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Just Got Back- Exotic Eastern Liberty 9/4-9/11

CaptivaTravler

By CaptivaTravler,
in Carnival Cruise Lines

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CaptivaTravler

CaptivaTravler

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Carnival Liberty - Exotic Eastern 9/4 thru 9/11/10

 

Just back on land and now done sorting through the mail / emails / voicemails that accumulated while on our 7 day cruise aboard the Liberty. I will break our review of the week into several posts as time allows.

 

Traveling with my lovely wife ( celebrating our 24 anniversary during the trip ) our 3 daughters ( 21, 19, 17 ) our son in law, and our middle daughters boyfriend.

 

*SATURDAY 9/4----

 

Since we only live several hours from Port of Miami, we had a nice casual breakfast at home with everyone before we pack all of our luggage up and head towards the port. Our goal was to attempt to get all of our luggage and ourselves into one vehicle. After some arranging and re-arranging we were able to get everthing in :-)

Left our driveway at 9:30am and pulled up to the front of the cruise terminal in Miami at exactly 11:45 am. All of the luggage was given to one of the porter's , which gladly put our assigned cabin tags on each of our bags, as we had not printed any bag tags out prior. We also checked both a case of water and a 12 pack of diet coke with him, he put a name/cabin tag on them, all with no problems.

By 12:15 we were stepping onto the ship getting our picture taken for our sail and sign cards! Carnival has mastered the art of moving people through security, checking them in, all with very little, if any, waiting. Granted most of our paperwork, credit cards, passport info, etc... had all been done online with the funpass, i am still always impressed with how well Carnival does with what could be a long, tedious check-in process.

Our oldest daughter was extremely grateful and happy to finally get ger own "gold-card" for returning Carnival guests :-P (its the little things in life that most of us 'grown-ups' dont notice or care about, that can cause us to miss out on some of the joy)

 

We headed up to the lido deck for some lunch after a quick stop on deck 7, where both of our cabins were located #7397 balcony / #7399 interior. We were told to check back at 1:30 as our cabins would be available at that time. After a quick bite to eat, and some pitures of Miami skyline, we got to meet our cabin stewards and into our cabin right around 1:30. Our cabins were located Aft , and we were extremly happy with the location of our cabins....2 floors straight up to the lido deck/ pool area....2 floors down to deck 5 /promenade area. This was our second sailing on the Liberty, and I much prefered this location to the forward location we had prior.

Within 15 minutes of being in our cabin, all of our luggage for both cabins arrived. Another smiley face for Carnival. Everyone settled in with their clothes / bags etc... and we headed back up to the Lido deck just to hang out for sail -away.

I can say for me, sail-away has always been one of the highlights of a cruise vacation. It never gets old. The smile on everyones face says it all.

We went down to the spa area to schedule a few spa treatements, and while touring the spa, they had free 5 minute massages, which each of us enjoyed, even if it was just a teaser!

 

We had the early seating in the Silver Dining room located in the Aft of the ship. Table for 7, right in the lower main section of the dining room. If you like to see and be a part of all of the entertainment portions of the MDR ( which we enjoy), this is the perfect location!

Our family tends to enjoy the Main Dining Room for more of an experience rather than just a place to eat if that makes sense. We spent a minimum of 2 hours each and every night over dinner. Talking, laughing, trying different foods you wouldnt normally eat, etc....

Our family prays over every meal and I had thought of this idea that first night at dinner: there would be 7 nights of dinner...there happened to be 7 of us..... whoever got served first on the first night would pray that night... whoever got served second on the second night would pray that night...served third on the third night and so on... We all enjoyed seeing and counting down as the appetizers were served to see who was up to pray for that night! Would you beleive that it worked out that each of the 7 of us got to pray over the 7 nights, with no repeats!....Sweet!!

That first night during dinner, we did have quite a scare in the MDR. A gentleman next to us at table of about 12, passed out cold on the floor. The gentlemans wife/family was understandably very upset, crying, screaming etc.. Our son-in-law is a firefighter, so he immediately went over to attend to the gentleman, and as it turns out he was just feeling overheated, dehydrated, and a little sea sick. Thankfully within a few minutes he was sitting up in a chair, trying to drink some water. They brought him a wheel chair just as a precaution, but all turned out well thank goodness.

 

After dinner, we went to the welcome aboard show, which primarily just introduces all of the various entertainment staff, but it also had a sneak peak at one of the comedians on board for the week, Phat Kat. The guy was pretty funny, we ended up going to one of his pg-13 shows later in the week.

