Another Jewel Southern route review, more like a trip report with pictures!

[Ocean Boy]

I'm sure it will, I was pretty limited in excursions this cruise because of my surgery in January. I'm posting a lot of the negative stuff this time, but we really did have a great cruise.

 

But you are posting your negative stuff is a pretty funny and entertaining way!:D

[BillOh]

Thanks for posting. I am enjoying the review. I love the reerences to the occasional thought given to the workplace you not missing. It always adds a little sweetness to the day when you're lounging on a deck chair on a cruise ship and it occurs to you that you're normally at work at that time.

 

I think you hit on the theme of this cruise for me. With the earlier surgery there wasn't much active I could do this time. My job is stressful so it was nice to get away relax. I started this job as part of a team of 10 seven years ago, we are down to 3 now, and I couldn't help think of my 2 remaining coworkers once in awhile. It was easier though as one of them was on Celebrity two weeks prior.

[BillOh]

Saint Lucia coming up next, i'll try to get the pictures together this evening. We did a tour labeled Soufries Volcano Tour. It was better than the Taste of Antigua!

 

I just checked and my notes and I noticed on Antigua day they had the Love and Marriage show at 7:45pm! This was the first time in 10 cruises this wasn't a late evening show, usually 10:45 at the earliest. This time was between dinner seatings and the whole show was rushed. Carly was just ok in her roll as CD/MC. I think I may have heard one new question. By the time I bring up Quest in my next message I'll be summing up Carly. She won't make my top 5 of CDs.

 

Again a reminder, I had a very nice relaxing enjoyable cruise!

Edited May 14, 2014 by BillOh

[BillOh]

Wednesday was St Lucia. Another nice port shopping area with the ladies talking a jewelry store owner into opening early so they can get their Pandora beads. Then we met the people for our Soufries Volanco Tour. There was about 20 of us comfortably in a shuttle type van. A quick trip town and we started winding up our way the hills to our first stop, a scenic overlook of the port. Below are the Central Ohio Ladies on this cruise.

 

 

Now add the husbands

 

 

At this scenic overlook there were quite a few people pushing trinkets, but nobody was too pushy. Again we were off for what was about an hour drive to Soufries. (about 19 miles) If you get car sick, this isn’t the excursion for you! Lots of back and forth on narrow roads with big ditches, or 100 foot drop offs. Two vans our size couldn’t pass on this road. Fortunately that never happened, though it was a bit unnerving flying through the mountains along those drop offs. After 20 minutes a stop at a fishing village. More stuff to buy!

Fishing

Then we drove through another town, Caneries I think it was called.

 

Shortly after our first look at the Pitons.

 

Next came a stop at a Botanical gardens that was very nice, not too difficult to get around, but lots of nice foliage and a guided tour.

 

Edited May 15, 2014 by BillOh

[Angel59920]

I think St. Lucia is a beautiful island but the roads remind me of that show Deadliest Roads. I was scared to death and couldn't wait to get out of the van.

[BillOh]

I think St. Lucia is a beautiful island but the roads remind me of that show Deadliest Roads. I was scared to death and couldn't wait to get out of the van.

 

I understand the feeling, I tried to keep my eyes on the distant scenery. Good to hear from you Angel, in a coincidence as I sat down to log in my computer this morning the screen saver was showing a picture of You, Brian, Gina, and I at our Freedom Meet and Mingle.

[Ocean Boy]

Jewel appears to me moored or is that just an illusion? Did you tender in St. Lucia? We had to tender on Serenade there once as Adventure had the pier and there was some other construction going on. Usually this is not a tender port.

[Angel59920]

I understand the feeling, I tried to keep my eyes on the distant scenery. Good to hear from you Angel, in a coincidence as I sat down to log in my computer this morning the screen saver was showing a picture of You, Brian, Gina, and I at our Freedom Meet and Mingle.

 

I just had to follow along on this review. Our favorite island doing the Southern Caribbean was Barbados. Maybe one day we will get to cruise together again. That meet and mingle was my favorite by far...:D

[Platypus_72]

Beautiful St. Lucia pictures! I wish our itinerary was going there. I guess it just means we'll have to go on another cruise. Oh shucks! ;)

[AZSwissGal]

I think St. Lucia is a beautiful island but the roads remind me of that show Deadliest Roads. I was scared to death and couldn't wait to get out of the van.

