole minutes on the very first day and my husband has already lost his sail n sign card. OMG…what do we do? So we went and sat down on a bench and regrouped….looked through our beach bag etc and couldn’t find it. So we decided to just go on about our day and hopefully they would let us back on the ship later! So we take a look at the shopping map they had handed us when we got off the ship and made a plan.

 

We browsed through some of the shops and just tried to have a good time. We aren’t big shoppers but we still had fun. At one point we decided to call the 800 number at Carnival and ask about Brian’s card. After like 20 minutes on hold (on a phone battery that was almost dead because I hadn’t planned to use it except to take a few photos) I talked to a lady who laughed at our panic and said to go have fun and not worry about it…she said it happens all the time. Whew!! Back to shopping.

 

WE got a few little gifts for family and we found a drug store so I could get some cough drops and cold medicine. Wow – expensive! It was $18 for a box of Advil cold and sinus!



We were amused by all the tactics the shops used to try and get shoppers in their doors. Free gifts, free drinks and even use of their private restrooms! I wanted to get one piece of jewelry on this trip instead of a bunch of junky souvenirs so I was happy to find a pretty starfish necklace. Bonus: while we were finalizing our purchase I got to use their restroom..haha.

 



 

I realized the only pic I took during our shopping trip was of Tiffanys….because Brian had no idea what it was..lol. We went in there just for the heck of it and he almost fell over at some of the prices..ha.

 



 

 

At 11:45am we went back to our meeting spot so we could finish the rest of our excursion (sightseeing and beach ahead!). I’m going to stop here for now because the pics aren’t done uploading, but I’ll be back tomorrow with more. The big question is….did we ever find Brian’s sail and sign card?!?

Edited January 30, 2014 by ktinnc

[GreytRacer]

Hooray! You're back! Can't wait to read more. :-)

[ktinnc]

Part 5/Monday, Sept 23, 2013 (cont)

 

Ok soooo we left off with us heading to meet up with Sunny Liston and the rest of our tour group. We piled into the open air taxi which was definitely full – but it was fun. While we were waiting for everyone to get there we talked to Sunny and guess what he found?!?……. (drumroll please)………………………………. Brian’s sail and sign! Woo hoo! So even though we knew from calling Carnival that we would still be able to board the ship if we couldn’t find it..we definitely relaxed after having it back in our possession!

 

All aboard! Time to go up the mountain for the sightseeing portion of the trip. Wow – what a trip! Sunny turned on the music (loud) and everyone was to sing along to some Caribbean/beach/island music. You couldn't help but join in. They drive on the left side of the road and they drive kinda crazy (or at least Sunny did)…there were lots of twists and turns and "whooooaaaaahhhhhs!"



We stopped at an overlook for just a few minutes where Sunny pointed out some of the sights and we could take pictures of our ship down below as well as ooh and ahh at the gorgeous views. There were vendors at this stop where you could grab a quick drink or shop for souvenirs. This was maybe a 10 min stop if that.



 



 



 



 



 

[ktinnc]

Part 5/Monday, Sept 23, 2013 (cont)

 

Everybody got back on board and we continued our adventure. At one point during the day (can’t remember when exactly) I realized that one of the guys in front of us having a blast with his family was somebody I had “met” on our roll call/group before we left. Hi Eman! (He and some of the other friends we made on this trip are all booked on another cruise this coming November - can't wait!!)

 

Sooo…up up up we go to “The Mountain Top” (the home of the Banana Daiquiri). We walked through the ginormous gift shop/bar and went out back to the deck and Sunny pointed out some more sights from the overlook and we took lots of pics. It was so gorgeous that I might’ve had to snap a quick pic and upload it to Fb (I’m a brat!)

 



 



 



 



 

 

 

 

[ktinnc]

Part 5/Monday, Sept 23, 2013 (cont)

 

Then it was back inside to grab a banana daiquiri (yummmm) and do a little shopping/exploring.

 



 



 



 



 

I think we stayed here about 20-30 minutes and then it was time to board the taxi again for our trip back down the mountain and to the beach!!