Victory Review 2/21....w/PICS

[PreciousCruiser]

Thanks for posting your review. Great one so far with great pics. Going on the same cruise in April and can't wait! Also can't wait to see more of your review........

[sailorwife]

doing great Mike I am enjoying it,

Joan:)

[travelgyalrox]

didnt you fall over when he hit you? oh dear! :P well your review is going well thanks for it!!!!

[CruizinMom2c]

I am loving the review and pics..and you aren't even on the ship yet...I cant wait for more :)

[newt98]

Thanks for posting your review. Great one so far with great pics. Going on the same cruise in April and can't wait! Also can't wait to see more of your review........

 

doing great Mike I am enjoying it,

Joan:)

 

I am loving the review and pics..and you aren't even on the ship yet...I cant wait for more :)

 

 

thank you. hi joan

[newt98]

didnt you fall over when he hit you? oh dear! :P well your review is going well thanks for it!!!!

 

no, because there was that barricade there, and it took alot of the impact. i am sure somebody got a good photo because there were alot of people there taking pics.:o

[Momto2PrncChrmgs]

Great review!! Waiting for more...:D

[Haysiedaze]

lunch, and first beer of the trip

 

If we had met up sooner I could have paid for this beer too!!

[newt98]

If we had met up sooner I could have paid for this beer too!!

 

 

there's always next time steve.;)

[fern1226]

great review and awesome pics. we will be going to san juan for the first time next year. wasn't too excited about it until i started reading reviews and seeing pics. loved the victory.

[newt98]

DAY 2 IN SAN JUAN

 

well we get up the next day kind of hungry. we decide to look at the menu at the hilton to see if we wanted to eat there. after seeing $28 for a 2 egg breakfast, we decided to head to town. we ended up going into this place that was a little fancier then the previous days breakfast. in fact the previous day we had gone by this place and it looked like a bunch of "wise guys" were running the place. so we tried it out and it was good, nothing to get too excited about.

 

after that we headed to the fort, meanwhile trying to spot our taxi driver from the night before that has our camera.

 

inside el morro fort

 

more fort

 

 

 

the tour guides assistant again, sitting down on the job!

[newt98]

looking at the atlantic from the fort.

 

looking up the coast to san cristobal fort.

 

flags at el morro.

 

a view from the fort with a rcl ship, and a celebrity ship in the background.

 

i don't know what these were used for?

[gaylensgigi]

What a great review, and we are till in San Juan.Was going to do this very itin this spring,but life got in the way....Im really looking forward to your pictures.Thanks:D

[newt98]

after the fort we went and had lunch at another outdoor cafe just a few doors down from the place we ate at yesterday. the food was good, and the service was better.

 

the group on the right were headed for the rcl ship the next day.

 

that's the storefront of the place we ate.

 

the parrott club. we met our friends from the roll call from our last cruise here at the parrott club for dinner after we disembarked on sunday night. it is a good place to meet with friends, we all had a great time. i think we met for dinner about 7:30, and i believe we left around 10:30.

 

mmmmm, sea kitten.

[newt98]

so that's it for the sj pics. actually there's one more. remember the story of my wife losing her camera in a cab? well we're headed back to get a cab to go to our room, and i'm looking at the drivers that are waiting for pax, and i'm like, "i think that's our driver from last night". but i'm not that sure, so we are on the other side of the street trying to get a closer look. then the kid jumps from the wall and starts booking it as fast as he can away from us. well not really. actually he jumps off the wall and starts walking towards us waving us down.

 

he comes jogging across the street and says " hey i have your camera". my wife broke into tears. she was so happy to get her camera back. i gave the guy $40, and he gave us a ride back to the hilton. he also gave us his phone number in case we needed another ride. we did end up using him the next morning to get to the ship, and of course he got a generous tip at the ship, and also when he took us back to the hotel.

 

this is lenin, i have his number if anybody wants to use a good kid to taxi them around when they are down there.

[WishIwasOutThereNOW]

.

 

 

i don't know what these were used for?

 

those are cisterns, used for catching drinking water.

