Cruising the Caribbean…
I hadn’t been on a cruise in a while and March seemed like a great time to go. The kids had different weeks off for Spring Break this year, so we thought, it wouldn’t be fair to take some of them and not the others – let’s just go alone! (Don’t feel TOO bad for them, they’re going to Hawaii with us in a few months 
) We ended up deciding on the Norwegian Dawn and their Southern Caribbean route leaving from San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The cruise we took had the following itinerary:
Day | Port of Call | Arrival | Departure | |
1 | San Juan, Puerto Rico | — | 9:00 p.m. | |
2 | At Sea | — | — | |
3 | Castries, St. Lucia | 8:00 a.m. | 5:00 p.m. | |
4 | Bridgetown, Barbados | 8:00 a.m. | 4:00 p.m. | |
5 | St. John’s, Antigua | 8:00 a.m. | 5:00 p.m. | |
6 | Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, U.S.V.I. | 8:00 a.m. | 5:00 p.m. | |
7 | Tortola, British Virgin Islands | 8:00 a.m. | 5:00 p.m. | |
8 | San Juan, Puerto Rico |
We’d never been to Puerto Rico, and St Lucia, Barbados and Antigua would all be new countries for us so we figured it would be a win/win! We flew into Puerto Rico on Spirit the day before the cruise and spent the afternoon exploring San Juan proper. I had always heard bad things about Spirit, so I was a little hesitant, but the flight was fine, and I posted a full review here for those of you considering the airline. There is Uber in San Juan itself, but not from the airport, so you have to queue up to take a taxi to the port. There was a set price to each area, and it was $21 per taxi to go to the cruise port. We don’t like to risk a cancelled flight, so we flew in the night before. The cruise itself did not leave until 9:00 p.m., so we were able to spend that evening and the first morning of the cruise exploring Old San Juan (See our Old San Juan tour here), and boarded the cruise ship at 1:30 p.m.
The Norwegian Dawn is a Dawn Class ship built in 2002 and was refurbished in 2017. The ship holds 2,340 guests (which is quite small compared to some of the mega ships nowadays). The Dawn is in the middle to low range of Norwegian ships but seemed big enough for us. It had 7 specialty restaurants, 11 bars, a casino, an internet café, an adult pool, a kid’s pool, hot tubs, a gym, a spa, a basketball court and a running track. What it didn’t have is the newer amenities on the Breakaway Plus style ships such as a race track, laser tag or water slides. If you’re going with children you may want to choose one of the larger ships, but to cruise on those you’ll pay more and since itinerary was more important to us – the Dawn served us just fine. It was actually kind of nice not to have loads of kids on the cruise since we didn’t have ours.
We chose an interior state room since we didn’t plan on being in there much, and when we were, we loved the complete darkness. I never take naps at home and I happily grabbed a few of them while on board. It was your standard interior stateroom with a bed, small table, tv, mirror, closet and one outlet. ProTip: Don’t save the extra $10 when it asks about choosing your own room or you might end up above the club like we did – karaoke til midnight in the comfort of our own room lol!
Our room was ready at 2:00 p.m. and as with all cruises we dropped our luggage off before entering the cruise terminal. Norwegian like most cruise lines has its own app, that can be accessed via wi-fi while on the ship. The app has the ships itinerary, keeps track of your dining reservations and has the schedule for the day so you don’t have to lug around a paper copy. Make sure you download it prior to leaving the dock. One place I think Carnival is a head above Norwegian is in the internet package. On Norwegian you can get a social media package which allows you access to popular sites like Facebook and Instagram for $14.99 a day or regular access at $29.99 a day. Carnival offers a social media package for $5 a day which is a lot more affordable. When our kids cruise with us and want access, we tell them if they really want it, they need to pay for it themselves and it only costs them about $40 for a weeklong cruise.
If you haven’t been on a cruise before, dinner is served at the buffet or in the dining room for free, but for an upcharge you can dine in the specialty restaurants. When we booked our cruise we booked late, so there were no reservations left for our specialty dining package. Norwegian reserves half of the reservations for when you are on board the ship, so our plan was to go to each restaurant and secure our reservations for the week. We needn’t have worried though as there was a dining table set up in the atrium as soon as you got on board and you could make all the reservations in one spot. If you weren’t able to secure reservations in advance, I would make this your first stop so you’re not eating at 9:45 p.m. every night lol! This applies to specialty dining only, as you can go to the ships main dining rooms at any time during dining hours with no reservations. We participated in the mandatory muster drill (for those of you that are not familiar on each cruise passengers must go to their designated emergency meeting location and hear the life-boat instructions in case of emergency). Our luggage was delivered to our room by 5:00 p.m.
