Caribbean Cruise

28 March 2011 - 8 April 2011

5 September 2011

Finally! We've been back from the cruise five months and just now got all the pictures and "things" together to post the pages.

We had a fantastic time on the cruise and made new friends. The journals have been posted, so read and see our trip!

PREVIOUS POST: PRE-CRUISE

The days are flying by now. We received our electronic cruise documents and luggage tags on 7 February. Randy immediately set to work turning the Origami folding paper tags project into a powerpoint file, print it out, punch holes and laminate the tags into two sided pieces of art! He even has the ties to use to attach the tags onto the luggage the morning we board.

I've also built a page for the Ship journal and posted some official photos and other information. Sea Days are also built. Note the links are now available to the right.

And we have startted looking at excursions. We've pre-booked one on Barbados.

2010

Well, we've waited long enough for a cruise. After changing our plans this year, we reached the point that we really needed a cruise and really wanted sea, warm air, and tropical beaches. Randy did a lot of comparisons and research and found a cruise with a number of ports we've never been to on past sailings and a couple of ports we visited on our honeymoon. Lots of ports and few sea days - just our kind of cruise!

We have booked on the MS Maasdam, Holland America. We've sailed with Holland America several times and with the exception of one cruise, have had wonderful vacations. It will have been more than 4 years since we last cruised (Cruise 2007 still links to the pictures from that trip) and we really like the smaller ships in the "S" class of Holland America Line.

This page is the beginning of our planning and preparing for the trip. As we gather information for the ports, or other details, we will update the page. The column to the right will eventually have links to pages about each of the ports as well as daily notes of the trip.

Update: 1 January 2011: Pages have been built for each of the islands we will visit. Next update will be pages for the Ship and Sea Days.

Pre-Booking the Cruise and Initial Plans

We booked a Deluxe Verandah Suite for this cruise as we received an excellent price fo the 11 day cruise. We enjoy having the larger room and balcony since it becomes our "home" for the cruise. Additionally there are some perks that are added in such as dry cleaning/laundry and use of the Neptune Lounge (great cappuccino, afternoon snacks, assistance from the concierge) that make the entire cruise experience that much more enjoyable for us.

HAL DelVerSuite HAL3D

Hotel in Fort Lauderdale:

Even though this is August 2010, we've learned that hotels in Florida in March get booked quickly. While we think this cruise date will be after most of the Spring Breakers, we decided to go ahead and make advance reservations.
We wanted to be near the Cruise Terminal and since Carey's a Hilton member with elite standing we checked out the Hilton Fort Lauderdale Marina, Beautiful looking hotel and views of the port as well as the Intercoastal Waterway. Best part - they had availability so we booked!