Review: Island Princess Christmas Cruise Panama Canal Dec 20-30, 2018!!

[Guinness1000]

We went on the Rose Hall Great House and lunch excursion in Falmouth. Very interesting drive up there and the property was beautiful and the lunch was great.

 

We also went on a local tour in Cartagena. I would suggest just getting your on cab and go to the places that interest you. Hawkers were bad, a smile and a polite no was enough to get them to leave you alone. There were just A LOT of them. We were told most of them were from Venezuela, so we felt bad for them.

 

We did not do an excursion in Panama. I would suggest making sure promenade deck and aft deck (7 or 8? Can't remember) for the ultimate close up experiences.  🙂

[Guinness1000]

I was surprised to be faced with this from the rear of the ship.

 

 

[Guinness1000]

Oh, and Bill Hall (?) was great! Sat in on all his lectures.  🙂

[Guinness1000]

Forgot...

 

We also went on the open air train ride in Costa Rica. Different than we thought, but still good. We saw the real country. Not touristy at at all. We also saw a sloth in the wild and two Howler monkeys. Word of caution though, the train ride was very bumpy and there were no restrooms for the entire three hour excursion. 

[BoopTennis]

OK, back to my review....

Day 54 - Sunday - Sea Day

this day was extremely windy.  Of course all the chair hogs had towels on all the chairs by the pool but things were blowing everywhere.  You could hardly walk up on the walk deck without getting blown over.  The ship was rockier than I've been on before for a couple of days. It was warm but windy. 

There are always beautiful views from the balcony...

 

and I love having the  partitions opened up between all our balconies

 

 

Dinner menus Sunday night

 

 

 

 

[BoopTennis]

Dinner Sunday night, cont

 

This night i started with an Appletini, it looked so festive

 

All the food again was wonderful.  Skip ahead to dessert...

 

 

 

Chocolate Journey Coconut Mousse

 

and, why not, some apple strudel, with you guessed it,  vanilla bean sauce

 

 

[BoopTennis]

Day 5 - Monday - Christmas EVE - Cartegena

Docked on starboard side.  There was a Silversea ship right across from us.

 

Everything on the balcony was covered in salt from the huge winds and waves overnight. The steward came and wiped everything down thoroughly and squeeged the patio door and all the glass.

Tour buses were lined up below

 

 

Did some laundry (easy; tokens in the laundry room bought with cruise card). Some of our family went into town and walked around, took a taxi there and back.  My hubby and I did not since we have been there before.  I did take my grandson off the ship to the little zoo/aviary right by the ship which is pretty awesome, lots of beautiful birds and flamingos, he enjoyed it.

 

[BoopTennis]

more from the zoo

 

 

 

 

No charge to go in the zoo

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Then back to the ship

 

It was very hot that day.  Back on the ship the Lido Pool was closed because a glass got broken in the pool the night before.  It took all day to finally get it drained and vacuumed.

I stopped for a double macchiatto from the Coffee shop on Deck 5 yum yum

 

 We went to the Lido deck for lunch and a butterfly landed on my daughter in law's flowered dress LOL

She walked all the way back to her cabin and it was still there.  She finally pushed it off to fly away before sailaway!  we didn't want it to get stuck on the ship out in the middle of nowhere.

 

 

[BoopTennis]

Xmas Eve cont

We played cards in the Wheelhouse Bar, then walked around the ship. At 3 pm, before sailaway, a very important person boarded the ship!

 

Santa stayed on to see the kids on the ship!

Then time for sailaway, which is always one of my favorite parts of any cruise

 

 

 

[BoopTennis]

Princess did a great job with the decorations for the Christmas holiday

 

 

That night before dinner we went to the comedy show (Ken Boyd).  We had dinner at 7:30 so went to the 6 pm show.  He was very funny. Oddly it was the only "show" we went to, usually we do more. There was no magician this cruise.  It just seemed like we were keeping quite busy without attending shows.

DINNER CHRISTMAS EVE

 

 

 

 

 

 

[BoopTennis]

I must have forgotten to take pix of the food LOL. I know  had the eggplant starter and a salad. and  the chicken main dish. All very good

After dinner we went to the Card Room to play cards for awhile

 

Then back upstairs for some late night mini golf

 

I don't think I took any photos, but there were two ping pong tables on the upper deck within the covered pool area. So easy to play without wind!

The sport deck had a basketball court and a pickleball court which I saw several people using both

 

 

[cruisingpeople]

Really enjoy following your review. Seeing that last menu would have driven me crazy. I saw at least 4 starters and 4 items on the main courses that I would have wanted to order. LOL🙂

Can't wait for the next installment.

[TracieABD]

What a fun thread! Thank you for sharing your pictures and your cruise with us! It looks like you had an amazing time!!!

[BoopTennis]

4 hours ago, cruisingpeople said:

Really enjoy following your review. Seeing that last menu would have driven me crazy. I saw at least 4 starters and 4 items on the main courses that I would have wanted to order. LOL🙂

Can't wait for the next installment.

I understand! Many nights it was hard to choose the entree. I did usually get 2 starters and skip the rolls on the table. Also 2 desserts lol. Just went easy during the day!

