Our vacation started with spending about 16hrs in airports/airplanes. Traveling from the East Coast of Canada to San Juan makes for a long travel day and definitely requires arriving a day early. We arrived at SJU on time, without any bumps in our travel, to an all but deserted airport. We deplaned, headed straight to baggage claim & were outside jumping into a cab in less than 20 minutes. I had booked us a room at the Radisson Ambassador via Priceline for about $80US. We arrived at approximately 9:30pm and were very surprised to be told our room "was not ready"...hmmm...at 9:30?? Anyhow, staff were very friendly and offered to send us upstairs for a complimentary dinner while they had our room prepared. We returned about an hour later to find that our room still wasn't ready...uh oh :O There was obviously some sort of festival going on in the area & it seemed that perhaps our room had been given away already. Anyhow, after waiting another 20min or so, the bellman led us to our room, which had obviously been upgraded. We were expecting a standard 1 king or 2 double room & ended up with a 2 room suite w/ a balcony overlooking part of the city.

Anyhow, Sunday morning came and as much as I had planned to wait until mid afternoon to head for the ship, we were too keen to wait & headed to the ship at around 11am (after enjoying a free buffet breakfast for each of us after the problem's with checking in). The ride to the pier cost us about $17 (if I remember correctly) and was only about 5min drive. Being GS guests, we inquired at the check in line about "priority boarding". The lady pointed us towards a line of 4 people, vs the long line for all other passengers. We were walking up the gangway about 15min later, and headed straight to the pool area for a drink. We hung around for a bit, grabbed some grub at the Windjammer & then, found our suite ready just shy of 1pm. WOW!! It was so much more than I had imagined!! It was beautiful, tons of storage, large bathroom & a great balcony! Our suite was on deck 10, a little forward of midship. Luggage had arrived when we went back to the room again around 3pm.

We departed San Juan at 8:30, what a gorgeous city to depart from at night!! Read more