Great itinerary and wonderful service make the Monarch an outstanding cruise
Written: Feb 11 '02 (Updated Mar 05 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: See a new country every day, convenience, service, activities, excursions
Cons: So many things to do, so little time
The Bottom Line: This was our first cruise and we loved it! There is truly something for everyone.
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| yaelcow's Full Review: Royal Caribbean Monarch of the Seas |
San Juan is charming - it is definitely worth tacking an extra day on to your trip to see it. We stayed at the Wyndham Old San Juan and were very pleased.
9/2 We took a small bus tour to the El Yunque rain forest. First we stopped at Loquillo Beach. The rain forest was nice, but we hardly got to walk around in it.
Ship check-in was at 2pm and was a breeze. The Royal Caribbean rooms are known to be small, but we didn't feel cramped. We explored all 12+ floors of the ship. The ship is so big with so many places to hang out, that you never feel crowded.
Our dinner table had people from New Jersey, St. Petersburg, Canary Islands, and Puerto Rico. Our waiter was Singh from India and he was hilarious! The menu was insane - 8 appetizers, salad, 6 entrees, 5 desserts - and you could have as many of each as you wanted. There were also an assistant waitress, a head waitress, and a bartender.
The first night of the cruise we had a muster drill to practice what to do in case of emergency. We then stood on the promenade deck as we left San Juan's city lights for the moonlit ocean. Then the party started on the pool deck - a Caribbean band and flowing drinks with umbrellas in souvenir glasses. The pool deck was packed. The moon was full and glimmering on the water. The clouds lit up. The wind gently flowed by. We were cruising!
9/3 We woke up docked in St. Thomas. One of the wonders of cruising is waking up and looking out your window and seeing that you are in a new place.
We took the kayaking eco-tour in the mangroves. A bus took us across the hills of the island and through the capital, Charlotte Amalie, which is US-like. The trip was great - we snorkeled and saw a baby barracuda, conch, lobster, eel, and upside down jellyfish.
After lunch at the buffet on the ship, we took a taxi to Megan's Bay - which was voted one of the 10 most beautiful beaches in the world. The bay is truly beautiful, but unfortunately it was cloudy and drizzly while we were there. I should mention that most of the people spend their time in St. Thomas shopping - there are literally hundreds of shops with lots of jewelry.
Back on the ship, the drinks of the day were "Mango Tango" and "Blue Monday" and we listened to the Caribbean band and watched as we left the port. I was not prepared for how prom-like formal dinner would be!
9/4 St. Maarten is Dutch, St. Martin is French - they are both parts of the same island. We grabbed a taxi to Orient Bay. St. Martin was a little more rural than St. Thomas but basically similar. Orient Bay is known as the French Riveria of the Caribbean - it is very large and has lots of blues and greens in the water. We got chairs and an umbrella and were constantly bombarded by people selling necklaces and everyone wanted to braid my hair. But it was still a beautiful and action-packed beach - there were jet skis and parasailers.
We returned to the ship and had lunch and took a water taxi to the capital of the Dutch side - Phillipsburg. The main street is packed with shops and people and is brightly painted, but slightly run down. Again, tons of jewelry shops. Some stores with 3 for $10 t-shirts in the window sold diamonds inside! We tasted Guavaberry juice - the local liquor - but it tasted like cough syrup to me. We did get great jerk spices.
9/5 The people of Antigua (an-TEE-ga) are the most charming we encountered on our trip. We took the 4x4 jeep ride around the island and had a wonderful time. Our guide even stopped at his friend’s house on the way! We saw amazing views of Nelson’s Dockyard and the entire island and then were taken to a nice beach for swimming and drinks. After lunch we took a cab to Dickenson Bay. Joe, the well-known local cab driver, took us there and picked us up. The beach was quite empty and very lovely – with hotels dotting it so you could get drinks and souvenirs. The main city had shops and booths in the street where you could get steel drums and other hand made souvenirs.
9/6 St. Lucia (Loo-sha) is very verdant and lush - hills and valleys with tropical plants, palm trees, and rain forest. We chose a tour of the island. The first stop was a lookout point over Castries (kast-REESE). The next stop was Anse-la-Ray (Anse means "bay"), which is a traditional and charming fishing village. We drove through banana plantations and stopped for a lovely photo of the Pitons, St. Lucia's 2 famous peaks that jut thousands of feet right out of the ocean. We drove into a drive-in volcano and saw bubbling hot mud and sulfur spews. We then went to botanical gardens that were my favorite part. Then we had lunch including "cheesy breadfruit".
