My husband and I are a young married couple that love taking a yearly trip together and seeing new places. We met another married couple our age last year and jokingly discussed going on a cruise together. Well one thing led to another and BAM we had our first cruise booked. We booked directly through Carnival back in July and managed to get a great deal on an Eastern Caribbean cruise on the Carnival Liberty. We booked our cruise for January of the next year because we heard that is when weather is the best in that area...and people were right!

We arrived in Miami a day early to make sure if we had any flight issues we wouldn't miss our ship. I strongly recommend this. It was nice to have a night to rest after traveling all day before we got on the ship. We stayed at the Springhill Marriott Suites and it really was a nice place for a cheap deal. It is a little further away from the exciting parts of Miami, but if you are just looking for a place to catch a snooze before your vacation, it is perfect!

We slept in a little the next day and scheduled a cab to come and pick us up around noon to take us to the Miami port. Our taxi driver was awesome and had a great personality as he took us to the port. He charged us very fairly and we graciously gave him a nice tip when he pulled us right up to the door. Upon arriving at the port the porters greeted us and started loading up our luggage. We expected to have to wait in line a long time before embarkation, but were pleasantly surprised. The line moved quickly with both the initial security scan and the line to get our boarding passes and such. Fun dance music was playing in the port and a lot of very friendly Carnival workers greeted us along the way. I thought the embarkation process was very smooth, I highly recommend you have your boarding passes and IDs handy to make it go even quicker. Read more