<p>Our January cruise is also eastern carribean. We are at sea as many days as on land. My husband isn’t sure there will be enough to do, but I’m thinking there will be. We have books to read too.</p>
<p>Fabulous, Stradmom! Congrats on picking a cruise that had cabins left!</p>
<p>Will you be going to either St. Thomas, St. Maarten or St. Kitts?</p>
<p>St. Thomas is very hilly and if you take a taxi to the top, top it will take you to a famous Banana Daiquri bar…expensive tourist trap, but delicious! 
St. Thomas is where we bought jewelry.</p>
<p>St. Maarten was one of our most favorite islands. Lots to do, water is gorgeous. Orient Beach is clothing optional…just sayin’!</p>
<p>St. Kitts has the most unique batik place on their island called Caribelle Batik on some beautiful grounds and they make tons of batik items for sale…very reasonably priced…</p>
<p>Not sure if you’ll be as far as Aruba or Curacao, but those were two of our most favorite islands besides St. Maarten…HAVE FUN and report back to us! :)</p>
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<p>Would it be possible to have someone else in the family do the daily contacting while you’re gone? Between the cost, the poor use of your vacation time, the time zone differences, and the sometimes iffy access, it might be better to let them know ahead of time that you’ll be out of touch for a little while, but Susie and Bill will be checking in with them while you’re gone. And that you’ll have lots of stories and pictures for them when you come back.</p>
<p>This thread has gotten DH and I thinking about a cruise. I would go Eastern Caribbean this time and I am looking at Princess for beginning of March as they sail from Ft Lauderdale. My only concern is that return flights are pricey given spring breakers heading north. Two of the stops are St. Maarten and St. Thomas. Love St. Martin, the French side and have not been in more than 20 years, was more recently in St. Thomas. Also has a stop in Grand Turk and Princess Cay so a nice itinerary. Would mostly focus on relaxing, not worrying about finding the restaurant to go to dinner and making reservations for dinner, catching up on movies and reading… and walking on the deck at night to see stars. That was one thing that was lacking on the Alaska cruise… it was too cold at night to stroll around, even though on the last day the sun did not set until 11 PM. Although I am always prepared with books, both HAL and Princess had nice libraries to select from. In fact on the HAL cruise, the library was one of the highlights of that experience as it was spacious and had a really fine and extensive selection of books and new magazines. Plus they did set up a time for guests to self-organize Shabbat…so that was appreciated.</p>
<p>ccc: Both St Thomas and St Maarten are on the itinerary, but alas, no St Kitts, which I’ve wanted to visit for the longest time!</p>
<p>You may rest assured that my optional clothing will stay with me at all times.</p>
<p>I already have fluffy reads waiting for poolside. But how to survive a week without CC? ;)</p>
<p>RE: St. Martin and Orient Beach. We had no idea that it was clothing optional when we went there to relax with our kids until the man taking the money for beach chairs and umbrellas walked over with nothing but a black semi-see through scarf tied around his waist. He squatted down next to my lounge chair and I had a hard time knowing where to look. About 2 minutes later my youngest - 12 at the time - ran up to tell me that there were people snorkeling nude. She couldn’t believe that they weren’t embarrassed. But, we did notice that the beach seemed to be divided by a small wall with clothed bathers on one side and unclothed on the other. It was pretty funny watching my kids sneaking peaks. Beautiful beach and water, though.</p>
<p>Stradmom - Glad you booked your cruise. We loved Norwegian. </p>
<p>Your next step (if not already done) is to sign up for CruiseCritics website. Then join the “Roll Call” group specific to your tour/dates. You may even be able to join a group for shore excursion, cheaper than Norwegian. Also take a peek at reviews and prior Roll Call groups for your ship - it’s a great way to learn. Good luck!</p>
<p>Do we HAVE to do shore excursions? They seem excessively overpriced. Can’t we just walk around the island in the touristy areas? I know we will want to get off of the boat, but I don’t need a group excursion to do that.</p>
<p>you never have to do shore excursions. They can be overpriced and not much for your money. Yes, you can just go hang at a beach or walk around. check your ports on cruise critic as many times there are fabulous recommendations for things to do in port, not with the ship for much less money</p>
<p>thumper, my husband thought he would be bored and he was not AT ALL. In fact, my main complaint was that I didn’t spend ENOUGH time lounging by the pool. We liked our last cruise so much that while we were on ship, we signed up for another one. I am DETERMINED to sit more this time, but they make it hard because there are so many fun things to do.</p>
<p>We enjoyed the shore excursions - I agree about looking for online reviews. On Grand Turk, for example, we did power snorkeling that was a BLAST (I say that as a certified scuba diver, too). They give you little motorized units to hang on to - you could point them straight down and see many more fish on the reefs than you would when regular snorkeling. The other nice thing about this excursion was that we were driven to the opposite side of the island, and the driver gave us an interesting tour. We learned that there is NO water source on the island, so all their water has to be shipped in!</p>
<p>Everyone likes to do different things when they are in port for a day. </p>
<p>Anything you want to do can be either reserved ahead of time right at the specific website, or just done when you are there. If you read ahead of time of the various sights to see on each island, you can very easily walk over to a waiting taxi right outside the ship and they will take you wherever you want to go. The fees are much more reasonable and we’ve always had the taxi driver to ourselves for a few hours…he takes us all over the island and then drops us off at the shopping area or back at the ship or over to a beach for a few hours and then comes back to pick us up and bring us back to the ship…they are very aware as to when the ship leaves the port and get you back in plenty of time…</p>