The catamaran sail up the coast was lovely. We pulled into Anse Couchon (pigs bay) for swimming, vendors kayaked out to our boat to sell conch shells and other such items! "I'm Mr. Cheap. No one has things cheaper than me." "I'm Rock Bottom. As the sun goes down, my prices go down." :)
We stopped in beautiful Marigot Bay and headed back to our ship.
Our dinner mates spent the say at Sandals St. Lucia (a couple is only $60 for the entire day with full use of everything and all you can eat and drink). They ran into a lot of ship’s crew there. It was French night at dinner then the "Newly and Not So Newlywed Game" - people revealed a lot. It was hilarious.
9/7 Bridgetown is the capital of Barbados, we only saw the industrial outskirts. We took the 9:15am tour to Harrison's Cave. The beaches we drove past were gorgeous, as was Steven Segal's $40 million home. This island was much more built up and Westernized than the others. It was sort of like a little England - the schools, justice system - complete with roundabouts and crazy prices.
The flower forest is perched high up so you can see all the way to the ocean, but it was only ok compared with the garden on St. Lucia. I would recommend taking the 8:15 tour if you are going to this cave, because of crowds we had to wait over an hour to get in. The cave was really stunning - rooms of stalagmites and tites, pools, waterfalls, and everything was lit up to create a very dramatic effect. But the trip wasted a good part of our day, so we didn't get a good feel for this island.
After lunch on the ship, we took a cab to Folkstone Underwater Park ($15 each way!). There were locals there (our first time going somewhere the locals went) and no other tourists. We snorkeled for a while and saw things I hadn't seen before, but it wasn't spectacular.
This was the gala night on the ship. We got formal photos taken (these are the ones we ended up buying). Lots of people on the ship had their hair braided by now. We stood in line to take photos of the gala midnight buffet before people ate it. It’s crazy what they can do with food! We also discovered a bunny rabbit made out of a towel, wearing my sunglasses, on our bed!
9/8 At Sea
The shopping mall had a huge crazy sale on this last day – worth waiting to buy RC logo items on the last day. Also worth waiting to see all the portraits on the last day and just buy the best ones. At breakfast, we saw hundreds of flying fish, flying out of the way of the boat. They would fly very far and skip over the water before splashing back in!
We spent our day sunning, drinking tropical drinks, listening to the music, watching the pool olympics and "horse racing", and taking occasional dips in the pools.
We packed up our stuff, which had to be outside the room before we left for dinner. We went to the farewell show which was ok - a bit of juggling, comedy, musical, etc. Dinner was international night & the waiters sang and there were flags everywhere. We were sad that it was our last night out on the open sea.
9/9 Last Day
We got up early, had breakfast, and waited around in the lounge until they called our flight number, which meant we could leave the ship. Then we found our luggage in the sea of luggage in the terminal on shore and checked our bags from the terminal to the airport. Then we walked around the city streets - the place was entirely different than when we walked around in the pouring rain. We wandered down the narrow streets and found little shops. We had lunch in a cute café, and then it was time to head to the airport and to the long flight home.
Small notes:
· Don’t worry about sundries – on your way out of the ship, they have ice-cold water and sunscreen waiting for you to buy.
· At dinner you can order a bottle of wine and they will keep it for you and bring it out each night until you finish it – this is cheaper than buying by the glass.
· Lots of people bought lots of liquor, but the ship takes it away from you until the end of the cruise.
· Taxis are very convenient on the islands - most places you can share a cab with someone and/or the cab driver will come back to get you when you tell him to. Sometimes cab drivers will wait for the cab to fill up or charge you more because there are fewer people in the cab.
· Consider email (50cents/min) instead of ship to shore calls ($8/min) and wasting precious island time figuring out phone cards while vendors harass you.
· While the cruise itself is relatively inexpensive, keep in mind that you will have to tip four people, and their salary comes entirely from tips – expect to pay about $150/couple/week.
· Adding to the cost of the cruise is alcohol, excursions (run from $10-$100 each), spa treatments, gambling, taxis (can be $5-$15 each way), souvenirs, etc. Allow about $100/person/day for doing things on each island, unless you just take a cab to the nearest beach or get off the boat and shop.
Recommended:
Yes
Best Suited For: Couples
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Epinions.com ID:
yaelcow
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Member: Yael
Location: San Francisco Bay Area, CA
Reviews written: 5
Trusted by: 3 members
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