Category: Caribbean

Caribbean Cruise 2024 – Day 6 – St Kitts & Nevis

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We both woke up early and watched from our bed, whilst drinking coffee, as we pulled alongside the pier in St Kitts…….what a decedent life style we live 🤣.
It was a grey day with the cloud hanging very low on Mount Liamuiga, there was no view across to Nevis. The extraordinary sight of a bright rainbow coming out of the bottom of the rain cloud into the sea put a smile on our faces.
Breakfast this morning consisted of yogurt and fresh berries, John followed this with a full English cooked meal, whilst I had smoked salmon with cream cheese on a toasted bagel. After breakfast we returned to the cabin and people watched ….it was windy and wet. We decided to wait a bit before going ashore and I took the chance to have an after breakfast nap……after all I’ve been up early every day 🤣🤣. I was finally ready to disembark at about mid-day. By now the sun was shinning and we walked the several thousand steps to the cruise terminal entrance. Once again we had not booked anything…we have been here 5 times before. Last time we went to Nevis by speed boat and explored the island with a Princess excursion. Prior to this we have always taken the train through the old sugar cane plantations. Princess had offered us this trip at a discounted price of $145 per person …the 3/4 hours would have cost us $290 ……it seems that the Americans and Canadians don’t think this is a lot but to us British that is a shed load of money….So we wandered down the quay and caught sight of local a tours lady…She offered us a 2.5/3 hour island tour for $25 per person …Yes Please !!! We had to wait 10 minutes so she could coerce another 3 people into doing the tour…..Castella went and got her air conditioned mini bus and off we went.

A quick drive around Basseterre, the capital, showed us a variety of sights ranging from schools and universities to churches of all denominations. We headed along the coast road passing Bloody Point, where the French and English had combined forces and massacred over 2000 Caribs. From here we went to the Old Road Rum area.


Continuing on passed one of the oldest churches and Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park.
Eventually the coast road got to where the Atlantic and Caribbean Seas meet. We stopped at a view point to take photos.


Our journey took us a little way inland and we enjoyed the beautiful street art prior to stopping at the Lava Rock.

We walked out to the viewing platform and enjoyed the spectacular jet black rock formations. These are formed by lava, from the volcano. As an aside, it’s probably important to explain that all the natural sand on St Kitts is black volcanic sand. One or two of the upmarket resorts do have yellow sand which is imported. There were a few souvenir stalls at the Black Lava Beach and I purchased a nice little leather purse for my forex and a hand painted Christmas decoration.

Our final stop was a view point over Frigate Bay, this offers splendid views of both the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.

It was a superb tour with lots of information and we saw a great deal of the island which we had never seen before. Back in the cruise terminal we stopped to buy…..yes you guessed, John a t-shirt…..they had 2 for $10, as we like a bargain it would have seemed rude to buy one so we ended up with two!!!

Back on board we changed out of our hot and sweaty clothes, the humidity had been very high, and we headed to the buffet for a light lunch and a few games of cards.
Tonight is the second evening of “The Voice of the Ocean”, auditions, which we are looking forward to hearing….don’t worry Dad I am not singing…..for those of you who don’t know me well I have a voice like a howling dog !!!! More about our evening tomorrow…Thank you for travelling along with us and thanks to those of you who have left such encouraging comments, we are glad you are enjoying our trip.

Cruising the Caribbean 2024 – Day 5 – Tortola – British Virgin Islands.

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Before I we move on to our first port day, we’d like to share the end of day 4…….It was a black tie evening, so John looked his usual handsome self in his “bib and tucker” DJ or as the Americans say in his tuxedo. I put on my newly discovered ( I can’t remember buying it and I’ve never worn it!!!) black evening dress with a beaded top along with one of my many evening over jacket…..We had decided to go to Capri Dinning room and try to get a table with Ernesto’s serving lady …but alas it was full so they took us down to Santorini Dinning room and guess what? …….we were seated in Ernesto’s area…it couldn’t have worked out better if we planned it. We both started our meal with crab cakes and followed on with roast duck, adding a pecan caramel cheese cake as dessert……it was immaculately cooked and served…now this is the standard of food we expect . If you are wondering why Johns not smiling in all the photos it’s because he is self conscious of his broken front tooth!!!!

Feeling more than satisfied with our supper we waddled along to the theatre. It filled up quickly and it was good to see at least 3 officers ensuring that people didn’t save seats etc. The show was “Spotlight Bar” . It really was of the West End, or perhaps we should say Broadway standard. Both the choreography and the vocals were superb. We delivered a standing ovation before hot footing it along to the Princess Live Lounge. One of our favourite games to watch is the “Yes No” game….it never fails to amuse us. The contestants are asked lots of chit-chat questions and they are out if they say yes or no …if they last 3 minutes they win a bottle of champagne. Two ladies managed it…it never fails to be hysterically funny…we met the nice couple we’d sat next to the previous evening at supper and they decided to play but unfortunately they weren’t called up. After this we stayed where we were and enjoyed the first audition of “The Voice of the Ocean”. 7 contestants sang….the standard was amazing, eventually we voted for a lady who had belted out “ Black Velvet” and our second vote went to another lady whose rendition of “My heart will go on” was better than the original. …….so that was the end of Day 4 …what a great day we had, had at sea.

