Eastern Caribbean - Solo Cruise!

 Most of you already know that I took an Eastern Caribbean cruise last month. This was my 4th cruise overall but my 1st solo cruise. Overall it was very exciting and I did get a bit lonely but I had a great time.  I'm not going to go into too much detail but most photos will have captions. I hope you like them. :)

Cruise Details: 7 Night Eastern Caribbean Cruise round trip out of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
Ports on the itinerary: Grand Turk, San Juan PR, St. Maarten. Grand Turk however was not visited as the waves were too much that the ship couldn't dock. But it ended up being a good thing.

Ship: I booked my trip on the Eurodam, a Holland America Cruise line. I chose this ship specifically for the itinerary. I took HAL for my first cruise to Alaska. HAL usually caters to an older generation but on this cruise there were all kinds of ages. The ship is also considered mid-size so only about 2100 passengers compared to the much larger ships that range from 3200-6000.

Here are pics of my cabin....all to myself! The window was great. It added so much natural light to the cabin. I was on the lowest deck possible for passengers but steps away from the Guest Services and the elevators. Super convenient.

TV was awesome! Digital programming so tons of movies and TV shows to choose from.

First meal on the ship! Gourmet burger on the lido deck. Delicious burger. Fries were meh.

This is one of the few pics I took of the ship. I didn't take very many this trip. :(

 The next three pics are of the port. Super busy but still very organized. At Port Everglades there were 5 ships docked unloading then loading passengers. The shuttle driver told us that the port can handle up to 9 cruise ships.

That is the butt of one of the Celebrity ships. Ships were parked super close.

Tons of boats sailed by, most of which were yachts.

You can see the Princess ship leaving behind me. Our sail away time was 4:00 but we didn't get moving until almost 5:30.

There were a group of people nearby taking pics so I asked if one would take a picture of me. He did but then his friends jumped in for a second one. Super funny.

Towel animals every night. Chocolates too.

A HAL tote bag was given on the third night.

As I mentioned before Grand Turk was cancelled due to high winds which caused high waves. The first two days on the ship I was not feeling well at all. By the third night it was much calmer and I didn't get sick again for the rest of the cruise.
Since we missed Grand Turk we headed right over to San Juan. We weren't due into San Juan until 12:30pm but our ship was allowed docking early so we got in at 10:00am. I signed up to do a Fort Morro/Old San Juan walking tour at 1:00 so left the ship when it docked at 10:00 and did some shopping. I returned to the ship, dropped off my goodies then joined my tour group at the cruise terminal.
San Juan was the main reason why I booked this cruise. It is a beautiful city but the heat and humidity was crazy bad. I probably would not visit the Caribbean again due to the weather unfortunately. 

Pic taken from the top deck of the ship.

Downtown San Juan in the distance.

Walking to Fort Morro, one of the 2 Spanish forts in San Juan.

In the distance is Fort San Juan Batiste. I didn't have time to visit. :(

The lighthouse is fairly recent so it doesn't blend well with the old charm of the fort.

Entrance into Fort Morro

Central area inside the fort.

 The next few pictures are random pictures I took of the fort. Very beautiful water and views and overall history. Our tour guide gave us a quick 15 minute tour of some areas then we were allowed about 30 minutes to tour on our own.

That "bump" on the wall is actually an iguana walking around.

As you can see the clouds move in fast. It rained on and off during the tour. The rain felt very good since it cooled down but then it would get sunny again and I felt like I literally baking.

More pictures of the streets of Old San Juan...

The Gate to Old San Juan. The city used to be surrounded by a wall.

Pineapple ice cream on the way back to the ship. It was pretty much slush after about 5 minutes.

The next port was St. Maarten. It is a very complex island as half is owned by the French and the other half is owned by the Dutch. The most spoken language is English though and many people speak Creole. It wasn't as hot/humid here as it was in San Juan but still very warm. It also rained quite a bit but only lasted a few minutes at a time.

None of the ship excursions interested me so I booked through a private company called Bernard's Tours. My tour was 6 hours around the island with multiple stops. I loved it. 

Some famous hotel

Iguanas! We got to feed them banana leaves. They're vegetarian. The orange iguanas are the oldest and they no longer can change color. And their tails come off too. But they grow back.

Market area where we could shop for an hour. Sadly most of these souvenirs were cheap trinkets.

These next few pictures are of Mahalo Beach. This thin strip of beach is right next to the island's very busy airport. A 2 lane road separates the beach from the fence at the end of the runway. This place is super popular because not only is it a nice beach but many people watch the planes come in. Also some people have been known to hold onto the fence when a jet is gearing up to take off and it causes a huge gust of wind from the engines. Super crazy and dangerous.

This is one of the smaller planes that come in but the huge jets also land here. The surboard on the left is a chalkboard with the schedule of incoming flights and what size the plane is.

Signs are everywhere letting people know not to hold onto the fence.

Allure of the Seas was with us in St. Maarten. One of the biggest ships from Royal Caribbean. The ship next to it is Discovery, a ship that came all the way from England.

My ship, the Eurodam

This is the Promenade Deck and my favorite deck on the cruse ships. This is usually the only deck that you can walk all the way around the ship without going up/down stairs. It is quiet and shaded and sometimes you can feel a bit of spray from the waves. So relaxing.

Leaving St. Maarten

This is a clear view of how big the Allure really is. The ship next to it (Discovery) holds about 200 less people than the ship I was on so not a big difference.

Another towel animal

These next few pics are of Half Moon Cay. This is a private island owned by the cruise line. It doesn't have a dock so tender boats are used to transport passengers to/from the island. I did not visit.

The End.

Happy Travels!