 

I loved these roads. They were pretty high on the list of things I liked about our tour with Serenity. I guess I am weird or it might have something to do with originally being from Switzerland where the roads can be pretty hairy in some places.

 

Rita

[BillOh]

Jewel appears to me moored or is that just an illusion? Did you tender in St. Lucia? We had to tender on Serenade there once as Adventure had the pier and there was some other construction going on. Usually this is not a tender port.

 

It's docked, but they backed in, so in this perspective you can't see the dock at all. There is another review going on my another in our roll call, I think she shows the ship from the pier area. The ship is longer than the pier itself.

[BillOh]

I just had to follow along on this review. Our favorite island doing the Southern Caribbean was Barbados. Maybe one day we will get to cruise together again. That meet and mingle was my favorite by far...:D

 

That was my top M&M till my Allure 2013 cruise. (Freedom still ranks up there) Several people from my Allure cruise were on this cruise as well, we had such a good time, they all followed me onto this one ;) I'm really looking forward to going back on Freedom in 345 days!

[BillOh]

FYI- Earlier I posted a pic of the link for the TASTE OF ANTIGUA excursion from Royal's web page. There was a WRITE REVIEW button on it. I did write a review and got an email back saying it was accepted. I need to go look for it.

[BillOh]

When I left off we had finished the Botanical gardents. This was enjoyable, but now it was off to the Soufries Caldera, which is a volcano that collapsed into itself. We drove inside the ancient volcano and stopped at a visitors center were we had a bathroom break and a video and exhibits on the volcano area. We then walked down into a guided tour.

 

The actual volcano collapsed an estimated 100,000 years ago. You get occasionally strong smell of sulphur and there are monitoring stations of the levels get to high. Below is a mud pool which hot gas is still seeping up.

 

This was an interesting tour, on the way we stopped at a restaurant overlooking the Pitons for snacks. After about an hour here, it was time for the ride back to the ship. This was formal night, so we skipped dinner in the main dining room and did the Windjammer, then later we did go to the Seaview Café for Chicken strips and onion rings. Admiral Nelson or Captain Crane was no where to be found!

Next up, Barbados

Edited May 16, 2014 by BillOh

[BillOh]

Next up, Barbados

 

This was day 6 and the last of 5 new islands. Normally I would be thinking about how fast the trip went by, but this one despite being so port intensive seem to be taking its time. I guess I was getting the rest and relaxation I so desperately needed. I had mentioned earlier that all of our excursions this time were from Royal Caribbean’s website. In 9 previous cruises I’ve had around 30% of our excursions canceled. I’ve been a person doing almost exclusively private excursions the past few years. But on this trip the 4 of us got together and picked them out from Royal’s website. At this stop it was Penny who wanted to “swim with turtles”. This was the only excursion we booked before 9am on this trip. Normally I am up early and wanting to get full days in, but this trip the sleeping in helped us stay awake through dinner! I don’t drink coffee so I went to get some Coke Zero in my Freesytle cup. It was right around 7am. There is only 2 of the Freestyle machines on this ship and they are both in the back of the Windjammer on the starboard side. I was shocked to see the Windjammer was closed! To my knowledge the WJ is always open early on port mornings when we dock early. More cutbacks? I did try to sneak in the back doors via deck 12 down to the rear of the WJ. When I got in, the machines were turned off! I know a coke at 7am may disgust some of you, but its my only caffeine source and I wanted to avoid a headache on the excursion if there wasn’t any available.

 

It was another (6 in a row) beautiful sunny days. The dock at Barbados makes you feel like a longshoreman rather than a tourist when you get off the ship. The scene looks like one from any down at the docks old movie. But after about 100 yards you walk into a building with the usual tourist places and free wifi! Jon and Penny, the couple we were with, were on the constant lookout for connectivity. I’m still a disconnect from the work and I don’t want to see a cell phone or computer when I’m on vacation. However, I don’t fault them. He has an internet business that is one big reason they can cruise with us. They are also in the midst of building a new house and they have kids at home. Once you get into this more touristy area, they do have a nice place for boarding excursions with plenty of seating.

