St Maarten, St Kitts, Grand Turk and San Juan March 2018 carnival Ft Lauderdale

Hello All!

My husband and I are going on our second Carnival cruise (kid-free :)) in March 2018.

We are leaving out of Ft Lauderdale on the Carnival Conquest.

We are stopping in:

~St Maarten

~St Kitts

~San Juan

~Grand Turk

I wanted to see what suggestions anyone had for affordable things for us to do at each port. We are BEACH people! We want to go to the beach every stop if possible, which beaches should we go to? I do want to go on a tour maybe in San Juan. Should we book with carnival or just the locals? Any suggestions are well appreciated! Thank you!

St. Kitts - Carambola Beach club - $10/chair & $5 umbrella usually a $5-6 cab ride so $12 or so round trip

San Juan - just get off the ship and tour the forts and walk thru Old San Juan. $5 entrance fee will get you into both forts for the day.

St. Kitts: Reggae Bar area of Cockleshell Beach.

Welcome to Cruise Critic! :)

You would probably enjoy and get lots more helpful information by going to the Ports of Call section here on Cruise Critic and checking under each of your ports stops. ;)

Grand Turk beach is right off the ship. Umbrella are free the green one the first two rows 20 dollars. Margitaville with pool right behind. I am glad I bought my water shoes a lot of people will say you don't need them but there is a lot of coral in the water . Rent the raft for 10 dollars. A lot of people will tell you to walk to jacks about a 10 minute walk from pier. Someone else can tell you how to get there. I did not go since we found such good seats next to the pier. I did the same itenary you are doing this May and loved it . We did the tour of best 10 of Saint Kitts had such a good driver that made it so much fun.

This will take you to the ports of call board for each port you mentioned. You can get lots more information there.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=-1&f=587

Keith

Join your Roll Call here and find out what others on your cruise are doing. Often you can join them if they are doing something you'd like to do.

San Juan is the city and there are no beaches near by. But, you can take either or both of the two free local buses, and get on and off as much as you'd like. Do explore El Moro though ! You pass this fort as you come into and out of San Juan. This fort was built in the 1500's and is something to explore! Google it and you'll see but it is a long walk up to the fort.

There is Orient Beach in St. Maartin which is a nude beach, Moho Beach where the airplanes literally land right over your head. Google 'beaches in St. Maartin' to see other beaches.

In Grand Turk the beach is right there next to the pier. They also have a Flow Rider- surfing on land - which is fun to watch if you don't do it. This is between the beach and the big free form pool there. (The whole island of Grand Turk is only 7 miles long!)

In St. Kitts we did river tubing and had a lot of fun. Again, you can Google beaches there.

San Juan is a great city for walking about on your own - a unique place. Grand Turk has a beach right next to the pier - cheap umbrella rentals. St. Maarten has a number of beaches with facilities - a large one you can walk to,on your own, but the water quality can be iffy. I did not go to a beach at St. Kitts, but I'm sure there are a few.

We just did these exact same stops. We're tourist type people. When we go somewhere we like to tour and see where we are and learn about the places we're at.

In St. Maarten we went with Bernard's SXM Tours. AWESOME and highly recommended.

In St. Kitts we went with Pereira Tours. Liz was amazing and simply awesome.

In San Juan we went with Island Marketing for the island tour. It was realy nice, would do it again.

In Grand Turk we always rent a golf cart and ride around the island and spend the rest of the day at Jack's Shack on the beach.