Eastern Caribbean Cruise: Our 33rd Anniversary Adventure

Doug and I just celebrated our 33rd Anniversary!! We decided to take a cruise with our good friends Greg and Lucie. We didn’t really plan the cruise around our anniversary. It just happened to be our anniversary on the day we sailed out. When we were searching for cruises, it helped us pick this one. We decided on an Eastern Caribbean Cruise out of Miami with stops to St. Thomas, St. Maarten, San Juan, and Amber Cove. Cruising in August is a little bit of a gamble because it is Hurricane season. We had some rain and it was super humid. It was like the worst its ever been. We had a few hiccups with our excursions too. We also had issues with our onboard communication system. These issues left us frustrated, sometimes lost, and not being able to communicate with each other. But with all that being said, we still had a total blast!!!

Our first two days were sea days. We just chilled and hung out, getting to know our ship. We ate and relaxed in the sun. We also went to different shows and watched live music. One of our favorite spots ended up being at the Red Frog Pub. They had a shuffle board game there. We spent a lot of time playing it. We had no idea if we were even playing right, we just sort of made up our own rules. I loved kicking everyone’s butt… LOL Man i wish that was true, but i sure tried!

St.Thomas

Our first stop was in St.Thomas. We decided to rent a golf cart on Water Island and check things out there. It was a much smaller island than we thought. Our drive around it was pretty short. We saw Fort Segarra and some of the underground rooms. We explored that a little bit and enjoyed the views. Then we ended up at the most beautiful beach, Honeymoon Beach.

This beach was pretty much empty because it is hurricane season. In fact, the only other people on the beach were our cruise ship entertainers! LOL we met them all on the Ferry over. That was pretty cool. We met Kenny J who was a guitar soloist and we really enjoyed watching him the rest of the cruise. He would give Doug a shout out every time he saw us in the audience that was super fun.

If I were to do this stop again, I would forgo the golf cart. I would just head over to Honeymoon beach. You can walk there from the Ferry and it was beautiful!

St. Maarten

Our next stop was in St. Maarten. We had booked an excursion online to do a Reggae Beach Break. It was pouring rain. The place they took us to had their power shut down the night before. There literally was nothing for us to do but sit under our umbrellas in the rain. We stayed maybe 25/30 minutes then asked to be taken back to port.

That was a huge bummer. But we decided to take a taxi out to the famous Princess Julianna Airport. Man was it crowded, apparently everyone else had the same idea too! While it was pretty cool to see. It’s kind of a one and done kind of deal. I’m glad to say I’ve seen it. I don’t ever need to go see that again! We watched the planes for an hour or so. Then we ate at the little restaurant there. After that, we headed back to port.