[BoopTennis]

Day 6 - CHRISTMAS DAY! - Panama Canal!

I thought this was an awesome day to go thru the canal!  Woke up around 5:30 am, still dark out, we were starting to get lined up with other ships to head towards canal. It was very pretty with all the lit up ships around us. A small boat dropped off a pilot that helps guide us thru.

 

 

We approached the big bridge (Atlantic bridge?) before heading into the locks

 

 

We first went to front of the ship. Decks 10 and 11 were very full, watched there awhile. Then moved all over the ship all day seeing various angles. Our ship went thru the old locks, which I was glad, because they are so tight the wall of the locks is right next to the ship. Our ship going from north to south (Atlantic side towards Gatun Lake) went thru the right hand lock so the port side of the ship was facing the middle of the "in" and "out" locks

 

 

[BoopTennis]

Panama Canal, cont

 

 

3 locks then entering Gatun Lake

 

 

[BoopTennis]

We hung around in Gatun Lake for a 2 or 3 hours then headed back out to the Atlantic side. We chose not to get off the ship and do an excursion, we wanted to stay on the ship and experience the locks again going back to the Atlantic. Any place on the ship outside is a good place to see different aspects of the canal. Soooo interesting. Especially considering how long ago this canal was made!

Deck 7 was a good place to hang out

 

there is only about a foot or less clearance between the lock wall and the edge of the ship

 

 

After we were back out of the canal and out to sea, we went back to our cabin and found this.  Not sure why, hubby and sons were doing some gambling maybe that's why. But who cares, anything with chocolate on it is always a nice surprise

Since it was Christmas Day, the old movie Home Alone was showing up on MUTS

 

[BoopTennis]

Christmas Dinner

I had the cheese crepes for entree, they were AWESOME

 

It was not formal night on Christmas, but everyone dressed up very nice.  For fun our group had some light up bracelets

 

 

 

 

 

[BoopTennis]

I tried the "Christmas pudding" but did not care for it, it was like fruitcake. This was probably the ONLY food item I didn't like the entire cruise LOL

 

I also had, of course, the gingerbread souffle with the infamous vanilla bean sauce. It was fantastic

 

They also just put on every table a selection of cute Christmas cookies

 

 

 

 

 

[BoopTennis]

Day 7 - Weds - Puerto Limon, Costa Rica

We docked on the port side. Grabbed pool towels and got off the ship early for our booked tour with Ricky Ricardo. He came along and also had a Spanish (only) speaking driver.  He had a nice size van He was easy to find with a guy holding a sign right outside the port gates with my name on it.  I was a bit disappointed because we were told it was going to be a private tour with just the 9 of us, and another family of 4 were included. They were very nice but we felt we were restricted to what we could do or not choose to do during the day

 

We had asked to go to Veragua Rainforest first, so we did. As a group we had taken a long time before the cruise trying to decide what to do in Costa Rica.  Everything seems eco-related, and nothing seems to be close to the Puerto Limon port. My hubby and I had on another cruise done zip lining, a banana plantation and the canal trip, so we wanted to try something different.

Veragua was pretty and green, the tram ride was short but interesting, the waterfall was cool.  But the 9 of us were not that enthralled by it.  We saw ONE sloth, no monkeys, a few bugs, and lots of plants and trees.  We enjoyed the walk around and short hike to the falls, but the rainforest was no where near what I had hoped it would be.

 

Here is the photo of the one sloth (look closely) in the middle hanging on a branch

 

Getting on the tram

 

 

 

 

[BoopTennis]

more from Veragua Rainforest. By the way, the rainfoest is a good hour drive, and bumpy, from the port, so that made the day long

 

the waterfall

 

There are exhibits are the Rainforest but apparently our tour did not include that. That was a misunderstanding perhaps, I was disappointed.

After the rainforest, Ricky took us to Playa Bonita beach for lunch.  It took awhile even though we called in our menu selections ahead of time.  Food was very good tho

 

By now most of us were getting tired and probably would have asked to go straight back to the ship if we had not had other people with us.  We stopped very briefly at a banana plantation, just pulled in and looked at the trees and pulled back out

 

We stopped briefly for a photo opportunity, could see our ship in the distance

 

 

 

[BoopTennis]

Puerto Limon, cont

We also stopped at a fruit stand.  I felt this was way too touristy and took up time we didnt need to go there.  He then did a quick stop at what looked like a private home to see a sloth low down in a tree, my grandson did enjoy that.

Finally we got dropped off back at the port.  It was too long of a day, mostly due to the fact that everything seems so far away from the port. We were all tired and glad to get back on the ship.

 

Dinner

 

 

 

I had the seafood stuffed trout

 

 

 

 

[BoopTennis]

 

 I had the Chocolate Lovers Delight.  of course.

 

Played some cards then went to bed. It was a long day

 

[Dartmoordan]

Thank you for this review we are going on the Island in 2020 so finding it useful especially the photos. we have been to costa rica and had a really fabulous tour though we did it with a ship, think it was a bus ride, boat ride and then a train saw so much wildlife such a shame you saw so little.