This was my second cruise on a big ship (the other was on Holland America) , plus two smaller liveaboard dive cruises.  My boyfriend has been on Royal Caribbean 3 times, plus once on Carnival.  This was a celebration cruise for him.  We booked the cruise through our local travel agent in January, which gave us plenty of time to read reviews online in anticipation of our vacation.

Taking the hotel shuttle to the airport on Saturday morning, we were glad to have been upgraded on our direct flight to San Juan, Puerto Rico.  We arrived and got our bags, making our way thru the crowded terminal to the orange Taxi Touristico booth for our ride to the Doubletree by Hilton San Juan.  We were pretty tired, so we went across the street to the Super Max grocery for some munchies and wine, and then tried a local 'dive', Restaurante La Jataca, serving Comida Criolla, or the local cuisine.  Though the kind woman there didn't speak any English, we managed to order a shrimp and mofongo dinner and arroz con pollo in broken Spanish...de-licious!  Satisfied, we shared a crème brulee dessert at the hotel before calling it a day.

Luckily, we were able to arrange for a late check out, and took a taxi over to the Pan American Pier around 1pm, a short 10 minute ride.  There was already a line of guests waiting to board...and the ship was huge (the cruise documentation didn't say when boarding started, but probably around noon).  It was right next to the Caribbean Princess, which looked really nice, too (but without the rock climbing wall or ice skating rink!)  In less than 30 minutes, we were onboard.  We got our dinner seating straightened out, and then went to our stateroom.  Our cabin was decorated with Bon Voyage streamers, and a bottle of Pinot Noir, chocolate covered strawberries and a shipboard credit certificate awaited us thanks to our family!  We looked around the Royal Promenade while waiting for our luggage.  There were lots of people at the pool, but we decided to save that for later. Read more