 

 

We boarded our bus to the pier where the catamaran was located. It probably was less than a mile from our port. That would be a theme for this stop. While it was a great day, I didn’t get more than 1 mile from the port, so I saw less of this island than I did the others. A reason to go back! This catamaran was another nice looking boat with plenty to drink, but nothing to eat. The right to the turtle area was a quick one. Its dock was probably ½ mile north of where Jewel was moored and the turtle area was less than a mile south.

This was a bit of a tourist creation, but I enjoyed it. These are wild turtles, but I guess you could say that have a mild domestication as they are use to having people come and feed them. Perhaps there is enough cruise ship and other tourist that these turtles get fed every day? But I did enjoy seeing them. I did see a full grown turtle in St Thomas at 60ft while diving, but unfortunately I had a broken camera then. Here is a link to the video I made with my GoPro camera.

 

 

After 20 minutes we pulled up anchor and moved about 100 yards to a wrecked ship where we could snorkel for another 20 minutes or so. This was the first time on the cruise I wished I could dive. The wreck was in 40 ft of water. It would have been much more interesting if I could have gotten more than 10ft below the surface. Back on board, another jaunt back to the north side of the cruise ship where the captain tried to find a beach to stop at. His first choice was a bit choppy so he went to another spot. At this spot she stopped about 100 yards off shore in 10ft of water. Technically my surgeon hadn’t ok’d swimming yet, but I took it easy going both ways, but it would make a little sore that night. After about an hour we swam back to the ship and to the port.

This port area was the only one that didn’t have a jewelry store with Pandora beads, so Jon took Penny and my wife Gina in a cab for their quest. I was feeling sore the long swim and headed back to the ship for some relaxation on my own personal seat in the Thermal Suite and then back to my book on the lounger on our balcony. I didn’t see much of the island, so I’m looking forward to going back!

In a first for us. We were invited to the sailaway party for that day reserved for the upper tier crown and anchor members. There must not have been enough diamond and above on this cruise as they exteneded it down to Emerald. I sure wish I had been invited to this on Allure as it’s the only ship with a public area on the bow that I haven’t been on.

 

 

 

It was a beautiful evening weather wise and we got to meet much of the senior crew from most departments, except for the Bridge crew, whom were busy taking us out of port. I went to sit down for a moment when Gina was a bunch of flying fish ahead of the ship. Bad timing on my part. The party began to break up, but we waited around to watch sunset.

 

This was Thursday night and after dinner was, “The Quest”. Many times there have been arguments here on cruise critic about bringing kids to quest. While I hope to avoid that here, I fall on the side of the leave your kids elsewhere, let us adults have our fun side. Well, I’m apparently not on the same side of the argument with the Cruise Director Carly what’s her name from Wales. She did state up front that this was an adult themed party, but she was keeping it PG. (zzzzzzzzzzzzzz) She just dropped to the bottom of my CD list. After that, it was just another quest, even if we did win the coveted $1.50 silver medal. I much more enjoyed the two quests by Ken Rush on Allure, or Dennis previously on Jewel. Ricky when he was on Majesty also did a good one. For those of you who love to argue about this on threads here or on facebook, this just serves as an example that not all CDs do it the same. I do wish they would come up with more new Quests and keep it for adults less we invade the Ocean Adventure and take over the games.

Edited May 18, 2014 by BillOh

[KirkNC]

Thanks for the report.

[Familygoboston]

It is too bad that your day went as it did. When we were first on Antigua we took a tour down to Shirely Heights and Nelson's Dockyard and we had a great day there. Hopefully, your next visit will go better.

 

OB, I'd love to hear more about what you did there; this is what. I have planned as DH and DD are history buffs. I've got a private guide lined up, and we are hoping to visit there, then go to one or two of the guides recommended beaches. I'd love to hear what you did and how long you think we should plan to visit.