[newt98]

i skipped one thing though, before we got our taxi, the dw wanted to walk over to the govt building that we had passed by in the cab the previous day. well i wasn't too fond of the idea because it's about a mile from the "tourist/shopping" area, and i had seen the razor wire on the buildings the day before. it was not necessarily a bad looking area, i just didnt feel that adventurous that day. usually i'm up for making a stupid decision, but this one wasn't mine.

 

so we are not even one full block out of the shopping area, and this guy walks up to us. i would say he looks like he is from the states, and probably not a local, he was dressed in jeans and a button up shirt, he had on average shoes, and his clothes were clean, all seemed normal. he asks us if we speak english and gives the perception that he is not from there. well he goes into this story about how him and his dad were on a cruise ship and came into town and went down the wrong street and got jumped and beaten and so on. he says his dad is at the hospital, and he needs $8 to get a cab to the hospital. he also gives us his name JOHN RIPKA and the policemans name that took the report ans says to go check, the station is just around the corner.

 

well i'm listening, and he does have marks on his face as if something had happened to him. so i'm like "sure i'll spot you ten". and i turn to the dw, and she is not even flinching. i'm waiting for her to get a ten out, and she is just looking at me like "not a chance in hell i'm pulling money out for this guy". now i'm thinking, what if this guy is telling the truth, and i won't even help him? but the dw wont budge. so after just staring at each other for what seemed like three hours, i finally say, ok, we'll just go check the story real quick. well then he starts getting all nervous, and starts asking if we'll actually come back, and he doesn't have much time. we ask where the station is, and he just says, "i'll just ask someone else".

 

so we head back to the fountain and wait to see if he comes around. well he does, and immediately asks another couple for the money. not a big deal, maybe this story is true. well this other couple walks him over to the store where it appears they got change, and we saw them hand him some cash, i don't know how much. but at this point we have turned into private eyes. so we keep watching him from a distance, and sure enough he goes around the corner and approaches another couple. at this point we just left. but looking back, i wish i had gone over there and called him out, but what would that really have done, not much, he would just be on to the next couple as soon as we were gone.

[newt98]

those are cisterns, used for catching drinking water.

 

thanks, i thought they had something to do with water, they looked like a well.

[newt98]

i'm going to jump ahead for a post. we got back from the cruise into san juan and were walking around town again when who do you think i see? JOHN RIPKA. there he was, walking around in the same outfit as last saturday, up to the same tricks.

 

so i decide i'm going to follow him and get some pics of him, and blow his cover right in the middle of one of his stories. so we start following him, and then all of a sudden, he takes a hard left and starts coming straight towards me and the DW. i tried not looking at him, but i could feel him coming closer to us like we were going to be his next $8 dollar victim, then all of a sudden he veers away from us and heads down the street. i believe he reconized my wife. so we still wanted to follow, just a little further back. well he goes into a store, and comes out with a soda and some chips, probably paid for by the last cruiser he lied to. then he heads down the street, and goes into a parking garage. at this point the dw and make a wise decision not to follow mr ripka into the parking garage, and we never see him again. i don't know if he knew we were following or not, but we like to think he did, feels more burne supremacy that way.

 

so, the local cab driver is the upstanding citizen in puerto rico, and the white guy from the states is the one ripping evrybody off. makes me think a bit.

 

there's mr ripka himself in the yellow shirt, that's how far back we stayed.

 

another shot of him heading to get his pepsi and chips.

[newt98]

EMBARKATION DAY

 

the plan today is to get to the port by noon. so we get up and pack our stuff back into our suitcases, then call lenin, our taxi. he shows up and gets us to the port by around 11:30. we give our bags to the porters, and head through all the checkpoints. the lines were not long at all to get to the carnival check-in. when we get in line to get our s&s card, our friends from the triumph cruise are already there and come over to say hi. that was joan and ken, along with mark and heidi, all from canada. we have another couple coming on the ship from that cruise also, sue and inder from Vancouver , B.C. getting the S&S card was quick and easy.

