| If you like the beach then at Grand Caymen just go to shore and take
a taxi to a hotel that allows access to beach. There are usually two
listed by ship. When we went it was like 2 bucks to take taxi, I think
per person. Hotel was Holiday Inn or similar, they will tell you.
The beach is the famous 7 mile beach, goes on forever, very beautiful
beach. If you take a tour you will pay more and not have much time
at the beach. Just depends on what you like. The hotel we went to
had the bar right at the beach and you could get lunch there also.
Dunns River falls is nice. Two things to know before going. When you
walk up the falls you will be escorted by a guide, they will expect a
tip which they deserve since it is a long walk. I only mention this
because in our case no one told us and we had to sramble to get cash
for the guy. Take your camera and
they will take your picture with it at various stages. You walk right
up the rocks which the water is flowing over so it is very slippery.
DO NOT bring flip flops or similar, they are dangerous on the rocks.
Barefoot is ok but slippery, your sneakers would get soaked, my
suggestion is buy those slipper like water shoes that go for about $10
that have treads on bottom and wear them. Since I've been to Dunn
Rivers falls and seen a little of what Ocho Rios has to offer, if
I returned there again on a cruise I would just sit back and relax
on the ship. No costs, no hassles with arrogant people, no drug
offers, no people deliberately giving you wrong directions. A friend of
my wife took one tour in Ocho Rios that included 3 stops for shopping,
at two of the 3 stops there were direct attempts to rob people in the
group, in one case the robber was shot on the spot by the police in
a crowd of tourists.
There are a lot on notes that refer to the ports you listed.
Harold
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| The work certainly piled up while we were gone and I'm still knee deep
in it, so this reply is going to be short until I have more time.
We had an excellent time, but we felt that the cruise line was good,
not exceptional. The ship itself is gorgeous, it's only 6 months old
and they keep it immaculate. The cabins are alot bigger than I thought
they would be, we had an outside on the Paris deck, and there was
plenty of closet space and the bathroom was big enough so that we could
both be in there at the same time.
The food was very good, although I thought the service was ok, we had
one busboy in the morning/lunch that just scowled all the time, one
morning he started to pour coffee in my cup and I quickly said no, I'd
like tea please, and I heard him mumbling under his breath in French.
Our evening busyboy and daily waiter were very nice and attentive,
though. We were at a table for 4 and lucked out that our table mates
were very nice.
Our biggest complaint was the excursions. We planned on them for
Cozumel (changed our minds on scuba diving after reading about Chichen
Itza) and Grand Cayman. In Cozumel we decided to do Chichen Itza by
plane, they fly you to CI and then bus you to the ruins, rather
expensive, $360/couple, but it sounded exciting and we figured we could
scuba dive another time. The cruise line had 2 groups set up and ours
was the second group, we were scheduled to meet @12:15 and the flight
was for 1pm. In the morning we got on the first tender to Cozumel to
get our shopping done. Rushed around and went back to the ship to drop
off our purchases, in all we had about 2 hours to shop. At 12:15 we
met with the other 28 people on our tour and were put into taxis to get
to the airport about 12:45. Got our boarding passes and proceeded to wait
at the gate for 1 1/2 hours before the cruise line decided to cancel
the tour. Seems like the airlines was being lazy about getting a plane
for us. People were livid! We got put back into taxis and dropped off
at the pier with a "Sorry it didn't work out". I guess that's what got
me the most upset. I understand how the cruise line is at the mercy of
the Mexican airline and also that they don't guarantee any excursion,
but their attitude was very non chalant and they offered no sympathy
that they had really put a crimp into everyone's day. At the very
least I would have expected them to offer a free bottle of wine in the
evening, just something. It seemed like the excursion office just
didn't have their act together and that they didn't follow through on
making sure their commitments with the contracted excursion suppliers
was solid. The tenders were running about every 1/2 hour so we didn't
even have time to go back to the ship, get our bathing suits and then
try to go snorkeling, instead we shopped more (we both vowed not to do
any shopping in the Grand Cayman the next day). Thoughts on Cozumel,
we thought it was ok, we'd probably like to go back and see Chichen
Itza and do some scuba diving, but we'd definitely forget the shopping.
The next day we had an excursion to go snorkeling at Stingray City in
the Grand Cayman. We meet in the Showroom with everyone else on an
excursion only to find that they are canceling all water excursions!
The cruise line felt that the water was too choppy where we were
docked (south side of island). Now feeling very jinxed we had no idea
of what we were going to do. Finally decided that we'd rent a jeep and
drive around the island, if we could find where to rent one (the cruise
people had no idea). Once we got off the tender we walked around a bit
and were really baffled that all the stores seemed to be closed. I
thought that maybe they were European in attitude about lunchtime and
closed for a while but reopened later in the day. We asked a crew
member about it and they said, "No, it's Good Friday. They are all
closed for it." I couldn't believe it! The cruise line knew that the
island would be pretty much shut down for the day and didn't readjust
the port itineraries to accomodate. You've never heard so many people
yelling. We weren't too concerned about not being about to shop as we
said absolutely no more after Cozumel, but a lot of people were really
unhappy. While we were hanging around deciding where we could rent a
jeep another couple said that the people that provide the snorkeling
tours for Stingray City were still going out there and that the waters
in the Northern part of the island were fine. In fact, they had told
the cruise line it was ok and they had been out there, but Costa
decided to cancel anyway, - ie, liability. We opted to go to Stingray
City and got to go for less money than the excursion was charging. We
took a Catamaran out there. It was gorgeous, the weather was
perfect and the water pristine. Stingray City was excellent, alot of
fun. Definitely a highlight of the vacation. We decided we really
wanted to go back to Grand Cayman for a vacation. It was so beautiful
and offered a lot of what we like to do.
By the way, our first stop was Ocho Rios. Jamaica is beautiful! We
definitely disliked the people hassle and I doubt we'd go back there.
Hmm, reading back through this note it sounds like we didn't have a
good time, but we really did. It was because we made it so, took us a
day or two to really relax, but once we did we had a great time. We
would really love to cruise again, maybe even take our daughter (there
were lots of families with little kids on board), but we would try the
Celebrity line. Heard lots of good things about them and it was the
one our travel agent really wanted us to go on.
Susan
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