This was our third Caribbean cruise but our first on RCCL and our first time to Grand Cayman and Falmouth Jamaica. We were planning to do the 'Dickens on the Strand' thing in Galveston with some friends and ended up taking a last minute bargain basement cruise to get out of the cold weather for awhile. The price was so good we decided to upgrade to a balcony which was also a first as we normally spend little time in our room, preferring to explore every nook and cranny on the ship. The balcony acted as a kind of human magnet and we ended up spending far more time in the room than normal! In a way that was not good as toward the end of the cruise I mentioned that we had seen little of the ship on this trip.

As far as the ship and accomodations are concerned, what is there to say? We typically look at the ship as a sort of floating hotel and transportation rather than a destination. We did our usual thing: eat too much, enjoy as much of the onboard entertainment as possible, and drink a little. I normally have fairly low expectations but when the bar girl at one of the lounges announced that they had no single malt scotch I was rather surprised. I was then dumbfounded when after I asked for a scotch with no ice or water and a side of water she brought me the usual watered down scotch/water/ice combo. After she realized her mistake she took it back, took out the ice, and brought the scotch and water back! Oh well. It was a fun evening anyway and made for a good story later.

There were several highlights on the trip. Leading the pack was meeting a local from Falmouth with the same last name as mine. I knew it was a fairly common name on the island dating back to the old English plantation owners so I used FB to track down a Falmouth resident by that name and invited him to lunch. We had a grand time! Along with our walking tour of the old port town of Falmouth it gave us a unique peek into the local scene. Jamaica is an interesting place with lovely people and I put it on my list of places to go back to. Second hit of the trip was meeting up with a group of fellow geocachers on the CC Roll Call forum. We did a little geocaching along the way and swapped stories on board. Grand Cayman was new to us so we were delighted when a local shop owner came out and greeted us at one of our geocaching locations and regaled us with local stories. Read more