CB Review 10/15 Eastern Sailing (Finally!) Very Long!

[Wicked]

Ok sorry for the long delay but I came back and was inundated with things (like a flood in my kitchen but thats another story) then I got the Flu, which I'm still battling.....

 

Here is my review of the CB Eastern sailing.

 

We arrived in Fort Lauderdale the day before the sailing and stayed at the Amersuites. While not fancy, it provided us with everything we needed, plus a free breakfast. It's close to absolutely everything so you can walk to any store you need to purchase anything you still may need (like wine/liquor/snacks etc). That night we met up with some other CC'ers (waves to Lew) for dinner at a restaurant called Old Florida's. One of my favorite places. Nice to know that even though I've been gone for so long the bartender and owner and hostess remembered me (yes we went there that much!) Had a fabulous dinner as always. They absolutely stuff you (you MUST try the potato thats "stuffed"). Woke up the next morning, letting DH sleep in and had breakfast. Then I went to the grocery store and stocked up on bottles of water and a few other odds and ends. Took that back to the hotel and then went to the liquor store. While I was "wrapping" the bottles of wine DH woke up and got ready.

 

Embarkation:

We went downstairs and it was a ZOO waiting for the shuttle! So I went to the frontdesk and called a cab. Took about 5 minutes and we were off! It was worth the $10, we would have been waiting for the "free" shuttle for hours! Unloaded the luggage (unfortunately the cabbie took off with one piece but thats our own fault). Went to go board and I showed my boarding docs and the put me in line with everyone else we went down one side and one Princess rep looked at my folder and asked what I was doing there and moved us out. We had platinum boarding. We were checked in and on the boat 10 minutes later (glad to bypass that long line!). We went right to our room.

 

Suite:

What can I say? It was a SUITE! and it was AFT!!! C750! A beautiful marble foyer, and I was floored at how huge our room was. Our Cabin Steward (goodness my flu has made me forget his name!) was great, he gave us a grand tour of the place. We had a bathroom with a sink toliet, a separate bathroom with a shower (big enough for a person to actually move and pick up the soap if it's dropped) and a whirlpool tub, which DH and I used EVERY DAY! That made the entire room well worth it! We had a living area that you could close off from the bedroom with a huge heavy curtain. A wet bar that came stocked for free for the first round (Little bottles of Liquor on the shelf, in the fridge, water, perrier, beer and all kinds of soda and no they don't read your preferences obviously from the website). And we also used the free dry cleaning/pressing/laundry. Again making the suite worthwhile!

 

Ports:

First stop Princess Cay:

Moving this up from Friday to Sunday (which I'm glad they did I like having a Sea Day on the last day). We woke up late (hmmmm in the casino to late I think!) and took our time. Hooked up with Doug/Terri (waves) from CC and went to grab the tender, although we had priority tender tickets we waited with them to go over together. It wasn't a long wait. Princess Cay was beautiful. We had a Cabana (not sure if I'd get one again, they need to make these so you get a BREEZE through them, they were stifling hot under them so much so that I thought at one point I was going to pass out). We had floats (recommend those!) and used them. Had a small lunch and broke down and bought a coconut monkey with a drink on them (they now sit on my headboard!).

 

Next stop St Thomas:

Having been all over this island we took a taxi over to St John's (just missing the other CC'ers by about 10 minutes) and met up with them at the beach there. The beach is gorgeous and the water is crystal clear. We laid out, snorkeled and napped briefly. Then headed back to catch the ferry back to St Thomas early as we wanted to go up to Paradise Point. It was Lew's birthday so we all went up the Trolley (you should do this at least once, we did it so Lew could enjoy it, next time we'll cab it as they charge alot for this!) Had the famous Bushwacker (yummy) bought some souvenirs (where the proprietor told us this was the first sunny day they had in 2 weeks!)