 

Next up, Barbados

 

This was a bit of a tourist creation, but I enjoyed it. These are wild turtles, but I guess you could say that have a mild domestication as they are use to having people come and feed them. Perhaps there is enough cruise ship and other tourist that these turtles get fed every day? But I did enjoy seeing them. I did see a full grown turtle in St Thomas at 60ft while diving, but unfortunatel

 

After 20 minutes we pulled up anchor and moved about 100 yards to a wrecked ship where we could snorkel for another 20 minutes or so. This was the first time on the cruise I wished I could dive. The wreck was in 40 ft of water. It would have been much more interesting if I could have gotten more than 10ft below the surface. Back on board, another jaunt back to the north side of the

In a first for us. We were invited to the sailaway party for that day reserved for the upper tier crown and anchor members. There must not have been enough diamond and above on this cruise as they exteneded it down to Emerald. I sure wish I had been invited to this on Allure as it’s the only ship with a public area on the bow that I haven’t been on.

 

.

 

We went on Calabaza and did a similar tour- it was about the same money, but only 12 of us, they go to the turtles and the wreck, which has all the same crowds, but then actually sail to and anchor in a quiet spot further north for lunch and more snorkeling. They fed and "watered" us all day long; banana bread, cheese and crackers, a full lunch, dessert, more snacks along with a in board bar open all day. Next time, Bill- it was well worth it! :D

 

The guides were excellent and they explained that this area was originally where the fisherman returned with their catches. They would toss their chum, and the turtles aren't stupid, they came. Now the tourists have come and the fisherman have moved on, but the turtles still come as long as there is food in the water. As a personal ethic of mine, I do not feed wild animals, so I did not take advantage of that even though it was allowed. You are not supposed to touch them, another personal decision, I did not do that. But some were not listening.:(

 

OK- now I am peeved about the sail away party- we have sailed many many times (as you know!) and we have little to zero interest in the diamond lounge and repeaters parties; but the one and ONLY thing I want to do is just once be invited to a party on the bow at sail away...it's never happened! :mad: Well, I'm glad you did, because you never know once you turn diamond, you may never see it again!:eek: Looks lie, you had a very move evening up there!

Edited May 19, 2014 by Familygoboston

[BillOh]

All I have left of this very enjoyable and somehow relaxing week is the final sea day. I have probably just a couple of worthy pictures left. I did see that they cracked open the Solarium roof about 6 ft allow air and direct sunlight to the plants just below. They may also have opened it to allow the paint fumes to escape as they repainted the pool and added the anchor to the bottom as seen in AZ Karaoke's thread. I'll post that pic.

 

On Friday morning I knew my wife wanted to get up early and get a good spot by the pool. Chair hogs at the pool were virtually no problem the first 6 days of the cruise because of port stops every day. In my post surgery recovery I came back to the ship before about 75% of people, so I never had a problem. I kind of had a goal of taking a picture like this one that was taken by a fellow cruise critic member on Freedom back around 2007. Friday morning, the only sea day would have to be the day.

 

 

However, Thursday night we stayed up late. When 7am rolled around, I couldn't get myself out of bed, knowing that I would be back to my normal routine soon and having also to get up early the next day for the dreaded disembarkation. I missed it. Perhaps I'll have a chance next year when I return to Freedom and day 2 is a Sea day on the way to Labadee. I sure hope the guy in the picture above is on my cruise! Speaking of my next cruise, I was swimming in the solarium and I overheard two guys talking about their next cruise and one asked the other a question about Freedom. The other guy didn't know the answer. I apologized for over hearing (ease dropping) and answered the question and that led to a discussion. Turns out he will be on the same next cruise. I like coincidences, though I guess we both like to cruise around this time of year.

A few more pictures tonight and disembarkation to wrap this up.

[Sunny AZ Girl]

Great review, Bill! We are so glad we got a chance to sail with you and Gina once again. I wish we could have seen a bit more of you.

 

We had originally booked the late dining with you, but after the other AZ Cruisers switched to Early we changed also. I am glad now that we did. Most evenings I was in bed by 11 on this port intensive cruise.:eek:

 

I had debated writing a review as you and Lisa both did one, but I see we really did different things. Once I get my pictures completed I will start. It may take a week to do it, though.

[BillOh]

Great review, Bill! We are so glad we got a chance to sail with you and Gina once again. I wish we could have seen a bit more of you.

 

We had originally booked the late dining with you, but after the other AZ Cruisers switched to Early we changed also. I am glad now that we did. Most evenings I was in bed by 11 on this port intensive cruise.:eek:

 

I had debated writing a review as you and Lisa both did one, but I see we really did different things. Once I get my pictures completed I will start. It may take a week to do it, though.

