CRUISING THE EASTERN CARIBBEAN
Who says cruises are for old people, honeymooners and families or even that you can’t have fun on a cruise in your 20s? One of our travel highlights was the time we spent a week cruising the beautiful islands of Eastern Caribbean and is something we highly recommend you do when you are young.
Here is our travel itinerary and what we did on each island, spoilers - lots of adventures.
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About Our Ship: The Carnival Victory
The Carnival Victory is a cruise liner that holds 2754 guests and has 14 decks, two pools (with waterslide included), spas, a casino, a nightclub...the list goes on. It was hard to get bored on here.
Our cruise was all inclusive so the diet we had worked on prior to our holiday would easily be thrown off in the one week we spent here. Buffet breakfast, pizza parlour, ice cream spots, lunch, dinner and to top it off...room service - it was hard to hide our food babies from the cameras.
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Highlights of the Cruise Ship
One of our highlights of the cruise would be the performances they put on every night. We were able to see several comedy club nights which were great as we love watching stand up comedy. The nightly stage shows included a variety of plays, magic shows and performances which were a great way to end the night.
Day 1. St. Thomas
First stop on our cruise was the beautiful isle of St. Thomas. To say we were excited is an understatement. Not only would this be the first stop on our cruise, it would be the first stop on our America trip which meant expectations were high. We stumbled out of bed jet lagged as hell, crawled to breakfast and after a few coffees disembarked onto the island of St. Thomas.
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Parasailing in the Caribbean
We had booked an onshore adventure through the cruise liner to start our morning. After a brief introduction and life jackets equipped we were high above St Thomas as we parasailed around the beachfront. Our intrigue with the local beach blonde Australian guide lead to many questions on how he scored such an amazing job.
The tour ended just before lunch so we had plenty of time to walk around the town. We continued our day with a Skyride to the top of the town known as paradise point. Here we could see three cruise liners docked and the thousands of tourists walking through the town. Jess being the only one of legal age to drink ordered the local bushwacker cocktail which contained dark rum, Kahlua, Dark Creme de Cacao, milk and ice, it was the strongest cocktail we have had to date.
Even though we had overcast weather, our first day expectations had been met and our cruise was off to a good start.
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Day 2. Day At Sea
Thank God there was a day at sea for us to catch our breath. Coming straight from the Perth, Australia directly to the cruise meant we were severely jet lagged. I would love to say we spent a whole day in the sun, relaxing by the pool and putting our diet to shame - but we slept in.
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Luckily for us the cruise had prepared a few lazy activities that we could stumble into. We couldn't remember the last time we played B.I.N.G.O. and it was more fun than we should admit. As we slowly regained some energy we headed to the top deck for a mini golf competition followed by a dip in the pool.
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Jess won a prize?
We ended our day at sea with a trivia night, which Jess won a prize and still displays in her bedroom. We spent some more time in the pool as we watched a movie at the Dive in Movies.
Our body clocks may not of reset yet but we eagerly anticipated the second island on our stop, Barbados.
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Day 3. Barbados
When we looked out of our cabin balcony as we arrived into Barbados we had a sense that this was one of the more built up islands of the Caribbean. There were quite a few industrial buildings and operations in the shipyard, which still couldn’t deter us away from Barbados’s natural beauty.
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Our activity was planned for the afternoon so we had the morning off to walk around the town. We explored through local markets purchasing fresh fruit and tropical trinkets to take home. We felt very safe as we talked to locals about life in Barbados to learn more about the culture of the island.
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Snorkeling At a Shipwreck & A Pirate Party
We were due back around lunch time to start our Pirate Party and shipwreck snorkel adventure. Our tour bus dropped us off at a pirate theme boat which took us around the island to a shipwreck. It seemed surreal snorkelling above a coral covered ship, we only wished we had our scuba license to explore further.
The afternoon was a blur - our pirate adventure concluded with plenty of local rum and a party on the top deck. This is still one of the top stories we always share about or Caribbean cruise, the time we had a pirate party in Barbados.
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Day 4. St Lucia
At St Lucia we had our most adventurous experience on our Eastern Caribbean cruise. We had planned to go Zip Lining through the forest and we were very excited to do this when we originally booked all our cruise tours.
Our tour bus drove us from the cruise terminal, through the island and into the mountains. Even though it was quite a long drive to get to, it was worth it to see the luscious green surroundings. We arrived at the tour location to several bus loads of cruise passengers.
Zip Lining through the Forest
Our tour included a gondola ride through the mountains as we rose high above the forest to get to our starting point. We then spent the next few hours zipping through the forest which was truly spectacular.
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Day 5. St Kitts
We felt that we witnessed a sense of history whilst travelling St Kitts. Our bus ride through stormy weather took us through the backstreets of local townships. We got to see local markets and a snapshot into the lives on the St Kitts residents.
Historical Fort Spotting Tour
We arrived at our historical tour which included going around St Kitts Fort spotting. Some of the buildings that we saw were from the 1700s. We were glad to book this tour as it was quite cheap and offered a unique adventure to our time.
Day 6. St Maarten
The sun rose on the last day of our island hopping and even though we were sad, we had managed to squeeze in two tours.
The first stop was a Horseback Riding tour in the warm waters of St Maarten. Both of us had never rode a horse by ourselves before, but the nerves were quickly diminished by the views.
Visiting the Coolest Beach in the World
One of the lessons we learnt in St Maarten was when things go wrong you find travel gems. We had originally booked to go helmet diving in St. Maarten but after our horseback tour we arrived at our pickup destination to only find that our tour had been cancelled.
With still hours left in our last cruise day we jumped into a taxi and asked them where the most visited tourist attraction was. They informed us about Maho Beach and that we would have to be quick to get back to the cruise line in time.
Boy are we glad we came here, being blown away by the jet engines just metres above you as the landed on one of the smallest runways in the world is a sight that should be seen with your own eyes.
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Day 7. San Juan, Puerto Rico
Maybe it was that we knew this was the end or that we knew we had a flight to catch the next day, but our time in San Juan was unfortunately not very exciting. We had pushed our jet lag to the back of our minds and it had caught up with us. We wish we had the energy to explore the local area but sadly our top 10 things to do in Puerto Rico would include: our hotel bed.
Overall we had a very memorable holiday with thousands of photographs to share our experience. It's hard not to see the value of money in cruises, seeing so much and eating so much at the same time. We eagerly await our next cruise which departs a few days before Christmas this year.
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Cruise Details
Cruise: Carnival Victory 7 Day Eastern Caribbean Cruise
Price: $839 per person triple balcony share.
Booking: Vacations 2 Go
Have you been cruising before? What was your experience we would love to hear from you in the comment section below, on Twitter or Facebook.
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