We spent the afternoon having a few drinks on deck at the San Juan Fun Party – then had dinner in the Specialty Restaurant, Moderno Churrascario.
This is Norwegian’s take on a Brazilian Churrascario where waiters bring out meat after meat for you to try. We started with a salad bar that was pretty good on its own with sushi, cheese, meats and mixed salads. Then they bring some sides to your table – white rice, Sautéed mushrooms, Garlic Mashed Potatoes, Fried Yucca and Brazilian cheese bread. We were served Filet Mignon, Bacon Wrapped Filet Mignon, Flank Steak, Beef Ribs, Top Sirloin, Parmesan Chicken Drumettes, Lamb Top Sirloin, Bacon Wrapped Chicken Breast and Leg of Lamb, Parmesan Crusted Pork Loin, Brazilian Pork Sausage and Spanish Sausage. You’re given a green and a red card, and when you’re ready for meat you just flip to green and they start bringing you round after round of meat dishes. At first, you think “aww those are little portions” and then about 6 meats in I realized I was in way over my head and considered the possibility that if I kept going, I might actually throw up. Our waiter Ozzy was like a ninja and as soon as I finished one thing he just appeared with another. When they brought out some delicious grilled pineapple, I celebrated thinking I had done it and made it to the end – only to have Ozzy say, “let me know when you’re ready for the second half” …… at that point I told Ozzy I had to tap out and take a small bite from each meat they brought Debbie instead. I know, total amateur! Each specialty restaurant serves drinks from their area of the world, and here they served the national drink of Brazil, the Caipirinha. A Caipirinha is served muddled and has Leblon Cachaca, Sugar and a flavoring. I went for Strawberry while Debbie had Fresh Lime – they were pretty good and luckily, I had finished mine long before my stomach stopped accepting any more food!
Overall, we enjoyed the restaurant. You should only go if you have a hearty appetite (and of course if you like meat!) The only thing I didn’t like is that there was a bar inside the restaurant which got pretty loud and ruined the ambiance of a romantic meal.
After dinner we attended the Welcome Aboard Show, which was your typical cheesy attempt at a Vegas Show. I had heard that Norwegian had better shows than other lines, even Broadway shows in some cases, but this was not one of those boats. Later we competed in the Sing it if You Know it game show where I think Debbie singlehandedly won for our team. The music would barely start before she would make a beeline for the stage and sing the next line to bring home the win.
One thing that I had not noticed on other cruises I was on (and I guess I just wasn’t paying attention), is that we were taxed for drinks that we ordered while in port in San Juan. A little research showed that when a drink is purchased at certain ports in the US where sales tax is charged, you are charged tax on your drink as well regardless of whether you have a drink package or are paying individually. Miami and New York have the same type charges. If you wait 3 or 5 miles until you’re out at sea, you are in international waters and are no longer charged the port tax.
Day 2 was our only Sea Day, so of course the pool loungers were packed! If you want to find a good lounger by the pool you best get up early to stake out your spot. We spent the day in and out of the sun lounging and going back and forth to trivia. We take our trivia seriously and in this case we dominated and at the end of the cruise were awarded shirts that said, “you can call me champ”! (All except for the really hard Harry Potter trivia where we got our asses whipped by an 11 year-old boy lol!) Many folks schedule a spa session for the sea day, though the best time to book is actually when the ship is in a port. If you have already been to the port or don’t care to be out all day, this is the time to book the spa and lay out at the pool as the ship will offer specials and most of your fellow cruisers will be off ship. We had the buffet for lunch, and I have to say I was not impressed. I think cruise buffets overall have gone downhill through the years, but there wasn’t much that I wanted. The majority of the food was ethnic food, with burgers and hotdogs being served up out by the pool. I think Carnival definitely has the edge over Norwegian on lunch food – I was missing the Blue Iguana Taco Bar and Guy Fieri’s Burgers right about now.
We visited the CruiseNext office later to put a deposit down on our next cruise. Each cruise line has its own version, but essentially it allows you to put a deposit down on a cruise while on your current cruise, and you will receive a certain amount of ship credit that can be used on that same cruise. You don’t even have to know what cruise you’re going to take – you just have to be sure you are going to take one in the next 4 years. We knew that we were going to take 2 cruises in that time frame, so we put down 2 deposits of $250 and for each got $125 in credit that could be used to pay our account on that cruise.
