shopping in Tortola?

[bulldogmom]

Hi everyone,

DH and I will be visiting Tortola for the very first time next February. I think by reading these boards the Baths on Virgin Gorda are the place to go and the ship offers an excursion that is 4 hours long to there, I haven't saw where anyone knows of any independent companies that do these tours (if anyone knows of one please chime in) so I think we will be doing that tour thru the ship.

My next question is, is there shopping in Tortola (for stuff like souveniers) near the cruise ship or does one have to go "downtown" for this?? On the description of the tour Celebrity says that you can either be dropped off back at the pier or downtown. I was wondering how far these two were apart.

Thanks

[Pyrate13]

From the pier to downtown in Road Town is about a 5 to 10 minute walk depending on your walking speed. Thers is shopping at both places, temporary booths near the ship and regular shops in the village.

[sunlover5]

Just got back from there on the Liberty. There were little stands under tents right near the ship. Good shopping. They don't hassle you at all. Loved this island, Brooke I see you were on the Destiny. How was it??? Doing it next Feb. and was curious. Thanks!

[bulldogmom]

Sunlover5,

I really enjoyed the Destiny. We usually go for the smaller, more intimate ships (if you want to call them that LOL) like the Paradise or Elation etc..... but wanted to do the Southern Caribbean itinerary that the Destiny offered. We had a balcony cabin on the Lido deck (the very front one, you could literally look off your balcony right into the bridge of the ship, it was neat) I wouldn't pay extra to have a balcony again though, especially with an itinerary that is as port intensive as the Southern Caribbean cruise that Carnival offers is. We just didn't use it that much. I'd rather take that money and spend it somewhere else (like the spa?!) Our room was spacious, the ship was clean and seemed to be well organized, there didn't seem to be tons of long lines onboard like you run into sometimes, I'm not sure if this is beause we ate at "off" times or what. We enjoyed our dining room experience and the food on the Lido deck and at other more casual offerings was good. Room service, as always was good.

Some things I didn't like about the ship: I didn't like the way it was laid out. It seemed like you did twice as much walking on this ship than on other ships I've been on, you have to take different elevators to get to different floors. They say you can go to deck 5 and get to anywhere on the ship but we found that this wasn't necessarily true, I mean you can get to everything but you may still have to take the stairs. We were on the top floor of the formal dining room and you either had to climb the slippery marble-type stairs (in heels no less LOL) or go a different way which meant getting on an elevator, going to a certain floor, walking to another elevator and going to the floor you need. I just didn't like the layout of the ship at all but everyone is different. I also didn't feel like we got the level of service that we get on the smaller ships, don't get me wrong, the service was good but it just wasn't the same. Our dining room service was slow on several nights which was odd because lots of people didn't eat in the dining room at night on this cruise, or if they did they had early seating because there were lots of empty tables all around us. Our wait staff only had our table of 4 and one other table of 4 to take care of. Our room steward was good but didn't include a lot of the "extras" that you look forward to if you cruise ( a towel critter every night etc...) All in all the staff seemed much more hurried on this boat. We could have just been on there on a bad week though, who knows. I just thought I'd share my experiences.