Has anyone gone on a cruise or other types of vacations and chose it because they wanted to go to certain places on it even though they weren’t thrilled about the others. Then during their vacation they were disappointed in some of the places they wanted to see while loving some of the places they didn’t think they would like.
A few places that disappointed me were Acapulco, the French Riviera, and Jamaica
A few places that I liked more than I thought I would were Estonia, Ephesus, Icy Strait Point, and Warnemunde.
@mcarley - Are you doing a land and sea package or just the cruise potion. We did both. Our first cruise to Alaska was cruise only but we flew to Vancouver, Canada a few days before that cruise so we could get to see it. On our second cruise to Alaska we flew to Anchorage and took a land tour for a week before the cruise.
I’ve been on 5 cruises. One of the best places was a place we went on our own. The ship stopped in Tortola and we took a ferry to Jost van Dyke. For some reason the cruise line didn’t offer any excursions there, but they had a ton to Virgin Gorda. Jost was beautiful…and it was almost paradise my then wife and I had a beach to ourselves. Nobody else was there. Simply amazing.
I think the most enjoyable cruise I took was the Southern Caribbean . We left from San Juan and went to St Thomas, Antigua, St Marteen, St Lucia and Barbados. We cruised from Barbados back to San Juan and pretty much hugged the islands along the way - Montserrat, St Kitt’s and Nevis…it was really nice. I didn’t care much for St Lucia…we took a cab tour on our on and it was a bit frightening when the driver got into an argument with some guy in a small village and a lot of villagers approached the cab with pitchforks. Kind of left a bad taste in my mouth. One cool think about it though…there were all kinds of tours to the Pitons. When we left port, the captain stayed close to the island and took the ship past the Pitons. Then he used the side thrusters to turn the boat 360 degrees so that everybody could get a nice view. I think that’s as close as I want to get to there again though.
I took my daughter on one cruise to the southern Caribbean that left San Juan and went to St Kitts, St Thomas, Grenada, Bonaire and Aruba. Bonaire was stunning.
My ex mother in law took 18 of us on a cruise in 2003. That one left Tampa and stopped in Key West (very touristy), Grand Cayman (love that place) Costa Maya - not impressed at all, and Cozumel.
@kcflyer - There are a few places you mentioned that I have been to long before they were touristy and then decades later when they were.
In 1959 my friend’s family took a fifties road trip and invited me to go with them. On that trip we went to Key West for a day when it was very rural and had a lot of charm.
My husband and I took our first cruise during the middle seventies which was nine days long, round trip from NYC, and only went to two ports, St Thomas and St Maarten. We tendered at both ports because they didn’t have docks to accommodate cruise ships and we were the only ship at both islands while we were there. Shopping at that time was special because they had many relatively unique quality items that were not easily available in the United States and these local shops treated us like family.
That’s cool BM. On one of my cruises (Holland America) our dinner companions were Dutch. One gentlemen asked why everybody was excited about St Thomas. I said it was likely the jewelry since the prices were better. He shook his head and said they really weren’t that good, then he handed me his card - a diamond broker in Amsterdam. He told me to contact him if I ever wanted a diamond ring.
It’s been several years since I cruised, but I rather liked the “formal nights” on our cruises. A couple of times I rented a tux from the cruise line (it fit surprisingly well) for that night. They just seemed like a “date night” in the middle of a cruise. Towards the end (10 years ago) it seemed you saw a lot of shorts and sandals and ‘freestyle’ dining. I really enjoyed getting to know our table mates. I guess the only way to recapture that is to take one of those “high end” cruises… Sigh.
My brother and his wife are in Italy right now and have been going once or twice a year for almost 20 years. They did their own thing the first few times, then took a couple high end tours and found some great little places off the beaten path. They have used private tour guides that show them places nobody really knows about, then they’ll go back on their own.
Well, my mother in law passed away about 10 years ago. Despite being divorced from her daughter, the family asked me to do her eulogy, which i gladly agreed to do.
