Mariner Easter Caribbean including PR

[travelbuffs]

Sorry...should be Eastern Caribbean! We are headed out on April 27 and going to PR, St. Thomas and St. Martin. Homeland of my DH! We have not been to any of these ports and wondered if anyone has recently been on this particular cruise. I have looked up ports of call but just wondered if anyone had a fave thing to do in any one spot. We're traveling with another couple and my parents. Looking for great, uncrowded beaches, fab shopping and what not to miss.

 

Any ideas?

[Ken]

There are bunch of us going on this cruise. Join us over on the Meet and Mingle thread, and you will meet a lot of nice people and come away with a lot of good ideas. South Carolina is well represented too!

[GTO-Girl]

Yes!!! Go over to the Roll Call boards and go into the thread and you'll find all kind of info.

 

Be sure to register for the Meet and Mingle.....

 

See You Aboard!!!!

 

Dianne

[birdylady]

Hi,

 

We just took this trip the first week in March on Mariner. First, let me say, we LOVED the Mariner. Make sure you get to see the Ice show. Even hubby enjoyed it. And definitely consider going to CHOPS. It is so good we went twice!

 

PR - We didn't get there till 3pm. We decided to take what they call an evening tour of PR. I think it was about $25 a person. We were on an A/C bus with a good tour guide. After seeing the city, we had the choice of getting off at the downtown shopping area or going right back tot he ship. We got off for some shopping. The only problem was this was probably around 5/5:30 and most shops close around 6. The downtown shopping area is a fairly short walk back to the ship. My parents (in their 70s) did this with us and enjoyed it too. Sadly we weren't that impressed with PR.

 

St. Martin - We also did a tour here. We got off the ship and went to the taxi area. We did the outer island tour. If you have 6 or more people it's $25 per person. Hubby & I waited less than 5 minutes and more people came up. For just the 2 of us, it would have been $45 each. We had another great tour guide. Had a great tour and stopped at a couple different places, including St. Martin and Orient Beach.

 

Then we also did the Segway tour of the boardwalk. Hubby wanted to do this, but I thought for sure I would break my leg (or neck) since I'm not the most coordinated person. I HAD A BLAST! Tanya was a SUPER tour guide.

 

St. Thomas - We did the nautilus sub. It was nice opportunity to be underwater and check things out, for a non-scuba person like me. Hubby does scuba but he liked it too. To be honest, he thought that would be the highlight of the trip, but the Segway was the IT!

 

Also in St. Thomas we did the skyride. I am not good with heights, but it was a nice thing to do with a GREAT view from the top. They also have parrots up there and one of the women up there does a free show with the parrots. Afterwards, we walked around and did some shopping.

 

My parents went to synagogue hill to see the oldest synagogue in the US (I believe that's the deal). They took a cab there but unfortunately the hill is so steep, cabs don't go up there so they had to walk up and down the hill themselves. They did enjoy seeing it though.

 

Have a super time!

Erika

[critterchick]

If you want something a little more exciting, book the America's Cup Yacht race through the ship (you can't book it independently). We've done it twice in St. Maarten and a couple of time in Mexico, too. The boats are genuine retired America's Cup yachts. We raced Stars & Stripes I, the same one that Dennis Connor used, against Stars & Strips II and Canada II, and beat them twice. You can be an active crewmember (there are 3-4 professionals on each boat) or do something less strenous like timekeeper, bartender or iceberg watcher if you don't want to overexert yourself.

 

If you want to take a day sail to St. John, book with Captain Bobby on Rumbaba Charters or Captain Pat on the Ike Witt. I liked the Rumbaba trip better because their lunch is amazing, but Captain Pat took us to a more out of the way spot for snorkelling, which was quite interesting. On that one, you don't have do anything strenuous, LOL. With 6 of you, you'll have the boat to yourselves (the small charters only hold 6 passengers), so you can set your own itinerary for the day, too.

 

I've been two San Juan twice in the past 2 years, and have stayed onboard both times. Getting in at 3:00 makes it impossible to do anything but a city tour (I'm not big on those) or walk up to the fort, which I was too lazy to do.:o