 

once you get your S&S you go to the waiting area, but they were already boarding, so we got in line for the ship. the line passes right by the liquor store, and the bathrooms. we each had one carry on, and the dw had about three water bottles. they werent checked for anything like some have said, but they were just water, so i didnt even think about it. we werent in line for more than 10-12 minutes. just past the x-ray there is a liquor check point where they put an orange tie band around your carry-on if you have liquor. then you walk a gangway for a ways before you get to the point where they actually take the liquor from you. it is a long walk from the tagging desk to the liquor confiscation table. i should have gotten some pics. oh well.

 

finally, we're at the ship!

 

these things are just so massive, it still amazes me.

 

kind of deserted here on the ship

 

ok, so i'm not the first one on the boat

 

nobody even at the bar yet.

[KroozFoolz]

I am enjoying your cruise report and pictures.

 

From the San Juan board, re your scam artist:

Found on the Cruise Junkie website, in the "Events at Sea 2010" section.

 

Since this website usually reports factual information, I thought I would share this with you.

 

 

From a reader: I have been a travel agent for 24 years and have cruised dozens of times. It seems that our Caribbean ports of call are getting more and more dangerous. When our ship (Holland America's Eurodam) was docked in San Juan last week (Feb 23, 2010) my daughter and I ran into an American man who was badly beaten, bloody-faced and in shock. He told us that he and his 73-yr-old father had taken a tour to the Old San Juan Fort and had wandered into the adjacent neighborhood. They were jumped by a group of men who punched his father in the face, stole their wallets and beat them repeatedly. It was a desperate situation, being badly hurt with no identification or money, and no one who spoke English. His father had to be hospitalized, and he says the San Juan police were of no help. UPDATE: Two readers have responded to this posting and warned that the man is a scam artist. One reader says: This guy has been approaching cruise passengers for years. He catches two people alone near the port and tells a well rehearsed story about wondering in the wrong neighborhood and getting mugged. He reports that his father is in the hospital. Isn’t it funny that his father is in the hospital but he still has blood on his face? When asked about going to the police, he says that he did and they are of no help. Another writes: We encountered the EXACT same man with the EXACT same story when we were in San Juan in November. He only wanted $12 for a taxi to the hospital to get his father. We of course felt bad and gave him more. He is dressed in a suit and speaks English without an accent. His story sounds believable. The next day we told the story to our taxi driver. He told us that the man is out all the time asking for money. He has a skin condition that makes him look like he was beat up. It's just a scam to make money. Advice: One needs to be senstive to the risk of street crime, but also aware of the scams played on cruise passengers.

 

and other thread there:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1079834

[newt98]

we get on the ship and head up to lido. we can't get into our room until 2:30, so we just go and hang out. i go straight to the deli, i always do, and get a reuben, the wife gets a caeser salad from the pizza station. she loves the caesar salad for some reason, don't ask me why. i don't even think i checked out the buffet. we ate there for breakfast each morning, but we never really ate there any other time. we could come back from port around 4 or 5, and it was always closed down, no desserts or nothing, so i couldn't even pick at it, kind of sucked. the only thing you could really get when you came back from port was pizza, sandwich, or burger grille.

 

this gets me to some of my other issues on the ship. any cruise is a great cruise, but there were a few things that irked me a bit. first, at tritons pool, the main pool, there is a bar on each side of it. the bar on the non-smoking side was only open one time that i saw. every time i got a drink, i had to go to the smoking bar, which, to me, i would rather not do. every cruise i have been on i use the triton pool bar on the non smoking side. so that bugged me. then when i got my wife a drink that was supposed to have whipped topping on it, the bar keep forgot it, which is fine, but when i asked him to put it on, he was d*** about it, i was like, what the hell? jus put the damn topping on it, and i had to show him the menu that called for whipped topping. apparently he was a prick all week according to some other couples.

 

then one night the back of the ship was closed from 6:00 until after i wen to bed for a private party. what the hell? evrybody paid their fare for use of all public areas. i thought that was crap.

 

i liked the idea of the bigscreen when i first heard about it. but when we're on the deck sailing out of st. thomas, do we really need to listen to chris collinsworth over the lido? no band, just t.v.

 

i'm getting my complaints out of the way so i can get back to rest of the cruise. didn't have beach towels two of the first four days of the trip, had to hunt down my room steward for towels. not a huge deal, but that's not something i've seen on my other carny cruises.

