Judy Best

Princess just started a new blog, Linked by Sea, sharing the stories of staff and guests who become friends after the cruise. After reading their first blog post, it reminded me of a friend we made on one of our first cruises, who we haven’t heard from in a long time.  Here’s our story.

On 9/1/2003, we were cruising aboard the Carnival Paradise.  We met two good friends on that cruise, Connie and Steve, who we’ve cruised with over and over with since then.  We had late dining in the Elation Dining Room, with server, Som, and his assistant server, Kat, both from Thailand.  We enjoyed getting to know them throughout the cruise, especially hearing about their mutual homeland of Thailand. Som had completed several contracts with Carnival, but this was Kat’s first contract.

We noticed a little chemistry, shy smiles and glances, between them, so when we had a few minutes alone with Som, we asked about it.  He said he was very interested in getting to know her better, but she was so new on the ship, he didn’t know if she had a boyfriend back home or if she’d even be interested in him.  So, next chance we were alone with Kat, we inquired about her relationship status.  She too was very interested in pursuing a relationship with Som.  Before our cruise was over, we gave Som the green light to pursue a relationship with Kat.  About a year later, we received an invitation to Som and Kat’s wedding in Thailand.  We love being part of love stories, and this young folks provided us with not only good service, but such a great memory!

Lee in Gijon, Spain

Many of you have shared your interest in a TransAtlantic cruise with me, but some of you have held back from booking one so far for various reasons. When Lee booked their second TransAtlantic cruise recently, I asked if he could share why they love these cruises with my guests.  Here’s my friend and guest blogger, Lee  Whitman, with his thought about TransAtlantic cruising:

Mike and I took our first cruise in 2005 and caught the bug…hard!  We’ve been on two dozen cruises now, and our friends seem to think that we’ve lost our minds. We even started our own cruise blog, Cruise Notebook, and it’s amazing to us that over 100,000 people have viewed our pictures.   We just love the fact that we pack once, visit many exotic places, have a variety of experiences onboard, and meet all kinds of people.

We have found that as our cruising experience has grown, the types of cruises we look for have changed.  At first, it seemed that we wanted to cruise as often as possible.  That meant shorter cruises and, invariably, Caribbean destinations.  After a while, we wanted longer cruises and new ports.  While it’s definitely a first world problem, we were getting tired of the same ports over and over, so we branched out and took a Mediterranean cruise.

Our sailing on Royal Caribbean’s Brilliance of the Seas from Barcelona to Venice and back was not only utterly fantastic but also utterly exhausting.  We came home needing a vacation from our vacation.  This made us wonder, is there a way to sail to Europe and not arrive home exhausted?  The solution, it seemed, was a TransAtlantic cruise.

A TA (Transatlantic) cruise seemed to be a sailing many experienced cruisers really loved, but we had always shied away from because we were afraid we’d get bored.  That’s a running joke in our house now because we were anything but bored!  Even though we’re very active people who want to try everything, we found lots of things to fill our days shipboard without arriving home pooped.  Many of our friends were horrified at the idea of being at sea that long “with nothing to do” but thatwas not our experience.  We participated in wine tastings, receptions, speaker series, afternoon teas, backstage tours, and all manner of diversions.  Also, we found that we enjoyed the evenings a lot more without thinking we had to get up early the next day.  A TA allowed us to see a few European ports (France and Spain, in our case) while having a long period of relaxation afterward.  Also, because we chose a westbound TA, we had six 25 hour days and arrived home with no jetlag.

Here are my tips for having a great TA cruise:

• Book early or book late.  Booking early will mean you get the room of your choice.  Those great cabins with extra space on their balconies go fast.
  

  Mike & Lee in Paris

  Repositioning cruises are really popular now, and they have their loyal fans who will grab the best cabins very early in the sales cycle.  On the other hand, if you have flexibility in your planning, we’ve seen TAs on large ships go for $599 per person, but those prices only arrive very close to the sail date (about six weeks beforehand) for a brief sale.

• Choose the ship, then the itinerary. A Caribbean or European itinerary might be chosen because of the ports, but it’s important to choose the ship well on a TA. After all, it will be your home for two weeks; you will want to choose a ship that offers all the comforts you think you will want.  We love Celebrity’s Solstice Class for this, especially the Aqua Class staterooms.  Even after 13 days, there were many areas of the ship we had hoped to spend time in that we hadn’t visited yet.  It had a Gelato bar, a Panini cafe, a coffee shop, a thermal relaxation room, and four specialty restaurants (including a private one where those booked in Aqua Class could dine every night, included in their cruise fare).
• Spend a few days in your embarkation city.  You’ll get over the jetlag and have a more in-depth experience of one of the ports.

We met Lee and Mike at a dinner before we all boarded the pre-inaugural cruise of Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas.   We became fast friends, sharing our love of good food, fine wine, and fun travels, especially cruising, so I encourage you to visit their cruise blog, Cruise Notebook.  Thanks, Lee, and if any of you are ready to book your next vacation, give me a call!

I just spent a few minutes sending some recommendations for excursions for these ports to a guest, stirring up some wonderful memories, so I decided to share it with you as well.