We did Karaoke tonight and went to the British Invasion show – same cast, still cheesy. To be fair, I am a musical snob and love to go to NYC and London to check out the latest shows, so my expectations are really high. As far as cruise shows go – this one is fine and just like all the others. One thing I like about Carnival compared to Norwegian is that there are usually one or two comedians performing each night. This ship only had one performing and it was later on in the cruise.
Day 3 was our first port – Castries Saint Lucia. The Norwegian dock is at Port Seraphine. When you exit the ship, you find the typical “Cruise Port Village” with Diamonds International and the other overpriced shops aimed at tourists. A walk to the city of Castries around the harbor will take about 20-30 minutes, or you can take a water taxi across. Rather than doing the typical ziplining or snorkeling, we decided to hire a private driver for the day (see article about booking off ship) to get a feel for the island. We hired Kurt “Island Man” Joseph which was a great choice. We spent 7 hours with Kurt, and he took us through the fishing village of Anse La Raye to Soufriere, a typical Saint Lucian town. We visited a drive through volcano, a waterfall, and the Tet Paul Nature Trail to take a hike to see the Piton mountains. For lunch Kurt took us to a local restaurant Fedo’s which was in a local home run by Ms. Marie. If you’re looking for island cooking this is the place. I had Beef Stroganoff with Caribbean Seasoning Brandy, Milk and Tarragon, while Debbie had grilled fish with garlic butter.
Dinner tonight was at Las Lobos, the Norwegian Specialty Mexican restaurant. We started off with Queso Fundido (Cheese Fondue Baked in a Skillet with Mexican Chorizo Sausage) and some Guacamole prepared table side. We were able to order an appetizer, a main, sides and dessert. We asked if were limited to one of each and they said technically no, we could have had more. However, we were pretty stuffed after having Enchiladas Verde (Slow roasted shredded pork, onions, cilantro, cotija cheese and tomatillo sauce), Carne Asada (Grilled Skirt Steak marinated in Guajillo Chiles, and Tequila), Mexican Street Corn, Fried Beignets and Flan De Chocolate. Overall, I enjoyed the restaurant, though I felt there was a lack of chicken dishes.
Tonight’s entertainment was the PJ Magic Show featuring PJ Wen who has the Champion of Gold Chrysanthemum award from the highest level Chinese National Magic Championships. Many times, the magicians on cruises are more comedy act than magic, and don’t get me wrong his spiel was – but his magic was absolutely amazing. I won’t spoil the surprise but if he is on one of your ships you should definitely go see him. We rounded the evening out with the Adult Karaoke Blast, but that was really more, “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”, since we would have been able to hear it from our bed anyway lol! They had late night movies in the atrium, but I would have preferred to have the movies on the big screen out on the pool deck like some cruise lines do.
Day 4 was spent in Bridgetown Barbados. We did a private tour with Barbados Cruise Excursions on a catamaran to swim with the Sea Turtles. The cruise itself was a nice little jaunt up and down the coast to see Barbados, but it was really a cruise with two snorkel stops. The turtle stop was about 10 minutes after you started and lasted only about 15 minutes. It was very hurried with a ton of boats and people in the same place at the same time. There were two turtles being herded along by the tour guides, everyone would head toward it and the tour guides would be yelling – don’t get near the turtle! You didn’t have that long in the water and then you were out. I would definitely do this somewhere else if you really wanted to experience seeing a turtle in the wild. We took a similar tour in Hawaii on Kayaks, and our group of 5 was the only group out there with multiple turtles swimming by as you watched. It was one hundred times better than this. This tour did have all the rum punch you could drink however .
One thing to note about Barbados is that if you are on a ship departing from Puerto Rico, both the ship time and Barbados time use Atlantic Standard Time. If you are on a ship from the mainland USA, when it is standard time Barbados time is one hour later than ship time. So, if your ship is scheduled to arrive at 8 a.m. for example, it will actually arrive at 9:00 a.m. Barbados time. Make sure you consider that when booking a tour on your own. When Daylight Savings Time is in effect then the time will be the same.
Dinner tonight was in the dining room. I do like Norwegian’s Freestyle dining where you don’t have to choose the seating or time you eat in advance you can just go when the mood strikes. The food was ok, again not amazing but I think that is the trend on all cruise ships nowadays. It is important to note that the better class of ship you go on, the better the food. So the food on the Norwegian Breakaway class ships will be better than the Dawn class ships. When dining on cruise ships many people don’t realize you can ask for more than one side or appetizer – you can even have two mains if you like! This where I get in to trouble – I don’t really want all that food, I don’t really need all that food, but if you can’t decide between a Caesar salad or soup, why not go for both lol!
