Cruise Day 1 and 2: Puerto Rico and St. Thomas

 Sunday morning, before going to the ship, we went to church in San Juan.  There was a church building a little over a mile from our hotel.  Sacrament meeting was much like many sacrament meetings we have been to except it was in Spanish and there was no air conditioning.  There were lots of windows and fans, so it was not too uncomfortable in a short sleeve white shirt and tie, but I felt sorry for the bishopric and missionaries in their suits.  After church we returned to the hotel and checked out and returned our car to the airport and then took a taxi back to the to the cruise terminal, which was less than two miles from our hotel. It was really nice to have the car while in San Juan.  We were able to go places and see things we would not have been able to do without the car.

When we arrived at the ship, we breezed through all of the preliminary paperwork and lines. We then boarded the Serenade of the Seas.  This was the first time we had been on a Radiance class ship.

Once aboard, we went to one of my favorite first day activities: lunch in the Windjammer.  As usual, lunch was very good.  Of course, we had to have desert.  Here are the first of many deserts on the cruise.

We had the traditional first day muster drill, except that it was not a traditional muster drill.  They no longer have the passengers wear their life jackets to muster drill.  There was some discussion of safety issues.  Whatever… It was not the same.  Since we were on deck 10 with all of the high class people, our muster location was the upscale steak restaurant, sitting at the dinner table.  Here is the muster drill.

Our first dinner was great.  Our waiter, Melroy and assistant waiter, Cesar were probably the best we have had.  I will have more about them in later posts.


The next morning, we woke up in St. Thomas.  

  Our shore excursion was snorkeling in Turtle Cove, which is at Buck Island, about 5 miles from St Thomas.  We had a leisurely boat ride to Turtle Cove.  

Once we arrived, we jumped off the boat and started snorkeling.  As might be guessed, Turtle Cove is named after the sea turtles that live there.  We saw several of them.  We also say a sting ray and a lot of really cool looking fish. It was a nice place to snorkel with visibility about 50 feet. 

As we dried off after getting back on the boat, we left Buck Island.  This is my sweetheart in the foreground and Buck Island and Turtle Cove in the background.  The water is such a pretty blue in the Caribbean. 

We had a nice boat ride back to St. Thomas.  

 Once back on the ship, a shower felt good.  After getting all cleaned up, Mom and Becky went shopping and John and I went to play miniature golf.  This is the view of St. Thomas from deck 13 where the golf course is. It is such a pretty place.

 The golf course was fun too.

 After dinner Monday night, we returned to our room and found a towel critter.  I believe it is an elephant, but it could be a cross between a sheep and Jar Jar Binks.

Puerto Rico (We’re Going on a Cruise)

 It had been over two and a half years since Mom and I had been on a cruise, so we felt that we needed to go on one.  Also John and Becky wanted to go on a cruise, so we decided to go.  Shortly after the last time we went on a cruise that started in Puerto Rico (2005) we heard about the bioluminescent bay, where tiny plankton like creatures glow in the dark when the water moves.  There are only 5 locations in the world that have the type of plankton that glow all year long and three of them are in Puerto Rico with the best one only 30 miles from San Juan.  We decided in 2005 that “someday”, we should do another cruise from Puerto Rico so we can see it.  Well, “someday” finally arrived.

In order to have plenty of time to see the bioluminescent bay and have time to see other cool things in San Juan, we left on a flight out of San Francisco on Thursday night for a cruise that left on Sunday evening.  Our first flight arrived in Ft. Lauderdale early Friday morning.  Since we did not sleep well on the plane, some of us took a nap and some took advantage of the free WiFi to write to Joseph.  

John is good at yawning.

  We arrived in San Juan in the early afternoon on Friday, rented a car, drove to the hotel, grabbed a bite to eat and then went to the beach about three blocks from the hotel.  The water was about 84 degrees and felt wonderful. 

We played for quite a while.  John and I snorkeled a bit but saw nothing but sand and a couple of fish.  After the beach, we went back to the hotel to our rooms, took showers and got the good night of sleep that we did not get on the plane the night before.

The next day, Saturday was decreed to be an A+ day.

It started with breakfast in the hotel and a return trip to the beach.  After that we returned to the hotel to shower and get ready for the rest of the day.  We drove into Old San Juan and drove past the forts and other interesting sights.  We then parked and went to Ben and Jerry’s for lunch.  

 The food was really good and the ice cream was what you would expect from Ben and Jerry’s – excellent.

After lunch, on our way back to the car, we passed an old really cool Catholic church.  We went in and looked around.

 While we were in the church it started to rain, so we waited out the storm in the church.

 We passed one of the old city walls on our way back to the parking lot.

We had reservations for Saturday evening at Laguna Grande for the bioluminescent bay tour, but we had time to stop and visit the El Yunque rain forest and see a few things.  Most of the rain forest was closed to visitors after the damage from hurricane Irene a couple of weeks earlier.  One of the main roads just opened up the day we went.  This is what it looked like where we parked. 

 It seems that it rained more in the rain forest than it did in the city so the waterfall we stopped at was flowing very vigorously. 

 We drove a little way further up the road to the tower, which was closed.  Even though the tower was closed, the view overlooking the valley below to the ocean was still pretty nice.

As we left to drive to the bioluminescent bay we got stuck behind large trucks that had been working on clearing the roads and it took FOREVER to get out of the rain forest and back to the main road.  We ended up getting to the Kayaking place very late and barely made it in time to go with the group to the kayaks and paddle to Laguna Grande.  See Becky and John’s blog post with photos from the kayaking company.  Conditions are just right in Laguna Grande for the little organisms that absorb light during the day and then release it at night when the water is disturbed around them.  Laguna Grande has over a million of these little guys per gallon of water.  It was really amazing to see it in person, but it was not something you can capture with a camera as the light level is pretty low and you can only see it after your eyes are adjusted to the dark.  Then it is really cool.  There were a lot of mosquitoes that we had to fight, but I am glad we went.