Friday, May 17 – Our last day, and it is a sea day, so we won’t be doing much. We did go to trivia and had one of our best scores – we got 15 out of 20 right. The winner had 19 out of 20, but we felt pretty good with our score.
We packed in the afternoon. Then we went to listen to the steel drum player in the atrium for our pre-dinner drink. He is very good, but it is a bit loud so we try to sit as far away as we can.
Same brothers at dinner – at least they didn’t desert us! After dinner we went to the production show, “Dreamscapes”. We always enjoy the music, dancing and acrobatic acts in the production shows. These on MSC did not have much of a story line, and we enjoy the ones with a storyline more. A few pictures from the production show. The big screens on the back of the stage, which are on all the cruise ships we’ve been on lately, really add to the ambiance.
We will be up early and do the express disembarkation, which means we will carry our own luggage. Then the 223 Mile, 3+ hour drive home From the Miami port. So this is my last post!
Wednesday Evening, May 15 and Thursday May 16:
Wednesday evening – Before dinner we went to “Times Square” which is a large open area where they have trivia. But we went to see a piano player and she won me over when her first song was a Beach Boys hit, Kokomo. She also played Billy Joel, Uptown Girl. We couldn’t stay too long as we went to dinner. After dinner we went to “Le Cabaret Rouge” which is a lounge on the back of the ship. It was Cabaret style. The first act was a violinist and he was excellent. We only heard two of his songs, “We are the Champions” and “Fiddler on the Rood”. Then we had a lady singer, and she was very good and entertaining. The next act was a juggler, and then another singer. So lots of short acts, but I thought it was entertaining.
We got back to our room and I killed a roach on the dresser. Yikes!
Thursday, May 16 – Our room steward has assured us he looked everywhere in our room and did not find any more roaches. Unfortunately, our room steward is on his first contract and his inexperience shows. He has left us without towels and one morning Dave had to go looking for him to get towels so we could shower. He has left us without a bathmat. He took the toilet paper off the roller and left it empty. Not that any of these things are major, but it is driving Dave nuts.
MSC is going paperless and it took us a day or two to find out how to download the daily activities. The bars and restaurants are paperless and we have to scan the QR code to get the menus. However, at our table, the brothers usually get a paper menu so we just use theirs. (We still have only 4 people at our table for 8 – apparently MSC cannot find anyone to sit with us 😂😂😂).
This morning we went to “Masterchef at Sea”. We thought it was interesting! First there was a 10 question trivia contest and everyone interested in competing turned in their scoresheets for the crew to grade (We did not want to participate, so we kept our scorecard). 6 of the top scorers were chosen at random to prepare a dish, working in pairs. It was a mystery box challenge, and the mystery box contained crepes, fruit, various sprinkles, chocolate sauce, etc. Two men from New York, who were together on the cruise, were randomly chosen as a team, and ended up winning. I’m not sure how long MSC will run this event, but two of all the winners at the end are flown to a Masterchef winners home for a meal, and also entered into a chance to appear on the TV show. So that was a fun event to watch.
We went to see the piano lady before dinner and listened to her with our pre- dinner cocktail.
After dinner we went back to the Le Cabaret Rouge lounge and it was the same entertainers but doing different sets…A black lady singer, a blond lady singer from the UK, the juggler and the violinist. The singers were backed up by an band this evening. We did not enjoy the violinist as much as last evening. Dave does not like the juggler, but I find his act entertaining. There was one additional vocalist, a black guy, Sterling, who was really good. He could really belt out the tunes, and he really put on the moves with his feet.
Wednesday, May 15 – We are in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. We are docked at Havensight with the Disney Wonder backed in right behind us and a Norwegian ship in back of Disney.
We are doing our own walking tour which I downloaded from the internet. Dave has mapped it out on a map, which I also downloaded, but his map and my walking tour are not always in sync.
We headed out of the port and it is a bit of a walk to our starting point, Kings Wharf. This is the site of the Virgin Islands legislature. The two-story structure was first built in 1824 as military barracks for the Danish police. The current building dates from 1874. It was in the ceremony on this site in 1917 that ownership of the Virgin Islands was officially transferred from the Danish West Indies to the US at what was then a hefty price of $25 million.
Practically directly across the street is a huge red building dating from 1680, Fort Christian. It was named after the Danish king Christian V. It is the oldest building in the entire US Virgin Islands. It was a fort, a residence, a prison with a downstairs dungeon, a police station, and a court until it was named a national historic landmark in 1977. Unfortunately, it has been closed since 2005 for renovations.
We walked a little further to emanation park. This is where a proclamation, African slaves and indentured European servants was read on July 3, 1848.
There is also a gazebo in this park where Lady Bird Johnson addressed the people of St. Thomas and June 2, 1965.
There is an area near here where many vendors are set up, and we parted with a few US Dollars to aid the local economy 😂.