After all the sun we’d had the past few days we turned in early tonight and enjoyed laying in bed and reading for a few hours.
Day 5 was a visit to Antigua. The top excursions here were snorkeling and swimming with sting rays which we’ve done many times – so we opted for another private tour with our driver Tian. Tian was a little late, as we found out that’s par for the course in Antigua, but he took us well past our scheduled tour end time to make sure we saw everything we wanted to see. We visited Betty’s Hope, Shirley Heights, Nelson’s Dockyard and the Devil’s Bridge, I had wondered how the island would look after the hurricanes, but they seemed to be rebuilding and Tian told us it was Barbuda that took the brunt of the storm. One thing to note, it was illegal to wear any type of camouflage or military type clothing on the island, so watch what you wear!
Tonight, we ate at our third and final specialty restaurant, Teppanyaki. Teppanyaki is a hibachi-style Japanese restaurant, where diners sit around a large flat-surface griddle while a trained chef puts on a show — juggling utensils and tossing food — all while cooking dinner in front of you. Teppanyaki is only open for dinner, and it is a three-course meal including a miso soup and seaweed salad starter, your main course and dessert (a choice of green tea cake or fresh fruit sashimi). Diners can choose entrees from the Teppanyaki Classics menu – chicken yakiudon, vegetable yakiudon, seafood (a mixture of lobster/sea scallops and calamari), filet mignon or vegetarian. Or the Combinations menu – chicken and jumbo shrimp, filet mignon and jumbo shrimp, steak and chicken, or sea scallops and jumbo shrimp. The main course also comes with garlic fried rice and Japanese vegetables. Due to the cooking presentations, they will not let you come earlier or later than your scheduled time – so make sure you know when you want to go. The only thing I didn’t enjoy is that it was a rather small space with four cooks going at the same time. They were very exuberant, and the yelling and singing became a little overwhelming.
Tonight’s entertainment was a comedian by the name of Vince Acevedo. I complained before that Norwegian did not have as many comedy shows as Carnival, but I can tell you this guy was funnier than the rest of them put together. I’m not sure he even had an act – but he started out asking questions of the audience and began ad-libbing for the entire show. When he was heckled, he gave back as good as he got and had everyone eager for more. He remembered everyone’s name that he spoke to, and he kept dragging people back into the heckling – that takes true talent. There was a White-Hot party on deck at 10:00, and cruisers were encouraged to dress in all white. I’m not sure if this is done on every cruise, but it might be good to check after you’ve booked so you know what to bring. There were DJ’s, dancing and pool side games, along with all the glow stick accessories.
Day 6 was spent in St. Thomas, USVI. We have done a lot of the cruise excursion staples such as zip lining, snorkeling, snuba etc, and decided to do something a little different in this port. While reviewing excursion options on the Norwegian website, we found that St. Thomas has a very small marine park called Coral World, which on its own isn’t much to see – but Norwegian offered excursions such as swimming with dolphins, or the thing that caught Debbie’s eye …. swimming with Sea Lions. The cost per adult was $169, and you got transportation, admission to Coral World, and the Sea Lion swim. Because we booked our cruise so late however, when we went to book the sea lion swim excursion it was completely sold out. Debbie was devasted, so I went to the Coral World website, and realized they had plenty of spots left for the swim, they just weren’t being offered by the Cruise Line. On top of that, the cost was only $127 a person. The Coral World website explicitly states that “If you are coming from a cruise ship and this tour is offered through your cruise line, you must book through the cruise line.” However, I’d had enough of cruise line price gouging after hearing our guides stories in Antigua and decided to book it anyway. When it asked where I was staying, I just said with a friend and left it at that. Their cancellation policy is 100% refund if you cancel 72 hours before, and 90% refund if you cancel between 25-72 hours before hand. This could be a little risky if you have to miss your port due to bad weather, but we decided to hope for the best. (See my post on off ship excursions here). We booked an 11:15 a.m. slot so that we had plenty of time to get there and return to the ship on our own.
