We left for Miami at 12:00 midnight Friday after work. We wanted to allow ourselves plenty of time from the long drive from Atlanta, GA to Miami, FL. The drive was pretty good considering there wasn't much traffic on the roads. When we started getting closer to Miami the traffic got a bit congested. It was a learning experience and we will try to avoid departure from Miami in the future. We all found Port Canaveral to be much more accommodating. We had a hard time finding a hotel close to port too. They wanted like $500 per night....give me a break! We ended up driving to Ft. Lauderdale and staying at a Best Western. It was reasonably priced and clean. We were on the ship around 2:00 the next day and embarkation was fairly smooth. We were on the ship within 30 minutes.

Our first port was San Juan, Puerto Rico. We arrived around 4:00 and left at 12:00 am. There wasn't really time for the beach so my fiance and I went to Senor Frogs which was within 5 minutes of the ship. We had a blast! St. Thomas was our favorite port. We went to Megan's Bay. The scenery to the beach was so beautiful. You can see everything as you drive up the mountain. Be sure to have your camera ready! We also did some shopping here but we aren't much on buying souvenirs. St. Maarten was our last stop. We went to Orient beach for the day. This beach is clothing optional but only saw a handful of people that were topless. I did notice that you are approached more by people trying to sell you things. The economy in St. Maarten relies on tourism. They were very friendly and didn't get upset if you kindly said "no thank you". We were able to rent a chair, umbrella & get a drink of choice for $6.00 which was a reasonable price. Our taxi driver Pearl gave us an informative tour as she drove us to Orient. Its very interesting to see how people live.

We stayed in cabin #9202 located on the lido deck in the very front of the ship. I was a bit hesitant about this room because it has a large deck outside of our window. We found it to be great! Not many people know about this deck so it was almost like we had our own private deck. My mom & sister were on the deck above us and also had the same type of room with the deck. All we had to do was go out our door, onto the deck, up a flight of stairs & we were at their room. We always met up with them for meals together. The noise was limited, but some mornings we could hear housekeeping. Read more