DAY 5 – Tortola ….I’ve never visited Tortola before and it is 30 some years since John was here last.
We watched from out balcony as we approached and docked. After breakfast we made our way to the gangway and disembarked. We hadn’t really decided what to do, but thought we might hire a taxi to show us the sights of the island. The cruise terminal area is so like most of those found on Caribbean Islands…posh diamond and gold shops and expensive mass produced souvenirs. Having asked a nice local where to find a taxi we made our way as directed. Before getting to the small individual taxis we found open sided taxi buses offering 2 hour island tours for $25 per person….it was a no brainier and we hopped on to the back seat.
it was a really informative tour, with several stops for photos, toilets, shopping etc. we went through the capital, Road Town, then we stopped at various view points on the climb up to Mount Sage National park.

The tour then wound its way back down the mountain to Cane Garden Bay. This looked a beautiful resort town.

We stopped at the only remaining rum distillery on the island, before heading along to the beach area. The beach was lively with sun-loungers, parasols, people swimming and the usual beach sellers. We had 15 minutes here, in which time we managed to buy John the essential t-shirt, just another to add to his massive collection!!, and he paddled in the sea whilst taking a photo.

The tour then ended back at the Cruise ship.

Wandering through the modern terminal area we stopped to buy a Christmas decoration…..for those of you who don’t know us we have Christmas tree decorations from special places we have visited around the world …we are very global at Christmas time.

We are looking forward to another enjoyable evening …more about that tomorrow,

Caribbean Cruise 2024 – Day 3 & 4 – at Sea.

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Our first evening meal went smoothly. We tend to find that the Sail Away supper is always ok but never spectacular and our meal in Amalfi Restaurant proved our philosophy correct….

We participated in a couple of quizzes in the Princess Live Lounge and then headed for bed.
During our supper I said to John that I thought I’d seen Ernesto Constantino, our all time favourite waiter from a previous cruise on a different Princess ship. I messaged him and sure enough he was on The Enchanted Princess.
The following morning we headed for Amalfi Restaurant for breakfast and Ernesto greeted us and sat us at a window seat in his serving area. Having a great waiter makes all the difference to our cruising experience. It was good catching up with him and learning that he will be a granddaddy next year. We had a super breakfast and a good laugh…

The rest of the day we spent sat on deck playing cards….our good friends Geoff & Caz are responsible for introducing us to “Five Crowns” …a rather addictive card game…which for once I can give John some stiff competition!!!!

After taking part in “Famous places and People” Quiz…in which we came second, we changed for supper and went for our 6.30 reservation. ….Let’s put it this way ..we hope things can only get better…..we were quickly shown to a table…40 minutes later a waitress took our order, no introduction or welcome only a faint apology for the delay and a grumble from her that her new assistant didn’t know what he was doing….Order taken …..John broke a tooth on the rock hard bread rolls…. Another 40 minutes passed before the starters arrived by which time we were feeling a bit disgruntled…eventually the main courses followed on….they were so delayed I’d almost forgotten we’d had a starter…We struck up a nice conversation with the couple on the table next to us …it was their first Ocean cruise…we did reassure them that dinning was usually a far, far better experience than what we were having…let’s hope so anyway.
By the time we had eventually got through our elongated dinning experience we had missed the entertainment we had decided to go to. Instead we returned to Princess Live lounge and enjoyed a couple of unusual quiz type music and movie themed games.
Today Monday 18th November…we had a repeat of yesterday… Ernesto treated us to some extra strawberries and blueberries with our breakfast yogurt. We are trying to change our dinning reservations for the second part of the cruise, to fixed time dinning so that we can be in his restaurant and then at least we know we’ll get great service….however dinning reservations didn’t know if that was going to be possible…we’ll have to wait and see.

We did, however, manage to book into The Crown Grill for Supper on our Wedding Anniversary. We also went to the photo gallery because they have kindly gifted us a photo shoot for our anniversary and we booked it in the studio before supper on our special day. The young man was so upbeat and enthusiastic about it that we are really looking forward to it.

More cards on deck…it’s a bright blue sky and none of the grey cloud from yesterday. We decided to skip lunch and instead had a very cheeky gelato ….. it’s formal night tonight , so we need time to get into our “glad rags”…. More about that tomorrow…

In the meantime we say “cheers” to you all and thank you for joining us on our cruise.

Caribbean 2024 Day 1 & 2

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Yesterday we set off from home for a 3 week holiday. It is to celebrate our 10th Wedding Anniversary. Those of you who know us will remember John proposed to me in the Caribbean.

