Summit- 2/20/16- Review and monkeys, too.

[CHARLESV32]

Great Review!!

[OhioCruiseDog]

DH here once again, to provide the photo supplement for the review.

 

St. Lucia

 

Here, Bombi provides the details of raising bananas in our visit to the banana plantation:

 

 

 

An intriguing rock formation on the St. Lucia coast, dubbed "Stiletto Arch", for obvious reasons:

 

 

 

One of the resident goats that the guides tend to by providing banana peels from the plantation:

 

 

Dramatic view of the Petons:

 

The mud baths at the "drive-in volcano"

 

 

 

. . .and the waterfall that cleanses the mud.

 

[OhioCruiseDog]

St. Lucia (continued)

 

The pool area at the Sugar Beach Resort, situated between the Petons:

 

 

Another view of the resort, with one of the private Cabanas, the pool and beach just beyond. Bond . . . James Bond.

[

 

Finally, the dreaded St. Lucian Chicken. Who knew?

 

 

Antigua

 

The beautiful green waters of Antigua:

 

 

A graceful old church in town, now abandoned:

 

 

This little guy was guarding the gate to the church . . . in between naps:

 

[Jetlagged787]

We just booked the Cosol tour on St. Lucia. It seems we made a good choice. Thanks for a great review.

[Champagne Cruiser]

Reading along since it's always fun to read a review of the cruise we were on! We had a great time, too. We just loved Captain Alex. He was so much fun.

[silkismom]

Following along & enjoying.

[funkyfaces]

Thank you so much for your review and pictures! DH and I are doing this cruise in November and it will be our first time sailing with Celebrity.

[jimbri]

Great review and photos!

[OhioDogLover]

Thank you all for the kind words

 

CRUISE DAY 6- St. Maarten

 

Another beautiful Caribbean day greeted us in St. Maarten. This is one of my favorite Caribbean ports. There are a lot of things available to do, and we have tried a many of them. Snorkeling is a favored activity at St. Maarten, but I have been forbidden to ever try to do it again. Having tried three times, on three different kinds of boats with the same result - sea sickness, my family says, no more snorkeling in St. Maarten for you. DH has a picture of one attempt, which shows me getting sick over the side of the boat and one of my sisters in law standing nearby with a drink laughing. Why is she laughing? Because the snorkeling was my idea and I guaranteed that I would not get sick. I think it's funny, too. Now, anyway.

 

Another favored activity is Bernard's Tours. If you haven't done Bernard's Tour in St. Maarten, we strongly recommend it. It takes you all over, stops at the famed Orient Beach, the beach by the airport, etc. An entertaining day, all in all. We skipped that this time because there were about 5 ships in port and we were warned about the terrible traffic jam getting back to the port because of all the cruise ship passengers.

 

One of the things we had never done in St. Maarten was walk through the main shopping area. So we did that this time. This was a lot of fun. There are shops, restaurants, a casino or two, and beautiful beaches, all in the same place. It was walkable from the port, so we walked over and had a ball. Stops at a couple of local restaurants for more local beer sampling ensued, and a brief stop to check out one of the casinos were on the agenda. A walk along the beach front was very pleasant as well.

 

We did find one activity that DH and I have been wanting to try for some time, the America's Cup yacht racing. I think next time I will don sea bands and give it a try. They go fast and its a game. Should be fun, right? The lady at the facility told us that you must book through the cruise ship do the activity.

 

Evening on the ship was the usual wonderful Blu dinner and games. There was the yes/no show hosted by the hilarious Justin and won by one of our traveling companions. If you haven't seen this, it can be very funny. the contestant must go three minutes without asking a question or saying yes or no. Justin even pulled someone out of the audience who had not submitted an entry. Good time was had by all.

 

At 10:30 was one of the funniest activities yet - the Liar's Club. It is a three person panel of ship personnel who give fun definitions of obscure words. Really, it is 30 minute standup comedy performance. The audience votes on who is telling the truth. If it hadn't been at 10:30, I think attendance would have been better, but there was so much entertainment, I don't think they could squeeze it in any other time. Those that were there had a ball. The highlight of the activity was when Mark, the English activity coordinator, and, I think, Justin's boss, put on a pair of panty hose over his suit to illustrate a definition. Don't ask me what word he was defining, who cares, after all? It was more wonderful comedy.

 

A word about Mark here. He and Justin played off each other the entire cruise. If you like British humor, you love Mark. Although some people thought him a bit mean spirited, I like to think he was just being funny. The two of them worked very well together, and make a great team.

 

Next: St. Thomas and the end of a fabulous trip

[OhioDogLover]

CRUISE DAY 7 - St. Thomas

 

By this point in the cruise, we were dreading the end. St. Thomas is another great place to go to the beach, but as I have mentioned, we can't do that. While we enjoy Sunny Liston Tours (another great thing to do), we decided for some reason to skip it this time. We did some more walking around, shopped, hit Señor Frogs because, well, it was there. Unfortunately, Señor Frogs was dead while were there, so we didn't stay long. And, their wifi was down.

 

The Norwegian Gem was docked near us and we got a good look at her.

 

Back on ship, we played TV Themes trivia, another good time. By this time, we had a few teammates we had adopted - or they adopted us. Mark did this one, I think. Most of the the themes were from the 50s and 60s, so if you weren't older than dirt, or watch a lot of Nick at Nite, you were toast. We did find out from some very nice people from Denmark, that for many years, Denmark had only 1 television channel. I guess you have to read a book in Denmark!