The next stop is called Grand Galleria, but it is not much. It originally opened as a hotel in 1837 and finally closed in 1875.
Diagonally from the Grand Galleria is the Central Post Office.
What is important about the Post Office building is it contains two murals by Stephen Dohanos, who became famous as an artist for the Saturday evening post.
The islands oldest church building, built between 1780 and 1793, is the Frederik Lutheran Church. it was financed by a free black parishioner, Jean Reeneaus. It was gutted by fire in 1826 and damaged by a hurricane in 1870, but the structure remains solid. It was closed so we could not see inside.
At this point, the map and my walking tour did not quite agree. We continued walking toward the Seven Arches Museum which is a two centuries old Danish house completely restored and furnished with antiques. We saw a sign directing us, and we climbed a couple of flights of stairs, but didn’t find it. Then we noticed on my walking guide that it was open by appointment only ☹️.
Walking towards our next point of interest, we walked through the Franklin D. Roosevelt Park and saw Mama Hen and her chicks!
We walked on to the Government House which is the administrative headquarters for the US Virgin Islands. My walking guide said the first two floors were open and contained vintage West Indian furniture, but it was well guarded and although I peeked in, all I saw was a reception desk. But it was in a nice setting, so I took a couple of pictures.
To the side of the Government House was a nice set of stairs heading up, which we thought was the “99 Stairs”. After climbing about 15 or 20 steps, we decided it was not “the” stairs, so we turned around.
Next to the Government House, on the other side of the wrong stairs, was the Frederik Church Parsonage. This building dates from 1725 and is one of the oldest houses on the island.
We walked on to the 1829 Hotel which has different backgrounds based on what you read. It was designed in 1829 by one of the leading merchants and was formally known as Lavalette House. My walking guide says it is a good place to take a break, but it was undergoing renovations when we walked by and we did not see anything open.
Then we found the “99 Steps” which is actually 103, but I only counted 102! The staircase was erected in the early 1700’s.
At the top of the steps is the “Crown House” which was the home of von Scholten, the Danish ruler who issued the proclamation of emancipation in 1848. The house is currently boarded up and in a state of disrepair.
We did not proceed further up the hill, but that is where Blackbeard’s Castle is located. It has been closed for every visit of ours to St. Thomas, and it is still closed, so we did not go up.
We headed down another set of stairs and found St. Thomas Reformed Church, which was also closed. The building is from 1844, but it holds one of the oldest congregations in the Virgin Islands, established by Dutch traders around 1660.
At this point we headed down to Main Street which is the most famous shopping street. We were looking for someplace to sit down, rest and have a drink, but all we could see were jewelry stores! We walked a bit and finally spotted a little place in an alley with tables. So we got a drink, rested and cooled off before our walk back to the ship.
We lose our good internet connection when we leave port today at 5:00PM. But our last two days will be sea days, so not much excitement. My plan is to post the end of our trip after we get off the ship Saturday.
Tuesday, May 14 – we are in San Juan. Slow start this morning because of a rough night last night, but didn’t seem to matter as the ship was late in getting the ship ready to let passengers off. Besides having a rough night, I got halfway to the elevator and realized I forgot my chapstick – which I need in this hot weather! Had to go back to stateroom and get it. Back to the elevator, down to the deck where we were exiting the ship and realized I had on the wrong shoes! Dave waited for me while I went back to the stateroom to change shoes. We exited the ship and Dave realized he had forgotten his credit cards and money! So I waited in the terminal for Dave to go back to the stateroom, but when he got back, we were finally ready to go exploring. Whew!
We were walking along the waterfront….
Continuing our walk along the water, we saw the defensive city wall.
Then we came upon the Chapel of Christ the Savior which is a small chapel, but not open to visitors. It was built between 1753 and 1780. The legend is a young man went over the cliff at the end of a horse race. Supposedly the young man was saved, and the Secretary of the Government at the time ordered the construction of this chapel to honor the miracle. It was later discovered that the young man had died, but the chapel remains.
Then we walked to the San Juan Gate. This gate was San Juan’s formal or symbolic entrance where Spanish dignitaries entered San Juan. Then the dignitaries would walk up the street to the San Juan Cathedral to thank God for the safe voyage. Guards would secure this gate at night and if you were outside when the gates were closed, you would have to stay outside until morning when the gates would be reopened.
We walked up the street to the Cathedral of San Juan, like the dignitaries before us. It was built in 1511, and the remains of Juan Ponce de Leon are interred in this cathedral. We made the requested donation of $3 per person and were able to sit in a pew, under a fan, and rest for a few moments.
We did see where Juan Ponce de Leon is interred in the Cathedral.