When you exit the ship, you have your standard cruise port shops, and there are tons of taxis waiting to take passengers in different groups based on destination. It was $9 per person each way to get to Coral World from the pier. When we arrived, we were given wristbands and shown where to meet for our interaction. Then we walked around the park to look at the exhibits. We were brought to a presentation on Sea Lions open to all park guests where the trainers talked about the Sea Lions, average weights, care and anything else you might want to know. Once the presentation was complete, those participating in the interaction were asked to stay behind and brought to a behind the scenes area where we were given life vests. We sat on benches while the trainers brought out the really big guy, Fred the 800 lb. Walrus. He did a few tricks for us and we took a couple of pictures while sitting. Fred is still in training, so all of his interactions were done on land. Next, we were taken up to the pool area where we introduced to Remo the 380 lb. Sea Lion. There were 10 people in our group, and we were all in the pool with Remo for about 20-30 minutes. The trainers would have him perform tricks and took several pictures with the group and with individuals. We were allowed to rub his back, take a ride, and got lots of kisses. At one point Remo played Sea Lion bowling and while we were all in a group he tried to push his way through all of us moving us out of the way like bowling pins. I have done a number of animal encounters where you don’t get much time with the animals, but it felt like we got a good 20 minutes in the pool with him. You were not allowed to bring phones or cameras in the water with you – so of course that means you have to buy their pictures. The cost was $59 for your group, but they did get a lot of good pictures.
Coral World is right next to Coki beach, which is a famous tourist beach in St Thomas. You could rent chairs for $5 and umbrellas for $10, so you could stay awhile and relax if you wanted, but we chose to go back to the boat.
Dinner tonight was in the dining room, there were actually two, so we tried the smaller one this time. Same food, different side of the ship lol! Tonight’s show was Elements, which had four different part to it but included both the magician and the comedian we had loved earlier in the cruise. They used completely new material, and again – both were amazing. The party on the deck this evening was an 80’s party, so tease up your hair and bring your leg warmers to join in.
Day 7, our last full day was spent in Tortola BVI. I had been here before, but Debbie had not, so we chose to do the excursion most associated with the BVI’s – a tour to Virgin Gorda and the Baths. The Baths is an area with large granite boulders that have round surfaces shaped by erosion. The boulders form natural tidal pools, tunnels, arches, and scenic grottos that are open to the sea. The largest boulders are about 40 feet (12 m) long. The trail through the baths requires you to climb over boulders, duck and crawl up a few ladders, which in general isn’t that hard, there were kids doing it, but it is a problem if you have mobility issues. The path leads you out to a pretty little beach with a snack shack. There are bathrooms and showers here, but then you have to take the stairs back up to the top again. We decided not to sit around the beach and walked straight back up which turned out to be a great decision as there was a cute little restaurant called “Top of the Baths” on top with a pool and outside balcony. So, we ordered drinks like a Strawberry Shortcake (Strawberries, ice cream and Amaretto) or a Cactus Colada (Pina Colada, Midori Melon liquor, Tequila, orange juice and grenadine) and took in the view as our fellow cruisers slowly made their way back up to the top.
There were probably about 150 people on our tour which wasn’t terrible, but ours was the only ship in port that day. If there were 2 or 3 ships, I can see how it might be a bit too crowded. If you ever want to see how many ships will be in port with you, sites like Cruise Center can show you that in a few clicks.
Dinner tonight was in the dining room and entertainment was the Farewell Show including an aerialist, the ships dancers, a magician and many more. Our Comedian Vince Acevedo also did an 18+ show at 10:15 p.m. Word got around about how funny he was, and it was standing room only. Once again most of his show was ad-libbed and it was great. This was a great last night on the ship and we went back to the room to pack. If you want them to bring the luggage down for you, you can put it outside your door by 11:00 p.m. and pick it up at the port the next morning. We chose to carry ours down. Typically, those who are self-assist (carrying your own luggage) can leave the ship first, so if you have an early flight this would be the way to go.
Unlike most cruises where you can dawdle, have breakfast, and leave by 11:00 a.m., on this cruise we had to be out of our state rooms by 8:30 a.m., and off the ship by 9:30 a.m. In order to play it safe we booked a flight departing at 4:30 p.m. We chose to take an Uber back to the airport (you can take one TO the airport just not FROM the airport lol!) and it cost us $12, while taxis were about $21. The cruise ship offered transportation for $29 per person, so I’d definitely use Uber in this instance. Had we been smart we would have booked a food tour or done something in San Juan that morning, but instead we went straight to the airport. You are not able to check in to your flight until 3 hours before departure, so we spent several hours in the little food hall outside of security waiting to check our bags. (They only had a Dominos, a Carls, a LaFonda Criolla and cookie place). Don’t forget before waiting in line to check your bags that if you are going to the continental US you have to get your bags checked in a USDA inspection station first.
All in all, we enjoyed our cruise on the Dawn and would recommend it to anyone who wants a taste of the islands
