| We cruised on the Celebration in October 1987. At that time,
Celebration was Carnival's newest ship (set sail in 1987!).
I understand that an even newer/larger ship was being built
at that time. The ship was very large (the largest ship we
saw all week in the different ports). All our service was
excellent, as was the food.
The ports of call were San Juan PR (one night, didn't get to
see much of PR at all), St. Thomas (one FULL day/early evening
during which you can venture to/from St. John very easily), and
one FULL day in St. Martin.
On all the islands, we did not go with cruise-organized tours.
For San Juan, we just wandered around, went out to eat, and returned
to the ship. It's a shame you can't spend a day there, there are
some great day-long nature hikes.
In St. Thomas we took a taxi ($1 each) to the Bomba boat (I forget
how much that was; around $5 each) that leaves for St. John, rented
snorkel equip ($6 each) in St. John, took another taxi ($1) to Trunk
Bay and stayed there all day long, took a taxi back, went back to
St. Thomas late in the day for shopping. The cruise-organized snorkel
tour to Trunk Bay cost more, took 2 hours longer to get to the beach,
and only stayed for 2 hours.
In St. Martin, we asked our taxi ($1) driver to take us to rent
jeeps ($35/day seats 4). Then we went sight-seeing around the
whole island (climb to the top of the hill where the french fort
used to be--the views are incredible, what pictures we took!),
did some shopping below, found a remote hotel with a patio bar,
swam in their sparkling seaside pool during lunch, walked around
the shops in the dutch section, returned the jeeps and went back
to the ship.
When we go on our next cruise (Fall, 1990) I would like to take
the Celebration again. The people on board were a varied mix of
age groups with no predominance at all. It really was extremely
enjoyable. I'm glad it wasn't a stuffy extravaganza--why buy a
whole new wardrobe just to impress a bunch of strangers (Isn't a
vacation for relaxation?)
|