Our next stop was what we thought was the Governors mansion, but we had misread the map and it was actually a casino, which we were not interested in seeing. I think it was closed anyway. We remembered passing a lot of guards earlier in our walk – that had to have been the Governors mansion. There were so many guards around that we weren’t going to get close, anyway.
Diagonally across the street from the casino is the Teatro Tapia, the oldest theater in San Juan, but it is closed, too, undergoing renovations.
In this same area is Plaza de Colon, with a statue of Christopher Columbus, which we have photographed on a previous visit, but here it is again.
At this point it is mid-afternoon and we have seen all the sights we had planned to see, except for what used to be Umbrella Street. But we will see that on the way back to the ship.
So it is time for lunch and we went to the Raices Restaurant for a Kan Kan pork chop. They are really huge, and Dave and I share one. We also got rice and beans and a side of mofango (a dish made from plantains). The Kan Kan pork chop was dry, which is not unusual for pork when I cook it (☹️) but it is a dish that’s representative of Puerto Rico, so we had to have it. We actually had it on our first visit to San Juan, but felt it was a little better at Raices. The mofango was definitely better, and our waiter brought us a sauce made from mayonnaise, ketchup and garlic, which was tasty on the pork and the mofango.
We had some great local beers, too: Dave had SJU which is a lager and I had an Ocean Amber which is a dark beer.
After lunch, we wanted to go somewhere different for dessert, so we went to Barrachina which claims to be the birthplace of the Pina Colada. It is also a restaurant, but we sat at the bar for our dessert drink. They were not exactly what we expected, but they were good! No complaints!
Leaving Barrachina, we are very close to Umbrella Street. No umbrellas anymore, but some kind of banners. We walked up and down the street and peeked into a couple of stores and restaurants, but just having finished our “dessert” we were not into shopping or more food or drinks.
We walked back to the ship and our “Steps” app showed we had walked over 12,000 steps – similar to our walk yesterday.
We had dinner with the two brothers, so just four of us at a table of 8. We’ve definitely scared off everyone else that’s tried to sit with us.
Still tired from my reaction to the muscles from dinner last night, we just went back to our stateroom after dinner.
Monday, May 13 – Today our port is Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic. We took our time getting off the ship. The port is a pain because instead of letting you walk directly into town, they make you walk by all kinds of shops. We finally walk by everything and head for the Puerto Plata cable car. Supposedly it is just over a 1 mile walk, but because of the port detour walking by all their shops, we are a little disoriented as to where to go. Dave has a great sense of our direction, and we have a map I downloaded, but the streets do not have names. We finally just turned on my phone, which usually is $10 per day when out of their service area, but I have some free travel days! That also let me post my blog for the last two days, so all is good! We had lots of offers from people to give us rides, two guys on motor bikes and one very persistent taxi driver, but we kept plugging along. When we got fairly close, it was all uphill ☹️. Fortunately, there was some shade, so we would stop and rest. Finally we made it, but decided to take a taxi back to town. It was $10 per person to take the cable car, and there are two cars that run up and back. We had to wait about 10 minutes, and then we went onto the boarding platform where we were entertained by a magician looking for tips until the cable car arrived.
They packed us into the cable car and up we went! The mountain is Isabel de Torres and it’s about 2,562 feet. There is a replica of the Rio de Janeiro statue, Christ the Redeemer, at the top.
There are some nice gardens and walking paths. Due to our walk from the cruise ship to the cable car, we took one of the shorter paths at the top. There were gardens, and the mountain was declared a Natural Monument due to the variety of flora and wildlife.
We had a nice walk, and when we returned to catch the cable car going down, we got water from a little refreshment stand. We had nice weather up there, but while we were waiting to go back down on the cable car, it seemed the clouds were rolling in. But they kept moving and it cleared up again. We agreed to take a taxi back down to Umbrella Street which is near the port and suppose to have lots of restaurants. So we got a taxi and he said it was going to be $25. CheapO me said no, that’s too much, and so the taxi driver asked what we’d pay and I said $15, and he said OK! While riding though, Dave said he was going to give him $20 because Dave is a nice guy, not cheap like me. He drops us off at Umbrella Street, and we are very disappoint with the restaurant and bar choices.
We really weren’t very hungry, but we were hot and thirsty. We decided to walk back through the shops on the port area because there were several places to get a beer and/or a bite to eat. So while we were walking, a lady at a little shop calls out “cold beer!” and we couldn’t refuse! We must of looked pretty hot and tired, and we were. They told us to try the local beer, Presidente, and the lady proprietor gave us two ice cold beers out of a cooler and the beers were ice cold! They tasted great!
Refreshed after our beers, we walked back to the ship.
When we opened the door to our stateroom, I had a towel animal and birthday card signed by the captain!
That was a nice touch from MSC. We showered and since we had not eaten lunch, about 4:30 we went up to the buffet and Dave got pizza and I got ice cream and cookies! Perfect lunch in my mind!