We flew directly to Miami..good flight…spoilt by the huge queue to get through immigration….just under 2 hrs we made it through…for the first time ever we used Uber for a lift to our hotel in Fort Lauderdale…it was $68 a good price…..how were we to know that there are several Marriott Courtyards of Federation Highway !! Another Uber for $21 got us to the right one. We were exhausted and went straight to bed…..Unfortunately our old red 10 year old cases had expired and we had brand new John Lewis yellow ones….one is already smiling at us!!

We woke up very early 3.00am ….Uk time was 7.00 am body clock all adrift!
After the necessary trip to the bathroom we both managed another long sleep and finally made it down for breakfast at 9.30am…USA time. We used our new skill to call another Uber and for $45 he took us to the port…dropping us at pier 21 to embark on the Enchanted Princess. Wow!!!… to say we were amazed is an understatement…the queue for the terminal went right the way to the end of the pier and back around again. It took us an hour to join the end of the queue and another hour and three quarters to embark on the ship…nearly 3 hours most of it queueing in the hot sun….come on Princess that is not good enough…..they should have allocated embarkation time slots like they used to, so that customs scanning doesn’t get overwhelmed … the actual embarking with Princess staff and getting our medallions was only a matter of minutes.
After dropping our carry-on bags off in our cabin…..an obstructed view balcony especially selected as it looks over the middle of the roof of the lifeboat…so I can’t look down and feel seasick…..there is always method in my madness!!! ….we hotfooted it up on to the sun deck for a Key West Cooler mocktail…”Cheers everyone!” And a light lunch – hummus, pitta bread, olives salad. Followed by fresh melon and pineapple…….lovely….two glasses of water and we are ready to fight the crowds for a slot on top deck to watch the sail away……..The usual array of singing, dancing, shouting, cheering, the “love boat tune” played on the ships horn and the pilot boats guided us out of the port 50 minutes late but yeah!!!! We are on our way.

Deciding we needed a rest we descended to our cabin….and our suitcases were already inside awaiting the unpacking….John kindly helped me and we soon had it all in the draws and wardrobes and the cases stashed neatly under the bed. Our cabin Steward for the next 20 nights came and introduced himself…”Lucky” from the Philippines. I think we are lucky because he instantly said he’d change the bar fridge for Diet Coke and he went and got us a kettle for our early morning coffee….which incidentally I bring with us….he also made certain that our shower has a flexible removal pipe, as I don’t like the fixed ones which don’t allow you to deep clean individual areas!!!!! I was very impressed with him so he will be lucky as I can already feel a big tip going his way..

So far so good….we have booked a table for supper at 6.20 every evening, so hopefully we won’t have to queue…but if we do we do…..

Two sea days now, then an island which is new to me..Tortola….but in the mean time let’s eat, drink and be merry…..

September 2024 update

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Just a little update so our faithful followers don’t think that we’ve forgotten them….

John and I tend not to travel very much over the British summer months..Why? You may well ask…Well! It’s when everyone else travels and we tend to have visitors at that time of year…..it is also our holiday planning time as well as our book writing time…..some of you may know that John has had 26 books published by Amberley Publishing Company. We have had our first jointly written book published and we are working on another for which we are contracted to deliver at the beginning of 2025. John, as usual, has more contracts spread out over the next few years. So the British Summertime tends to be a busy time for us.

What’s on the cards for 2J’s World of Adventure…..

We are about to spend a week in The New Forest with my 92 year old Dad. We hire a house in Lymington for a week…. I will blog some of the week so it can give ideas of what to do and where to go in that area of ‘Our green and pleasant land’. We use a company called New Forest Cottages to rent a suitable house. We have used them for several years and can thoroughly recommend them as a highly reputable company.



In November we will be off cruising in the Caribbean for 21 days in celebration of our 10th Wedding Anniversary…an area of the world we both love. We will again blog our daily activities, although I suspect much will be sea and sand !!!

The planning for 2025 has started. We had been looking to Safari in Namibia as well as South Africa. However, Namibia seems to have become increasingly expensive and trying to book accommodation within Etosha National Park has proved a frustrating and unenjoyable experience. So, I have ditched it for next year and we will instead stay in a South Africa, spending a month in Pilanesberg and Kruger National Park.

We are also investigating and planing two other adventures….. A trip around Spain, Portugal and Morocco and also a trip to Uzbekistan-the silk route. We are looking to do both of these with tour companies. ……more on this soon as I am trying to secure good prices for both of these trips so that if you decide you fancy one or the other of them you should be-able to get a really good deal. One of the companies starts the tours in the country of the tour, which means our readers across the world will be able to access the same price regardless of their country of origin …you would then be able to book your own flights, direct or indirect depending on what you want to add on, do and of course your budget.

Well that’s all for now….watch out for our New Forest blog and of course the occasional ‘Been there got the t-shirt’ blog.

Many thanks to those of you who have purchased our framed prints. We have been delighted with your highly complimentary responses and we are so pleased that they have all arrived safely and you are enjoying them on the walls of your homes….

Thanks again for your continued following and interest in our travel adventures.