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::: Review::: Emerald Princess 10/19-10/29 Eastern Caribbean

jillocb

By jillocb,
in Princess Cruises

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jillocb

jillocb

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Congradulations on your marriage....Thanks for your review & pictures. Can't wait to read & see more..Since we have what seems like for every for our chance:eek:...One question what's the procedure for requesting the UBD?

Thanks,

Stacie:)

 

I was told to do it early so we called Room Service from our stateroom phone that day and ordered it for the day/time we wanted.

 

Someone asked if we knew the head waiter's name - sorry. We didn't pay attention to a lot of specifics.

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jillocb

jillocb

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We didn't plan an excursion in Antigua so we decided to just get off of the boat and walk around. We were one of two ships in port that day - the other was the Silver Whisper.

 

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We walked off the ship and were almost immediately bombarded by taxi drivers and tour guides. We were followed, FOLLOWED down the road, as we walked into town by multiple men. We were extremely put off by this as it wasn't just, 'hey, come with me', it was constant. We got a map from the local tourist shack (literally - a shack) and walked up the street to find a Cathedral we saw from the ship. This area was very very depressed. We did not feel very comfortable walking around. We went to the museum first. It was definitely done with minimal budget but, they did have some nice artifacts.

 

Outside Architecture

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We walked a few more blocks up to the Cathedral. Boy were we disappointed.

 

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Completely blocked off by plywood. In total disrepair. There was a newer gravestone in there, surprisingly - from 2009. The rest were quite old. We were disappointed and just hoped this wasn't the start to other sad towns to visit.

 

We walked back to the ship at this point. We had no interest in the minimal shopping they had out front. We were attacked AGAIN by tour guides and taxi drivers as we walked back. Overall, we have a very bad taste in our mouths from Antigua.

 

I know some folks who were on our cruise that went to the Antigua beaches that had a wonderful there. We probably won't go to Antigua again, if we stop there on another cruise, we will either stay on the ship or take an excursion out to a beach.

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Whoo

Whoo

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Thanks for your review and pictures! We are taking a ship's tour to Nelson's Dockyard in Antigua - sounds like we made a good choice after your experience! We are nautical fiction fans (Hornblower, Alan Lewrie, etc.).

 

Hope you had better experiences in the next ports!

 

Anxiously waiting for more......

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jillocb

jillocb

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In St. Lucia, we used recommendations from Cruise Critic and booked a tour through Cosol tours. The tour was as described in the email we received from Nereus - aka Cosol. Our tour did have a few changes to it due to weather. The weather was beautiful when we got off the ship but turned to a rainy mess for about a half hour or so. It didn't affect us much, it did affect us a little bit but I'll get into that later in this part of the review.

 

We got off the ship and immediately saw a sign for Cosol Tours. Everyone on this tour was on our ship. I'm not positive, but I don't think there were any other ships in port that day. For our tour, there were two vans and a car with a family in it. The family paid for a private tour, so they didn't have to squish into the bus. They did go on the same tour as us, though.

 

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Initial thoughts on St Lucia - lush and beautiful territory. We hopped on our bus and made a few stops at 'scenic overlooks'. A few stops in, the drink truck found us. Hello, our first of many island brews. They were really pushing their rum punch but we're more beer drinkers, so we stayed away from that. We heard it was potent but tasty.

 

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They took us to breakfast, which was three table-fulls of delicious homemade foods. Really, really tasty.

 

We stopped at a drive-in volcano, which was very cool.

 

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We also got to pop over to a small waterfall at that stop. By this point, it was raining so a lot of people went back to the vans. I decided to take a dip under the waterfall - why not, we're already wet, right?

 

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From there we went to the boats that would take us to Jalousie beach. It's now raining harder. I don't have pictures of this because we were in small, open boats and rain was PELTING us as we rode to the beach. By the time we got there, we didn't know whether we should laugh, cry or just shake our heads. That was one miserable ride! We did some snorkeling on the island and then just wanted to go back to the vans already. Finally, it was time to leave, so we headed back to the vans on the same boats. Much nicer ride now that it wasn't raining!! When we got back, Cosol kept saying to us, "make sure the rain doesn't make us get a bad review!" Well, you can't control the weather.

 

We drank more, got back in the vans and headed down the road to see the Pitons which we missed on the way up.

 

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Then we stopped at a local bakery where they fed us with hot, fresh bread and cheese. Yum. We were starving! We got back to the ship and headed in to take a nap!! We would suggest this tour if you are one of few boats in town. I can't imagine having more people than we had on that tour. It would be a struggle to make sure everyone has a good time, is fed well and gets to see everything they want to see. We are very happy with the tour!