We rested and went to a bar for a pre-dinner drink until dinner time when we met our usual table mates, Ranger and BJ. The Hispanic couple truck driver and the two gay pals from Sarasota and Tampa failed to show up. I guess we are scaring them off! We have really been friendly and never said anything political, so not sure no one likes us unless it’s because we are more mature than they are.
So, this is when my birthday went south…I had muscles for an appetizer and Thai Chicken curry for my entree. Dave had shrimp cocktail and That Chicken curry. After dinner we planned to go to the show but decided to stop by the stateroom…..good plan because just as we got to the stateroom, my tummy told me there must have been something wrong with the muscles, and I was in bad shape until mid morning.
Sunday, May 12 – Today is Mother’s Day. There is a special Mothers Day Brunch, but we had our basic breakfast – French Toast for me and a Ham and Cheese omelet for Dave. Then we played some Trivia with a Mother’s Day theme. We checked out more of the ship, as it is a big ship. At the back there is a walkway bridge they call the “ Bridge of Sighs” which has nice views of the wake. It has been an amazing extremely smooth ride so far.
One unique feature is the elevators – I had read about these but never experienced them before. The elevator buttons are in the elevator lobby. You choose your floor, and a “voice” tells you which elevator, and the elevator button pad tells you how long before your elevator arrives. There are no buttons inside the elevator. While we are getting use to using them, the wait times indicated by the button pad does not seem very accurate. This ship, which holds 5,877 (😳) passengers has 18 elevators. It seems we spend a lot of time waiting for our elevator.
We tried to go another trivia in the afternoon, but it was standing room only, so we found some nice lounge chairs and sat instead.
Went to the Atrium to see the officers introduction and hear the Captains welcome.
Then dinner time. Interesting….the younger couple from Michigan have bailed from our table (I’m sure they did not enjoy sitting with old people!) and we have 4 new people! The brothers are still at our table and we are enjoying sitting with them. The new folks were two guys, I think they are a couple. One is from Sarasota and the other is from Tampa. And a couple from Miami. He is a long haul truck driver. The “new four” speak Spanish and conversed with each other. We will see who shows up tonight!
After dinner we went to the show in the theater- Premier. It had a little bit of a story line: A worker was looking at reels of old movies. Every time he picked up a reel, the performers would sing a song from an old movie – like West Side Story, Wizard of Oz, Dirty Dancing, etc.
After the show, we went back to our stateroom.
Saturday, May 11 – It was 227 miles an 4 hours from home to the Miami Cruise port. Hit some traffic and a few love bugs☹️. Bag drop, Parking, and embarkation was uneventful. We had a late embarkation time, so by the time we arrived most of the passengers were already onboard. Since this is the first time on MSC, we are confused with the ship layout. We are hungry and made it to the crowded buffet. Rather than scope out the place, we just grabbed burgers, which were surprisingly good! After we finished our burgers, Dave asked me if I was ready to go back to the car! That should make it obvious we are struggling a bit with the big ship.
We were able to switch from early dining at 5:15 pm to the later dining at 7:30 pm. There’s even a later dining – I think 9:30pm, but that is too late for us.
The room is small, but laid out ok for a 7-nighter. The closet would be too small for us for a longer cruise. But we saw people with lots of luggage, maybe they’re in suites. One thing we do is we always bring wire hangers from home. There’s never enough hangers provided, and they are usually big wooden hangers.
We met our room steward Windo (?) from Bali, and he brought our requested Kleenex and ice.
We were assigned a table of 8, but there were only 6 of us. Two brothers, one from Tennessee and one from Utah. They seem like a lot of fun. The other couple, much younger, from Michigan. They all ordered Salmon, which was a small entree. I ordered prime rib and it was huge!
We went to the production show. The theater is very modern with a huge screen along the back. They sang songs from the 70’s, so we recognized them. Acrobats performed, which I always enjoy. I liked the show. But Dave thought all the activity – singers, dancers, big screen and acrobats was just too much going on.
After the show we walked around but while there are lots of bars, we didn’t happen to find any with music we liked,so off to bed.
Tuesday, May 7, 2024
At the last minute, we decided to get away for my birthday week. We found a great deal on MSC, a cruiseline we have never been on. Their ships are much larger than what we’d prefer, but it was super cheap, so we will give it a try.
| Saturday, May 11 | Miami, FL | 5:00pm | |
| Sunday, May 12 | At Sea | ||
| Monday, May 13 | Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic | 8:00am | 5:00pm |
| Tuesday, May 14 | San Juan, Puerto Rico | 9:00am | 11:00pm |
| Wednesday, May 15 | St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands | 7:00am | 7:00pm |
| Thursday, May 16 | At Sea | ||
| Friday, May 17 | At Sea | ||
| Saturday, May 18 | Miami, FL | 7:00am | |
