We booked a cruise on the Adventure of the Seas for February 8 - 15, 2009 to celebrate our first wedding anniversary. We flew into San Juan the day before the cruise and stayed at the Tres Palmas Inn. After a good nights rest we boarded the ship around noon, had lunch in the Windjammer and settled into our room....Cabin 2288. Our luggage arrived before dinner, we unpacked, changed clothes and went to dinner and the show. Our first day was spent at sea and we also had the Cruise Critic Meet and Mingle followed by a "Cabin Crawl". We had a chance to see a suite one couple had booked.....very nice. Tonight was formal night so we put on our best duds and enjoyed a nice dinner.
Our first stop was in Aruba, our favorite island. We rented a car, drove to some of our favorite spots, visited with friends and had lunch. We did get in some snorkeling, but the water was cloudy and pretty cool. Our next stop was in Curacao where we had booked at excursion with Curacao Actief. Kim picked us up and we had a great day touring Curacao with some really great snorkeling. We even checked out the resort we had booked for our upcoming dive trip in May. Kim showed us all over and gave us a history the island.
The next day was a sea day and we chilled out around the pool most of the day. It was our second formal night and we got dressed up and had a tasty dinner with our tablemates.
St. Maarten was our next stop and we booked an excursion to Orient Beach for a day at the beach with lunch. This is the beach where nudity is allowed and it is not a pretty site. Our lunch at Kakao Restaurant and Bar was very good...Dale had ribs and I had mahai mahai. We got back to the ship in time to hit the hot tub and relax before dinner and the show.
St. Thomas was our port of call for our anniversary...Feb. 14 and we had booked a sailboat for a trip over to St. John. We jumped in a taxi and went to Red Hook to board the boat. Capt. Max was waiting and we raised the sails and headed to St. John. We snorkeled at Caneel Bay and Fish Caye...both were crystal clear with lots of marine life. Capt. Max prepared a light lunch and served a delicious rum punch. We sailed back to Red Hook, caught a taxi and boarded the ship.
We had dinner reservations at Portifinos for our anniversary. The food at Portifinos was amazing, we both had steaks that you could cut with a fork. We left stuffed, headed back to our cabin to pack for the trip home.
We were off the ship early and had booked a tour of El Yunque....the rainforest since our flight didn't leave until 5 pm. Our flight home was long and then we had a two hour drive to get home, we pulled into the driveway around 11 pm.
Our cruise was very good and a perfect way to celebrate our first year of marriage.