 

I'll look forward to it, I normally prefer 2nd dining, but it was a real pain on this one. As it turned out I was back on the ship by 3pm most days because I was so tired from walking/swimming, I easily could have done 1st seating.

[Spurschick]

SunnyAZgirl had pre-arranged a shuttle van from San Juan tours for a very affordable $10 each. I think there was about 12 of us in the van with our luggage. The tour had told Ginny they would pick us up around 1pm. Ginny had told them no way, we want to be at the ship by 11am! They showed up right on time at 10:30 and we were quickly on our way on a beautiful San Juan morning. We arrived right on time to the port. It seemed to me that we were among the very first just as they were letting people check in. Within 15 minutes we were on the ship and headed to the windjammer by 11:15! Well. The WJ wasn’t open yet! We waited in one of the spacious seating areas just outside the windjammer.

 

The Windjammer did open at 11:30. I didn’t get any pictures, but I still think the Jewel Windjammer is the nicest looking on in the fleet. Love all that shiny wood! We had lunch, not too soon as I forgot to mention there is NOTHING around the Tre-Palmas. Lunch by the way was my first without Honey stung chicken! Its no more. There was regular fried chicken, which was good.

 

Next as per our tradition we changed into our swimsuits from our carry ons. Here, my first experience with the new towel policy wasn’t a good one. I looked over at the towel station which was unmanned, but had a single stack of about 10 towels on it. Another man was walking towards it as well, and being the polite man I am (on a cruise anyway) I let him go first. He picked up every towel available. I’m not sure if the look on my face said , “ I’m going to kill you” or, “ I can’t believe you are that stupid!” Which ever look it was, it got through as he sheepishly offered me two towels. Situation defused!

At one pm we went to our cabin which was 9290, a D1 on the hump on the port side next to the elevators. The balcony is at least twice as deep (see below) and has nobody on one side. As you can see two loungers, one table and two chairs. We loved it. I spent some reading time here. I recommend this cabin!

 

 

 

Given my back surgery of January, we also got the thermal suite again. I spent some time here everyday, especially after excursions.

 

 

 

I’ll close off day 1 with my next two mistakes. We killed time till muster. This in 10 cruises was our first muster where we didn’t have to go outside! Our station was in the Safari lounge. We had plenty of warning, but my wife just started putting in her contacts when the alarm sounded. I swear it took her only 3 minutes! I think we were at our station 4 minutes after the alarm, which I thought was just about perfect. Turns out we were the last ones and they had been calling our name! How embarrassing and so not me! I’ve have people in my section show up 20 minutes later! From there sailway. I’ve read many reviews that sailway was 8:15am and the 2nd seating was delayed till 8:45. I swear I’ve read this. Below is my wife at sailway:

 

 

From there we arrive promptly at dinner at 8:45 and the rest of our table mates had ordered!. Opps, sorry, that’s so not me. That’s day 1.

Loving the review thanks:)

[cruiseapril]

Enjoyed your very interesting review.

 

We'll be sure not to do that Antigua excursion! Wow- how could they charge for that?

[Arizona Cruz Chic]

Great review and pictures!

 

[BillOh]

Final day, at Sea.

Friday after visiting 5 beautiful islands was a sea day on the way back to San Juan. This cruise also fell on the 10th anniversary of Jewel of the Seas entering the Royal Caribbean fleet. There were decorations everywhere as well as a balloon drop in the centrum and a large cake on the pool deck.

Happybd

 

 

 

As I mentioned in the last post, I expected chair hogs to be a problem on the last day and only sea day of the trip and hoped to get pictures of the bad people in action, but was too tired to get up. As you would suspect all the chairs near the pool were gone, but there were others to be found. Below you can see the deck patrol watching out for them.

 

 

But the need would go away by late morning/early afternoon. We had wonderful weather this trip. Some might have called it perfect. Clearly early May is a good time to cruise this area. Or, at least it was this year. Shortly afternoon we saw our first rain/heavy clouds of the trip and chair hogging was no longer an issue, though the crew had lots of wet towels to pick up that evening!