 

Last stop St Maarten:

I won't lie, so far this is my favorite island in the Caribbean, we even stayed an entire week there last year. Having seen the island DH and I opted to just hang out on the beach in Phillipsburg (we're one of those odd birds who like the town!) We went to the outdoor market behind the courthouse and bought some sourvenirs Tshirts for friends, me a dress (always get a St Maartens dress) and St Maartens shirt for DH. We then went to this place now called Cornies (used to be called the Dutch Side) we always go here when we can, we get a chair and lots of ice cold Henikens! If you go there say howdy to Vincent, he'll get ya set up with the chairs! We had lunch, drank and enjoyed the day!! Almost time to go we walked down Front street, shopped, bought the famous Guavaberry Liquore (yummy) and caught a cab back to the ship. Oh let me tell you... in St Maartens the ships dock front to back of each other.... and I wasn't quite aware of this... So that morning I (who likes to sleep in the nude) opened the door to our balcony and opened the curtains to find the bridge of the Sun Princess right behind us! So uhmm be careful if you have an Aft balcony!!

 

Dinner/Food:

We had late traditional. We sat at our table on the first night. The first formal night we sat with Doug/Terri at a four top they provided for us as our table was "shortened" from 8 to a 6 top for the night. The other nights we ate at Sabatini's and Stirlings and then joined Greyhound3's table for the rest of the journey! The food was excellent. Even the buffet was wonderful, although I thought the area was tight and confining if there were lots of people in there. if you go to Sabatini's ensure that you dont' eat anything for most of the day as you go in there and they serve you lots and lots of wonderful food! You get to try almost all the appetizers as they bring out a bit of each for you to have. Stirlings was great, the waiters/maitre' D were smashing! we got sit right by the window to the kitchen which I thought was very cool. It was our anniversary and they brought us a cake and sang to us and the kitchen flashed the "heat lamps" on us! Very cool! In the main dining if you couldn't decide what to have they'd put two entres into one for you! Zoltan was awesome when we moved to Greyhound3's table! Adapted to new people joining the table with ease and even shared a toast of wine with us on our last night!!

 

Fun Stuff:

DH and I are not "show" type people so saw none of the shows. I heard most of them were great (with the exception of the Piano man which most seemed to not care for). We did catch Bert Stratton for a brief time (he SO needs a bigger venue if he had one we would have stayed for his entire show but I was on heels and standing!) the short time we watched he was great and wish I could have stood to see more of him! Casino! Ok I admit we spent most of our evenings whiling away our time in the Casino. Where most of the Casino staff had a good laugh about my "flashing" the bridge of the Sun Princess and teased me telling me they had pictures!(Goodness I hope they were teasing!)We were down at first, mid week we made a comeback and then we were ahead.. All in all we ended up with about a $100 profit at the end of the week. Course I did win the "cabin crawl" with a straight and won $320! That was very cool!

 

Debarkation:

Of course a very sad time. We were up early, sitting on our balcony having coffee relaxing. We were out of our cabin by 8:30 and went to the Platinum "lounge" to wait. They had newspapers, croissants/muffins etc, coffee there. Hardly anyone in there but they do check you in when you enter! Would have been nice if they had a small "hot" buffet of scrambled eggs or something though. We waited about a half hour and then our color was called.

 

Once off the ship gathering the luggage it was a zoo in there! I waited with our carryons and DH entered the masses and came out one at a time with our checked bags. We rolled out and right into a cab (thankfully most didn't seem to know where to go so we got to bypass a lot of people that way).

 

Overall it was a wonderful time. The staff always seemed ready to assist, and everyone I came into contact with was pleasant, friendly and smiling! It was great meeting up with SOOOO many CCer's! Meeting them made the entire trip a much more enjoyable experience! Just would not have been the same without them!

 

If you have questions feel free to ask, I'll do my best to answer what I can. I would definitely sail her again (would love to do a back to back) and sail on Princess again. My first time away from Carnival in a long time! I will still sail on Carnival as well as I've enjoyed all of those cruises too!!