 

the service at the mdr was not as good as we have had in the past either. usually we know the servers name and where they are from, and if they have a fam or not. i never really knew they guys name, or his assistant. the helper guy would come and fill up some glasses of water, but not all of them. it got to the point where i said fill up two, and from that point on, he brought me two glasses each night, but it still didn't sove it completely, because then i would just have two empty glasses.

 

and the drink server, omg! seriously, he would come to our table after our dinnner was eaten, no exaggeration. it was laughable to us. i liked the drink server, he was a young kid, dmetry from belarus, but he would show up around 9:15-9:30.

 

so onto some pics.

 

buffet line

 

that's what we got onto the ship.

 

that's what a bathroom looks like, exciting isn't it?

 

the DW in our room

 

looking back towards the hallway

 

looking out towards the balcony.

[newt98]

I am enjoying your cruise report and pictures.

 

From the San Juan board, re your scam artist:

 

and other thread there:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1079834

 

wow, that's funny, he's famous.

[newt98]

ok, back to the good.

 

we booked a guarantee balcony. we usually pick our own room, but we thought we would save a few bucks. well i would not book a guarantee again. i knew the risks, so it is what it is, but next time i will be on deck 7 again sandwiched between rooms. it was nice being on deck 8 because it was just one floor from lido, but those deck chairs, are you kidding me? can people just sit down and stay there? the deck chairs make alot of noise. it didn't keep me up, because we were tired by the time we went to bed, but they did get us up in the morning. we didnt need a wake up call, that's for sure. we didn't hera alot of noise other than that. the night of the deck party we heard the music and people talking loudly, but again, fell asleep without any real problems.

 

so we go down to deck 8 at about 2:20 to wait for the doors to open to the rooms, and of course, just like always, people walk up to the door, read the sign that says 2:30, and they open the door and go right through. the doors will be opened when the rooms are ready.

 

anyways, we get to our room and our bags are already there, which was great. we get unpacked and get ready for our M&G on deck for our roll call. btw, we didnt meet our room steward until we were walking to muster and i said, "are you my room steward?"

 

we go to the M&G and we had planned to go to the triton pool bar non-smoking side, but it was closed. only one bar was open almost the entirety of the trip, so not only did i have to deal with the smoking side, it was almost always backed up becasue it was the only one open. btw, i don't have a problem with smokers, i just dont like the smoke, i grew up in a house that was always full os cigarette smoke, and i just don't like it, but to each his own.

 

the M&G was good, we saw all of our old friends (canadians):rolleyes:. there was maybe 15-20 people that showed up, including hayziedaze the sexist cruiser.

 

view from our balcony with celebrity and rcl ship in the distance.

 

 

 

at the M&G

 

self portait on our balcony

 

brought my canadian friend a shirt from back home!

 

miami vice, the reason we cruise.

[newt98]

dinner on the first night is basically anytime dining, you just walk up and they get you a table, we were told to be there right at 6, because the line may get long. well, we were there at 6 and got the first tables right in the front of the dining room. our server was eveline on that first night, if you get this table, consider yourself lucky. she was the best server any of us ever had. she was funny, witty, and right on top of everything, she really made our servers for the rest of the cruise look bad. we had two tables because alot of us from the roll call mer for dinner that first night. we didnt get many food pics this cruise, i think i'm too self conscious to take pictures of my food in a dining room. i think after dinner we headed back to the room to wait for muster and finish unpacking or something like that.

 

muster drill was at 9:30, and you don't need your lifevest. it was fairly quick, but there was a guy next to me that apparently just got in on his flight, and he was a mr grumpy gills. the guy in front of him was trying to be nice and said something to him, and grumpy gills let everybody within earshot know how bad his cruise has started, and he doesn't see it getting any better.

 

after muster the group of us from that previous triumph cruise gathered at joans cabin, she had an aft wrap balcony cabin on 8, just down the hall from us. we hung out there for a bit, then headed back to our room to listen to the smokers play musical chairs, lol.

 

on lido deck

 

our old friends, and some new ones

 

chocolate melting cake, other than the surface, it was just warm pudding.

 

at joans balcony wrap cabin.