I used the weather as an excuse to go back to the gym and work on my physical therapy exercises. Despite the problems I mentioned in this thread so far, a very nice relaxing cruise was coming to an end. At this point, Me, Mr. Rule Follower decided to break one rule. The normal last day compass included the departure instructions and they said that bags had to be out by 11. I in a blatent disregard for said rules knew that we might not be back from our 8:30 dinner in time to finish our packing before dinner, so we wore our travel home clothes (read jeans) to the final dinner. This was subtle protest of the really slow dinner service we had all week. Now these were nice new jeans, nothing to bad looking. Nobody noticed or cared. As I suspected, we hadn’t even ordered dessert yet when all the dining staff went into the final night singing, parading and speeches, so it was after 11 when we finally finished dessert. I don’t feel bad about wearing jeans for the first time in the MDR. (flame away) We ate so late we decided to skip the final breakfast. Our flight wasn’t till 2pm so we got the last possible departure time which was listed as 10:45.

We planned on meeting the next morning in the Crown and Anchor waiting area on deck 5 the MTD dining area. It was then I got a text (turned our phones back on when we arrived in San Juan. My friend Jon had gotten really sick right after dinner. He said he was violently ill with stabbing stomach pains. He texted us that Medical had given him a shot, which struck his sciatic nerve, and was told to stay in their room till someone came to escort them off the ship. I guess if you are going to get sick, it might as well be the last night. By the time he got up the next morning he was better but he said the shot made him tired. The fact that he slept most of the 6 hours back home attests to that.

We were first off the ship of our group and got in line at customs. They came out about 10 minutes after us. The line for people using porters was much shorter and the porters were soliciting people to use their services. We knew we our flight wasn’t till 2pm so I didn’t see the need to hurry things along. Customs took only about 20 minutes. 10 minutes later we met up with our traveling companions. We should have discussed this earlier, I was ready to get in a real cab and one of the tour companies grabbed my friends wife and offered a price that was a few bucks cheaper. I thought a fight was going to break out between the cabbie and the tour operator. It was settled when we saw the tour guide was going to shove us into an already full van in standing room only. I told him this was unacceptable for me because of my surgery. We got our bags back and headed to the cab no poorer and killed a couple of exta minutes 

Oh, I forgot to mention it was a very rainy day in San Juan. We were very lucky with the weather, but the port facilities are covered enough the heavy rain was no problem for us leaving. We arrived at the airport around 11am and this is where the review/report should wrap up. Over the years I’ve read about cruising out of San Juan I’ve read of problems of people getting into the wrong lines at the SJU airport and having to back to agricultural inspection. I don’t know how long this has been going on, but now its just another security stop on your way into the airport terminal. It was very easy and took just a few minutes. Killing 2 hours at the airport wasn’t too inconvenient. We had a very good lunch at a pub near our SW gate.

 

Summary – This cruise was very relaxing and we had plenty of good food and an overall good time despite my complaints about the dining and the one bad excursion. I kept reminding my self, “I’m not at work” My next cruise, booked on this one, is Freedom on the Western Caribbean. I don’t know when, but I will cruise the Southern Caribbean out of San Juan again. I don’t’ know when it will be, but Jewel is currently changing which ports it goes to so I know I have other ports we haven’t been to yet. Who knows what ships will be here after 2016, so I’ll keep my options open. Since 2006, it seems like this time of year Royal usually has 2 ships, one Voyager class, one Radiance class. I would welcome another cruise on either class again, or what ever Royal’s offerings are in the future. My up coming Freedom cruise will make me Diamond so it is also possible my next cruise out of San Juan will be on Celebrity. That will give me something to research in 2015. That’s pretty much it for my less than usual detailed review of Jewel. I have this thread subscribed, so I’ll check periodically to see if there are more replies. I very much enjoyed sharing with you, hearing from my new cruise friends, and those of you who have sailed this route/ship before.

Edited May 20, 2014 by BillOh

[AZ Karaoke Girl]

Jeans in the MDR on the final night is acceptable. The planner stated "Casual" vs the usual "smart casual" which means to me as long as you aren't coming in flip flops & tank tops, you are ok that final night due to everyone having to pack in advance. The same usually goes for the first night too since not everyone gets their luggage & unpacked in time for dinner. At least early seating.