After the show some dancing in the hot-cold club and dancing in the czars palace and then we called it a night around 12:30 am ..... we didnt want to push it too late....we have a whole week ahead of us after all :-P

 

Sunday - Day 2 coming soon....

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CaptivaTravler

CaptivaTravler

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*Sunday 9/5 - Half Moon Cay

 

No one in our group had ever been to Half Moon Cay. It is a tendered port, so we were asked to go to deck 3 to the Venetian Palace to get a tender number and then wait in a group. We went down after breakfast around 10 am and got tender # 16. When we sat down they had just called tender #9. Not even 15 mins went by and they called our tender number. Its probably a 10 min boat ride or so to the island. Very smooth, no problems. There is a small group of shops as you come off the tender dock, typical island stuff, we didnt go into any of the stores, so im not sure about the prices, etc...

 

Half Moon beach is very very beautiful. They have chairs set up spreading out over several hundred yards, up and down both directions on the beach. We brought our own snorkeling gear, so we headed over to left as you are looking out onto the water, as this is where the suggested snorkling is. There is a big water spout that is shooting up into the air, we set up our chairs right in this area. The snorkleing was a great intro to the week. While we didnt see any large fish, the variety of sea-life is spectacular. We even saw several small octopus, and two lionfish. After a few hours of hanging out snorkling and beachtime, we headed over to the lunch pavillion. The island is very well laid out, with brick pavers for paths all over the place. Each walkway seems very private, and you dont feel like people are overwhelming you. Afterall you can imagine how many people are on the island at one time, all in a pretty compact space. The way its laid out, you never feel 'squished' in.

Hamburgers, jerked chicken, and other assorted bbque style foods were served. Good stuff, but i found out later that they serve this same exact lunch back on the ship that day, so if you want the food, but dont want to eat on the island, you can still get it back on the ship.

After lunch, we headed back down to the beach to relax in the water, and we were kidding about doing exfoliation to each others feet with some of what seemed to be the most perfect beach sand. As we were packing up to go back to the ship, our Son-in-Law of about 5 months noticed that his wedding ring was no longer on his finger! .....He remembered seeing it on his finger while we were all laying around in the water, but it was now nowhere to be found. We went ahead and tried the needle in haystack routine and put our snorkleing gear on and searched around in the area we had been in, all to no avail. To their credit, He and our daughter took it well though, and said....oh well, maybe we can just pick up another one in St.Thomas or something :-P

 

We headed back on the tender to the ship around 2:30 or so and all just went to up to the main pool on lido deck and hung out. We always gathered in the same area to the right of the big screen up on deck 10 outside. Always plenty of deck chairs together, and plenty of both sun and shade depending on what your flavor was. This particular day, all 7 of us had our deck chairs pulled up under the deck roof area out of the sun and all fell asleep for about an 1.5 hours. :-)

 

Went down to Sushi a little early before dinner (they have it most nights 5:30 -8:30 ) . I must say i love sushi, as does our whole family, and the sushi is very good. Its has to be difficult to make it in the quanities that they must produce it, but we enjoyed most all of the rolls we tried. They have a pretty broad assortment over the course of the week, and most times we would take the small 3 piece sample with us into the dining room to get our appetites going :-)

 

After dinner we went to the pg-13 comedian show...2 different comedians, one at 7:30 / one at 8:30 then 2 later R rated shows, which we did not go to R rated shoes, so no comment there, but the pg-13 shows were just ok.

And although we had seen the Juggleing show in the main lounge, we went again because some had not seen it. I know its a cheesy show, but i gotta say of you go in with the right attiude its a waay fun show. Our group laughed and lauged at the campiness of the act. It was a hit with our group.

After that we caught some of the movie showing up on Seaside Theatre. A nice evening under the stars.....

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CaptivaTravler

CaptivaTravler

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* Monday 9/6 - Sea Day

 

ANNIVERSARY DAY! 24 years! 9/6/86

After a relaxing morning of coffee and conversation out on our balcony, I went up to the jogging track for a run. I must say while I wish the track were a little larger, jogging on the ship makes your run go much quicker :-)

My wife had earlier booked a 10am Spa Class on Detoxifying your body, you know, the one where they tell you why coffee, chicken, chocolate, all the good stuff everyone likes to eat is bad for you :-) She went with our youngest daughter, and to be completely honest I think our daughter only went because she thought the two spa instructor guys were cute and loved their English accent. She would die if she knew i were writing this, but all through-out the cruise when we would 'run into' these two spa guys, I would just talk to them and strike up casual conversations, while our youngest turned a little red and flush. Ahhh to be 17 again :-P

My wife is kinda sorta particular about what she eats, she said the class was good, but no new information that she didnt already know. I told her earlier that she could have probably taught the class herself with all her knowledge of Healthy Foods etc....