 

At this point, a realization hit me - we had been on a Celebrity cruise for 7 days and I had not been to the martini bar. Now, we were on a Med cruise on the Equinox a year ago and experienced what must be the ULTIMATE MARTINI BAR EXPERIENCE. So, with great expectations, two of us headed to the Martini Bar. (Neither of our husbands drinks.) We ordered the smallest flight of martinis. The martinis were great. But, it just wasn't the show on Equinox. That's OK, although I confess I was a bit disappointed. Someone down the bar told me they had been there just about every day and were working on a 16(?) martini flight. Like I said, the martinis were good. Too good.

 

Dinner that night in Blu was sad, as it always is the last day of the cruise. The staff was getting ready for their vacations and dry dock, so they were as excited to be off as we were disappointed. Service was great as usual. We really appreciated the service throughout the cruise. Was it even better because they were going on vacation? I don't know, but thank you.

 

After dinner, I packed and DH and the other husband of our group did the Silver Screen Love Stories game. By this time, they said they had to break into two teams, and they had a marvelous time. Sending the husbands to do a love story movie trivia is not a recipe for success, but I did get the packing done and checked into our flights for the following day. Besides, the point is to have fun, isn't it? That they did.

 

Sadly, we missed the late night comedy. I think we just forgot about it, really. We did want to go, but that's ok, we had enough entertainment.

 

 

CRUISE DAY 8 - We have to go home

 

There is nothing so sad as getting off a cruise ship. Really. At least in the vacation context.

 

Having a 4:50 flight out of San Juan, not visited the rain forest, and having a lot of OBC resulted in our booking the post cruise excursion to the rainforest and airport. We went to the dining room, were called promptly, dropped off the luggage and got onto a bus. There were several busses for the excursion.

 

I will think four times before I book another post cruise ship excursion. This is the third one we have booked, and I can't say any of them were good. The first one, the bus caught on fire on the freeway in Florida. Yep. At least we weren't charged for that one. The second one was a tour of Houston which should have been interesting, but frankly, I don't need to see a tour of the hospitals of Houston. This one should have been good, but between the political rantings and lectures of our guide, incorrect facts (e.g. Koalas eat bamboo), laziness (other guides took their groups along the path in the rainforest; he gave us a tour of the parking lot, really), and fact that the air-conditioning only worked part of the time on the bus, I did not enjoy this one. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed seeing the rainforest, but the guide and the bus really ruined this one for me. Give me Bombi any day of the week!

 

The good part of the tour, we got to the airport very early. I had heard horror stories about San Juan Airport and they are true. Even though we had checked in already, it took forever to check our bags. DH and I were TSA prechecked, but our friends weren't, and they had to go through regular security. It took them at least 45 minutes to get through.

 

We were on Southwest, and looked for a restaurant in the terminal. There is a Margaritaville under construction and a Spanish restaurant in the terminal. I have low expectations of airport food. But, tapas, they can do tapas, can't they? The hostess was great and seated us promptly. From there, the experience degenerated into a Faulty Towers episode. I kept expecting John Cleese to step out and say, "just kidding", but no such luck. Our third waiter, I have no idea wha happened to the first two, darted (yes he was running) to our table, took the order of one of the four of us and darted off. After watching him take orders from other tables and enter everything into the computer, we waved him over and he said he didn't think the rest of us wanted to order anything.

 

I hope the Margaritaville is open when you go through San Juan airport or that they have found new service (and cooking staff). If not, I'm eating trail mix next time.

 

There are good and bad things about Southwest Airlines. One of the good things, in my opinion, is that they get you on and off quickly, they are generally about on time, and their flight attendants are fun. Also free luggage. True again. We got home on time.

 

OVERALL

 

This may have been the best cruise ever. (Yep, I tend to say that after almost every cruise, but this time it may be true.) The entertainment staff was very good. The house bands were very good and there was a variety of music. I have had issues with Celebrity entertainment in the past, but not this time. (I thought it could get boring.) If Celebrity's goal is to liven up the experience, they have succeeded. I didn't think it was too noisy, and my only complaint is that were too many fun options available. What a good problem to have. The passengers were there to have fun, too and that helped.

 

The cruise staff was terrific, there was never a problem getting a drink with the drinks package, drinks service was great in Blu, too.

 

We tried the buffet a couple of times for lunch and the last day for breakfast. It was fine, but I like Blu better, who wouldn't? The coffee up there was really quite good. Thank you for changing to good coffee.

 

Elite for the first time, we used the free laundry service. This is the first cruise I did not take laundry soap with me. (Generally, our bags are searched by TSA as they determine the makeup of the strange white powder in my suitcase.) Service was good and fast. No complaints there. The more we travel, the less we take with us. We may get bored wearing the same clothes, but they are clean.

 

Thank you for reading. Please let me know if you have questions that I can answer. I strongly recommend this cruise. I strongly recommend the Summit and its crew.

 

Ohiodoglover

[OhioCruiseDog]

DH here with some more photos to wrap up DW's review:

 

View back across the beach in St. Maarten, to four of the ships in port that day (from right to left, Regal Princess, RCL Freedom of the Seas, Holland America Nieuw Amsterdam, and our home, the Celebrity Summit

 

 

Typically irreverent establishment along the St. Maarten beach:

 

Tranquil harbor in St. Thomas:

 

 

Canopy of the rain forest in Puerto Rico

 

 

Puerto Rico rain forest waterfall:

 

 

And, as we wrap this up, a view of RCL's Freedom of the Seas sailing off into the sunset off St. Maarten

 

 

Cheers!!!!

[Jetlagged787]

Thanks for a great review and beautiful photos.

 

24 days and counting then we can experience it all for ourselves. :cool:

[beason641]

Loved the review!! Hoping to get in as much trivia as you did!!

[DrivesLikeMario]

Really enjoyed your review! It was interesting and entertaining! Welcome home. ;)

[KirkNC]

Thanks for your report.