Day 1 - Embarkation in San Juan (March 21, 2009)

This is our second cruise. First one was a short 3-night one onboard Royal Caribbean's Empress of the Seas in 2007. My wife and I loved the experienced and wanted to try a 7-night cruise while we still are in Puerto Rico. We are from Mexico and have been living in Puerto Rico for 4 years. This time we were bringing along our 20 month-old boy. This ship departs on Saturdays and does a Southern Caribbean journey: St. Thomas, St. Maarten, Antigua, St. Lucia and Barbados. I would say that 95% of the passengers were Americans. There was barely any Spanish heard in the ship, I didn't see that many Puerto Ricans and we only found about 8 more Mexicans, a couple of Argentineans and some Spaniards.

Some friends volunteered to drive us in our car to the pier, which of course was very convenient. We got to the pier and it took us about 15 minutes to check in and get onboard. We had completed the Online Check-in and this made it a lot faster. At the terminal we just had to fill in some forms asking if we had been sick in the weeks prior to the trip. Read more