I went and booked a suprise all body spa treatment for my wife that she would be able to get this same day at sea. 2 pm- normally the price was $229 , i was offered the price of $149... no arguments there from me.

We all spent the majority of the day just hanging out by the main pool. Plenty of deck chairs were still available all together for the 7 of us at around 11 am. We prefer to be on the deck above the pool/lido deck. Deck 10 just to the right of the big screen, by the glass rail area. You can still see all of the activitys going on around the pool area, but still somewhat removed from all the business of it if that makes sense.

We entered the vollyball tourny as a family....won that. Got pictures with our Gold medals around our necks like an Olympic Dream Team :-)

 

 

All 7 of us went in for the formal tea they have in the Silver dining room. I think it was around 3:30 or so. Great time was had. We got seated with a couple that were celebrating their 60th Anniversary! yea you read that right 60th anniversary.

What an interesting couple. He was lifetime military, and our family was very intriqued to here the stories that he had about the interesting life they had experienced. As I mentioned our oldest daughter and her husband have been married all of 5 months, they actually were seated right across the table from this precious couple. It was a joy to see them interact, one couple with tons of life experience, one couple just learning what this whole marraige thing really means. The hour flew by, we were still there talking when the dining room staff starting cleaning up and we knew we had to get moving....we said hello to that couple everytime we saw them on the ship after that...especially our newlyweds.

 

Today is formal night which is always our fav, because our family enjoys getting dressed up for the occasion, and tonight being our actual 24th anniversary it was a special one indeed! I went down to the dining room about an hour early to talk with our waiter, because I had purchased some jewelry and written a card to my wife that I wanted him to deliver to my wife as her first appetizer. I asked that as he served everyone else there first plates of food, he would bring out the jewelry and card on a plate and place it in front of my wife. Our girls were in on the surpise so asked them to film the event. It was worth a million dollars as he sat the plate down, the tears of joys started flowing.

 

Lots of formal pictures that night, several of which we ended up buying later on in the cruise. Our waiter and the Maitre d asked if this was our 24th...what the heck our you going to do to top it for the 25th?? Good question, but im sure somehow we will figure that out :-)

 

The rest of the night was great to say the least.

Family.....When you really think about it, what else do you have ?

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CaptivaTravler

CaptivaTravler

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* Tuesday 9/7 - St. Thomas

 

The ship docked promptly at 9 am in St. Thomas. Beautiful sight as you arrive into port with all the wonderful mountains contrasted by the blue waters. We had breakfast up on the lido deck together, but as i had pre-registered with Budgett for a van, i wanted to get oto the rental car agency as quickly as possible. I had already had the experince here in St. Thomas where you have a 'confirmation' but when u get there, it still seems like a first come first serve sort of deal. We walked in to Budgett at around 9:30 ( when you get off the ship, walk immediatley to your right about 3 to 400 yards to rental office) and sure enough, no van was available or had been reserved. Thankfully i had printed out the email stating that a van reservation had been made, because without it nothing could have been done. But after showing them the conformation, the very kind lady helping us got on the phone and called a nearby budgett location and asked if they had any 7 passenger vehicles available. Bingo, they had an xl suv that they could upgrade us to for same price as the van......sweet! So they loaded all of us up and drove us to the location, which was probably only about 4 or 5 miles on the other side of the port. They allowed us to drop it by the cruise dock location, which worked out percectly.

Once in our suv, we drove to the local flea market type open area and did a little shopping. It was cool because our son-in-law is a firefighter, and the market area is located right next to the st. Thomas firestation, so he was able go walk over and chit chat with the local firefighters. He tried to exchange a tshirt for one of thiers, but they had to go out on a call.

We headed up and over the mountains to get a peak of Meagans Bay, from the Drake Seat. Don't miss this vantage point. Its breathtaking.

Then we headed on down to Coki beach. As we talked later around the dinner table abojt the highlights of our week, several of us put our visit to Coki beach at the top. We spent several hours snorkleing over on the left side by the rocks as you are looking out at the water. Tons of sealife. Cyrstal clear water. Mountains almost encircling you on every side. Wonderful afternoon. When you pull into the parking area, several locals greeted us, asking if they could help in any way, chairs, drinks, etc... not pushy, just trying to gwt a few bucks here and there. We got several beach lounge chairs for$ 5 for the day. Highly recommend this beach area.