<p>We have done excursions on occasion where the water activity or the excursion itself was real interesting and less of a hassle just to go through the cruise line…but more recently we’ve done so many things on our own with a little bit of advance planning.</p>
<p>No, you definitely don’t have to do ship’s excursions, but maybe just treat yourself to one fun one that sounds really cool! My kids did that on our last cruise…it was an island segway tour and they just loved that! Sorry we didn’t join them, maybe next time!</p>
<p>“Do we HAVE to do shore excursions?” - I don’t think so. It sounds like many Carribean ports are close the beaches/towns… walk or taxi works. (When we did our Western Med cruise, that was not the case). Or you can stay onboard and enjoy the ship activities.</p>
<p>Thumper, one of the nice things about cruising is that you can do whatever you want. There aren’t any forced group activities.There is a schedule of events all day long ranging from speakers to demonstrations to entertainment and movies and lectures and information about shopping… but you can do whatever you want. If you want to curl up in a chair with a book that is fine. If you want to spend your time in the casino, that’s fine. If you want to stay in a hot tub and the pool, that’s fine. No one cares what you do…the only thing to be aware of is if there is something you want to do what time it is scheduled for and when you have to leave your cozy chair to get there… these ships are huge!! There is also a lot of hokey stuff that seems particular to cruising. On our Alaska cruise on one of the dress nights, they took pictures of everyone pouring champagne out of bottles onto a pyramid of glasses. Whenever you disembarked at a port they take pictures of you with crew members dressed as lumberjacks,klondike miners, moose, bears, etc. </p>
<p>Also a lot of cruising is about blatantly selling you stuff…excursions, spa treatments, jewelry, but you can ignore all of that. You are a captive audience for them to make a profit. There was an interesting article last year in the NYTIMES travel magazine about the economics of cruising… the ship makes x number of dollars and it costs y to run… once they reach the break-even point…everything else is pure profit.</p>
<p>We only schedule shore excursions for things we are really interested in and I always do a lot of research. Most of the caribbean ports involve either walking to a beach or scenic area as well as shopping unless you are planning to do a water sports activity. Some do have historic sites-the historic synagogue in Curacao, for example.</p>
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<p>Thumper, you will be getting on the Enchantment the day we get off. Our first cruise. People keep asking me where we are going and I tell them “I really don’t know. It didn’t enter into the consideration.” This was the cruise we could get to when we could get to it that had a stateroom that could accommodate us, so I booked it.</p>
<p>We’ll have to compare notes afterwards.</p>
<p>A few shore excursions are worth it - but some are not. The memorable ones… Atlantis submarine ride out of St. Thomas USVI (school bus sized submarine ride for a couple hours)… The Yukon Railroad out of Skagway Alaska… Foodie runs in Grenada… Some excursions are grossly overpriced and some are ‘special interest’ only, i.e. do you really want to spend $200/person (or whatever) to see a whale?</p>
<p>But a lot can be done with a local cabbie or company or even mass transit. I’ve done all three. Also, the cruise companies have gotten pretty good in making sure you have few excursion options other than themselves for one reason or another (Bonaire rings a bell…).</p>
<p>Shopping depends a lot on what you’re after. We usually buy quality local art so we research way ahead of time and know exactly where to go. </p>
<p>Just some advise, buy a decent camera and figure the basics out before your trip. No fun coming back with an SD card full of blurs :)</p>
<p>There are great hints here. Thanks!</p>
<p>For anyone thinking of doing an Alaskan cruise, I will second the recommendation for the Skagway railway excursion. We did this in June and it was special although as we only did half-day we did not go all the way to the Yukon but from Skagway back into British Columbia. We booked with a local tour operator rather than the ship so took the railway up and a mini-van that stopped on the way down at the border crossing…so everyone could take pictures at the Welcome To Alaska sign. Also in Juneau, you can pick up local schoolbus near where the cruise ships dock and go to the truly amazing Mendenhall Glacier.</p>
<p>^^We rented a car in Skagway and drove out to Emerald Lake and back. That’s a ‘fun’ way to see the sights. We picked up the car around 9 AM and returned it before 3 after driving and stopping everywhere we wanted to. We also drove all “around” Skagway and out to the rivers end. It think the car cost arounod $80 plus 1/2 tank of gas that we used.</p>
<p>Can anyone recommend anything can’t miss in cozumel?</p>
<p>Sent from my DROID BIONIC using CC</p>
<p>We went to Cozumel on our first cruise 10 years ago. We just took a cab from the dock to a beach area. The beach was really nice, and there were some small shops and places to get something to eat and drink. We also walked around the port area which at the time if I recall was pretty run-down and consisted entirely of bars and jewelry/tourist shops. The thing about all these port stops is that by and large you have limited time so whatever you do is fine. There isn’t anything that is “must see” about any of these ports in the Caribbean and some places you will want to re-visit perhaps another time or a different vacation and others, you spent a few hours or a good part of a day and will never see again or care to. I am sure Cozumel has lovely resorts but after that one day, I would not go out of my way to go there again.</p>