As I mentioned earlier, this part of my blog will be a little about the western Caribbean islands that we visited on our 7-night cruise. We visited three ports of call in our cruise:
- Labadee resort in Haiti - This is Royal Caribbean's own private resort near the beach. This resort is owned and operated by Royal Caribbean. But of course, to see the REAL Haiti you would have to go beyond the resort limits and spend your own money for transportation and all. The Labadee resort is also the place where Royal Caribbean arranges a big get together for its employees once a year. There was lots of swimming and shopping for souvenirs here. Also they had a grill with lots of food. And people who did not like eating anything served in the grill restaurant, they could go back to the ship and eat and one of the restaurants on board.
- Falmouth, Jamaica - This was our next stop. Falmouth is the chief town and capital of the Trelawny parish in Jamaica. In Falmouth, you start out at the dock with a compound having duty-free shops for jewellery and precious stones etc. with some restaurants. There are a lot of shore excursions here like the 1700's great house and plantation tour, Chukka zipline canopy with Dunn river falls, Dolphin touch experience etc. Also there are trolley tours of the real Falmouth, outside the dock compound. Since our DS was back at the ship, in adventure ocean and we wanted to have a family lunch, we chose only the trolley tour excursion. But it was a very informative and interesting sight-seeing excursion which we loved. We had a wonderful tour guide who witty, engaging and also was a font of information on Falmouth and Jamaica. Though there was a lot of info that we saw and heard about Falmouth, one thing that made an impact on us was this painting on the right, that we saw in the St. Peter's church. This painting was painted by the painter William Zidnic in 1966. It is the image of Christ when you look from far, but upclose you will see faces of prominent leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and some other common faces of people. This painting was a wonderful reminder of the truth - though we all are different in different ways, all of us a one with God!
- Cozumel, Mexico - This was our last port of call on sea before we headed back to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. In Cozumel too there were a lot of shore excursions like Tulum Mayan ruins express, Whale shark encounter and snorkel etc. And only in Cozumel, once we get get down, we directly go into the city and use cabs and other public transportation to explore the city ourselves. Of all this, we only visited the Forum shops, a hub of duty-free shopping and were back at the ship. This day too, our son chose to be at the adventure ocean for kids on the ship, so we had to hurry back. But what of Cozumel we saw, we really enjoyed it and it was beautiful.
- Everglades, Ft. Lauderdale - Technically, though this was a place we went after we disembarked from the cruise ship, I thought I should talk about this place. We went to Everglades for the famed "Airboat ride" through the swamps of the River of grass tropical wetlands, along with that we got a chance to enjoy a free show of one of the "Gator boys" with their alligators.The airboat ride was beautiful!.. here are some pictures from this excursion:
Now coming to the cruise lingo that I promised:
- The transportation that you are on in a cruise is always called a "Ship", not a "boat" - I remeber a joke by our cruise captain - "A ship has a captain behind the wheel and a boat has an angry husband!!"
- Staterooms - the rooms in a ship.
- Deck - floors inside a ship. Fun fact - a cruise ship does not have a 13th floor to avoid bad luck.
- Bow - front of a ship
- Stern - back of a ship
- Port - left side of the ship when facing forward (the bow)
- Starboard - right side of the ship when facing forward
Also here are some fun facts about the Allure of the seas:
Ship Statistics
225,000 gross tons 30 feet draft
1,187 feet long 208 feet wide
46 wheelchair accessible staterooms 22 knots cruising speed
5,400 guests (double occupancy) 6,296 guests
24 guest elevators 2,180 crew
16 passenger decks
Staterooms
Total: 2,704 Outside: 254
683 Staterooms with additional berths Inside: 496
Balcony: 1,956
Finally, here is one photo which I don't want to miss sharing with you all. This picture is of the Allure of the seas and the Navigator of the seas, another ship of the Royal Caribbean docked side by side:
With this, let me say good bye and thanks for reading my blog.
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