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Cruisinforasnoozin

Cruisinforasnoozin

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First Congratulations on your marriage! Looks like your off to a wonderful start on a beautiful Princess Cruise. We will be boarding the Emerald on November 28th for 20 days... yeahhhhh Looking at your St. Lucia pictures brought back good memories. It is a beautiful lushious island. Enjoy the rest of your cruise!:)

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teripp

teripp

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Congrats on your marriage :) Looking forward to your next installment. Did the Eastern Carib on The Emerald in early September totally different itinerary than yours. I heard they were changing things up. Can not wait for more photos of the ship interiors.....

Teri

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jillocb

jillocb

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In Barbados, I left Dan on the ship and joined up with some of my Roll Call members to take a catamaran cruise complete with snorkeling and lunch. It turned out to be more than we could have hoped for!!

 

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They only have 12 people total on their cruises. There were 11 of us on a catamaran for the entire day.

 

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We stopped twice to snorkel - once with turtles, once over a reef. They steered us waaaaay away from the other boats that were trying to do the same thing that day. We saw other catamarans with what had to be 20 or more people on them. I can't imagine. Ours was so wonderful because we weren't cramped. The other boats we saw, people had no where to go, you either stay in your spot or you lose it!

 

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We had three crew - the owner of the catamaran, Gina and two boat crew. They were all wonderful. Friendly, chatty, helpful, etc. I can't say enough about these guys!! They fed us all day long - breakfast, banana bread; lunch, everything you can imagine and more. It was fried fresh fish, salads, couscous, and more. We also drank. They had rum punch (which apparently was better than the rum punch on St Lucia) and local beers. Those local beers were GOOD! The best I tried on all of the islands. At the end they fed us brownies and coconut cake. A few of us were sitting out front, they brought it out to us instead of making us come to the back of the ship. Great customer service.

 

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We did get to see turtles on our first stop. That was really special. I don't have the videos with me at work (got busy last night so I didn't have a chance to get to the computer). I posted one video on my blog, just scroll past a few pictures and you'll get to the turtle video. Blog Post Once I have edited more of the underwater footage, I'll post it here.

 

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Calabaza really made this one amazing day.

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jillocb

jillocb

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We love food and alcohol. We love to eat and we love to drink. We did a lot of this on the Emerald Princess. We enjoyed everything we ate on the cruise.

 

Service was hit or miss. We had Anytime Dining and tried both of the Anytime Restaurants. Our first Formal Night was our best service night. Our second Formal Night was our worst service night. First night on the ship, we went to the MDR and we weren't sure what to do - we had never cruised before. We looked at the waiter with blank eyes and said, what do we do? He practically huffed and said, pick one of each and order all at once. Great start.

 

Second night - first formal night - was amazing. I wish we had tried to get seated with these guys every night. They were wonderful. From there on out, service was just ok. On the last Formal Night, we felt like we were in our waiter's way. He was never snotty to us but we certainly didn't feel all that welcome. We ate and enjoyed each other and our food and had a good time anyways.

 

Last night - on the last night on a Princess Cruise, they do the Parade of Baked Alaska. A bunch of waiters line up and walk through the dining room with Baked Alaska on their trays. They thank everyone for being there and ask for rounds of applause for the staff. We were eating dinner and were offered dessert about a minute before the Baked Alaska Parade. We were not offered Baked Alaska. We received our desserts, ate them and tried in vain to catch our waiters eye. We heard him offer the special dessert to the table next to us and the one next to them. Finally I caught his eye and told me we would like some as well, please. Excuse me while I roll my eyes...

 

Food

Mushroom Appetizer

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Princess' Famous Fettucini. I added more pepper to mine but there is plenty of cheese! You only get the cheese bowl if you get it as your Entree

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Mixed Fruit in Papaya

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This breakfast meal actually was supposed to come with mushrooms and a grilled tomato. I mentioned the mushrooms because I love them and they brought me an entire plate of mushrooms. YUM! I love those fried potatoes, too, we had those at almost every meal.

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We ate at the buffet a lot. No pics of that. The food was always very very good, though. Princess Pizza? AMAZING. We can't get pizza like that in North Carolina, unfortunately. It's done in a very hot oven and comes out with a partially charred bottom crust yet the top stays soft and yummy. YUM!

 

I want to cruise on Princess again just for the food....

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