Day 1-San Juan (Embarkation)

We boarded the Valor on 8/3/14 for a 7 night eastern Caribbean cruise at 2PM. No issues with embarkation and we quickly got off the ship to tour Old San Juan. We headed right for the fort..Castillo San Cristobal. For a $5 dollar entrance fee, we entered the fort, toured it and took some amazing photos of the ship and the surrounding area from the upper level. Worth every penny of the admission price and the National Park Service staff were awesome (as usual, I might add). After leaving the fort, we headed west along Norzagaray towards El Morro, another part of the historical site. There is a huge grass area that people use for kite flying, relaxing, etc...a very nice area. The area also has museums and many shops and restaurants. After a few hours, we headed back to the ship to get ready for dinner. We had a balcony cabin (8445) on the starboard side. To our surprise, there was a concert going on in a park near the port that we could see and hear very clearly from our balcony. It seems that the entire port area is bustling on Sundays and it was nice to sit back and hear some live music prior to dinner. The first night in the Main Dining Room is an open seating arrangement since the ship does not leave until 10PM. The mandatory safety briefing is a 9:30PM, so you need to be seated by 8PM if you want to enjoy your dinner and not be rushed. To sum up the entire dining room experience for the week with one word: Awesome!! I have been on the Sunshine in Europe last fall and the Pride this past March and the food was much better on the Valor. The dining room staff did a wonderful job as well. My family looked forward to dinner every night during the cruise. After dinner we explored the ship and another thing I noticed was that the Valor has much more live music than the other ships I mentioned previously. The casino, Winston's and a few other lounges had music throughout the night.

Day 2-St. Thomas Read more