After leaving Coki beach we stopped into a little mom and pop grocery store, one of the advantages of having your own car, which we really enjoy is being able to get off the touristy spots. Everything was very reasonably priced....if you drink beer they had every beer you could think of for like$ 1.50 a bottle. Bought a red stripe for$ 1.25, talked with the owner for a bit and then we left.

Ate lunch a little further down the road in and area that is called the East End....i can't remember the name of restaurant, typical burger joint, nothing memorable just ok.

Headed back to cruise dock around 4:30 to drop the car at Budgett as the ship sails at 5.

Back on the ship in time for our group to shower and get to our 6 o'clock dinner.

After dinner we visted the kareoke bar, which is always a good time. Seems like they should put that in a different area of the ship because it always seems so packed in the small 5th aft deck bar they have it stuffed into......

After that a few of us went to the casino to give them money, some went to the Seaside Theatre up on deck 9...

great day...great day

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waykaylincruz

waykaylincruz

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What movies did they play in the evenings on the big screen??

 

Also, what was the afternoon tea you mentioned in the afternoon in the MDR?? Way back when, when I sailed Carnival, that wasn't introduced yet. We are going on the Liberty in 30+ days and was just curious.

 

Thanks for your review!!

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CaptivaTravler

CaptivaTravler

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What movies did they play in the evenings on the big screen??

 

Also, what was the afternoon tea you mentioned in the afternoon in the MDR?? Way back when, when I sailed Carnival, that wasn't introduced yet. We are going on the Liberty in 30+ days and was just curious.

 

Thank you!

The movies various current recent dvd releases....

Avatar, Sherlock Holmes, etc...

 

Yes, the afternoon tea is held in the Silver Main Dining Room. Its always on one of the sea days, in this instance our first sea day, Monday. They serve various assorted hot teas of course, along with finger foods like cut cucumber sandwiches and that. Some really good little desserts as well as fresh sttawberries etc....

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ebonniekins

ebonniekins

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I too was on this cruise and let me just say that the weather was gorgeous. The only "bad" weather was in St. Thomas when it was small spurts of storms, but they never lasted very long and were a welcome relief from humidity. Otherwise it was sunshine all day every day!

 

It was by far one of my most favorite cruises and I a looking forward to repeating it again next year. :)

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CaptivaTravler

CaptivaTravler

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7 people, 2 cabins....who roomed with who?

 

hahaha, this was a topic in our house for a few weeks leading up to the cruise..

 

our oldest daughter, her husband and our youngest daughter stayed in one cabin... our middle daughter, her boyfriend, my wife and I stayed in the balcony cabin.

 

It worked out perfectly.

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CaptivaTravler

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* Wednesday 9/8 - Puerto Rico

 

Ship docks at 7 am in Peurto Rico. We had been to this port several times, so we decided to take a nice relaxing morning have breakfast on the ship and then do a little walking tour of Old San Jaun. We got off the ship around 10am.

We did want to take a peek at the Fort del Morro, so we headed in that direction. Old San Juan is a neat city to walk around in, narrow brick lined streets, tons of colors and textures which make for really neat photography. We made our way across the tip of Old San Juan, down to the Santa Maria cemetary located seaside right near the fort.

 

http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z146/whosyourdaddy_mmc/Family%20Cruise%20Sept%202010/DSC04720.jpg

 

Then spent an hour or so inside the fort. $3 admission fee it is run by the US Parks Dept.

Beautiful views of the port and the ocean from several levels inside the fort.

One area (the triangular stairs) was literally closed within just a few minutes of us being int there as someone had fallen and fractured their leg climbing on the stairs. It turns out it was a fellow Liberty passenger.

Couple of Photos from inside del Morro

 

http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z146/whosyourdaddy_mmc/Family%20Cruise%20Sept%202010/DSC04736.jpg

 

http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z146/whosyourdaddy_mmc/Family%20Cruise%20Sept%202010/DSC04763.jpg

 

 

we wanted to grab a bite to eat for lunch, and wanted to go to an out of the way place that maybe the locals would eat so after asking a few local business were they might grab lunch we were directed to a place called El Jabarito.....Great Find!

Inexpensive and very very tasty. Red Beans and rice, flat steak, friend plantains...awesome.

http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z146/whosyourdaddy_mmc/Family%20Cruise%20Sept%202010/DSC04754.jpg

 

the ship sets sail at 3pm , so after a little more walking around and shopping we headed back to the ship.

 

We took the opportunity of being back on the ship earlier than normal to grab a nap up out on the lido deck. It was very breezy and a great way to wind down the day.

 

In the MDR we started to realize it was becoming more and more apparent that we would be having a difficult time saying goodbye to our waiter Ping and all the great dining room staff. Fantastic Service by all.

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