Mountaintop View

St. Thomas:  I always recommend that first time cruisers really do the island.  Shopping in town, island tour, beach time.  You’ll get the works with Sunny Liston Tours.  He picks you up at the ship, takes you into town for shopping. You can leave your beach bags with towels in the truck while you shop. He picks you up for shopping, takes you on a tour of the island with a stop at Mountaintop View, where you’ll have great photo ops, but more importantly the world famous Banana Daiquiris.  From there, you stop at one  of the beaches. I recommend either Magen’s Bay or Sapphire Beach.  Coki Beach is another choice, but less nice than the other two.  You can leave your shopping bags in the truck while you’re
at the beach.  Picks you up to return you to the beach.  Just $40 per person.  Next visit, or this time if that doesn’t interest you, I’d suggest a private day on the water for six with Captain Bobby on the Rumbaba.  Best day we ever had in St. Thomas was with Captain Bobby, but there’s no time to do these other things plus his excursion.

Lord Sheffield

 St. Maarten:  St. Maarten is a half French, half Dutch island, where clothing is optional almost everywhere.  You’ll get great deals on shopping in St. Thomas, but you’ll find very exclusive shopping in St. Maarten for much higher prices.  Another one of the world’s most beautiful beaches is here, Orient Beach.  When the taxi driver dropped us off here, she said, turn right for the nude beach, and turn left for the clothing optional beach.  We turned left!  Lots of really great restaurants on this beach, where you can have a great meal, plus rent beach chairs and umbrellas for the day.  But, you’ll see topless tourists and totally nude locals walking on this beach, so it’s not necessarily family friendly.  (But, oh, such a beautiful beach!)  I couldn’t find any pics online without nude people in them, so here’s a pic we snapped on our only visit there.  We’ve been back several times since then, and we always spend the day on a boat in the water.  Twice we sailed with Lord Sheffield Tall Ship Adventures. The second time with them, our group chartered the boat to celebrate my 50th birthday in St. Maarten. The last time, we had a really large group, so we chartered two catamarans that sailed in tandem for the day.  Any of the catamaran excursions or Lord Sheffield would be a great day in St. Maarten.  In case that’s not what you’re interested in, Joyce Prince gives a wonderful tour of the island.  We’ve never toured with her, but I’ve recommended her to several clients who absolutely loved her personal tour.  Some people like to spend the day at a beach by the airport, where the planes fly really low over the beach.  Interesting to see, but not for me!

Barbados:  We’ve visited Barbados twice, and this is absolutely one of our favorite places in the Caribbean.  The first time we took an island tour, then had them drop us off at Boatyard Beach.  The island tour here was really boring, and we wished that we had gone straight to this  fabulous beach.  Our ship didn’t sail that day until really late, so we stayed on the beach until the sunset (be-U-tiful!).  During that time, we asked several locals where the best meal was on the beach, and they all pointed to a small place just up the beach called Lobster Alive.  This place had a water hose to wash your feet off as you entered, and a large tank of Caribbean lobsters ready to grill for your meal.  A wonderful meal right on the beach, and the best Rum Punches we’ve had anywhere.  My husband tried to replicate them after our visit there, but it was never as good.  On our next visit, we rented a taxi for the day to be taken to the Crane Resort on the other side of the island, to see the resort and the world famous  Crane Beach.  Breathtakingly beautiful!  But, it was a really long taxi ride there and back … like over an hour each way.  Worth it as a travel agent, but I’d recommend my guests just book a trip back to Barbados to stay there to see it!  We ended that day back on Boatyard Beach and at Lobster Alive.  When we walked back in Lobster Alive, we warmly greeted our server from our previous visit.  She warmly welcomed us back.  We were said, you don’t remember us!  She said, I sure do, let me show you why.  She went back in the kitchen and came back out with a computer printout from my online review from our previous visit.  I had included a picture of their menu and a fabulous review.  She said their owner attributed my review with increasing their business the next year.  Sure enough, she called him, and the owner came in to meet us.  When Roger told him about trying to replicate his rum punches, the owner gave him the recipe, plus the secret ingredient we had missed.  If you come visit us in downtown Little Rock sometime, Roger will whip you up some Lobster Alive Rum Punches. (The prices on this menu are in Bajan dollars, which are 50 cents to our dollar, so our US price is half these amounts!)

You gotta love a good story!  Sarabeth and I both live in Little Rock, but we met online through some form of social media, then in person at one of the many social networking events held in Little Rock.  (I think that’s true, but I meet so many people in so many different places, it may not be true.)  Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to help Sarabeth and her friends plan a few vacations, because that’s what I do.  When Sarabeth returned from her recent trip to celebrate her hubby’s 40th birthday, she had quite a story, and I knew you’d enjoy reading it as much as I did.  So, here it is in four parts; for best enjoyment, start with part one.  As you’re enjoying her engaging story, take time to check out the beautiful pictures from Jamaica in each part.  It’s worth reading all four parts.  And, you may want to follow Sarabeth

Jamaica is a beautiful island, but the locals believe all Americans exiting cruise ships are rich, and their greatest goal is to separate every guest from all their riches.  I always recommend you have a plan when visiting Jamaica, so you can safely enjoy this beautiful island.

Americans can still take a cruise that sails roundtrip from a US port without a passport, with just their photo ID driver’s license and birth certificate.  A passport is still the easiest and safest way to travel.  But, bring your driver’s license along, too, in cases you need it to get a day pass in Jamaica!