We'd been to Miami in Nov 2006 which was our 1st trip out there...we'd always wanted to go and Miami was great! So we decided to come back to Miami and combine it with a short cruise as neither myself or hubby had done that sort of a holiday before and we were rather intrigued by those great big ships leaving the port and everyone waving them off down the highway to South Beach.

So we managed to get a great deal with Trailfinders in the UK to combine Virgin Atlantic flights, hotel stays and the cruise itself.We stayed in the Park Central Hotel in Nov 2006 and decided that we wanted to stay there again before and after the cruise in 2007. The hotel is authentic Art Deco and is very reasonably priced - apart from the drinks at the bar, both bars in fact! One cocktail (ok it was a great cocktail) was 13 dollars!!! We had flown in for the 2 NASCAR races beforehand as hubby is a great fan so we hired a car and then drove it back to the airport on the Monday am for the cruise...I think we were planning on getting to the ship for about 1pm or so,,I think we were a little earlier but quite a few people were already on board! Now I did remember from hiring out an Alamo car last year that they took people down to the Port on a shuttle bus so that's what we did, saving 24 or so dollars!

Getting onto the ship was really easy..the only hard thing was being Brits we had to go through immigration but that was hidden in a very small room..everyone was really friendly and helpful on the pier (now us Brits call a pier something on the outside) a pier here is a building! Read more