Just got back from the May 10th sailing with the Barbados swine flu incident and the Cosol jellyfish - and we had a spectacular time. It was my first Caribbean cruise (others were Hawaii and Alaska) and my wife's 3rd, so I don't have much to compare to in terms of similar trips. I can say this much, I don't think I can ever go on a 3-port or 4-port cruise now after this itinerary, which we specifically sought out for having no at-sea days. We hate at-sea days! So here goes my lengthy review of this very busy cruise.

Pre-Cruise / Embarkation

We arrived on Saturday (for a Sunday sailing) and stayed at the Sheraton Old San Juan across from the pier. The location is perfect and I felt the room was very comfortable. Of course we only stayed one night so one can only say so much. We glanced at the casino, it was very small and I saw no bar or waitstaff with free drinks so we didn't spend any time in there. We had lunch at La Bombanera (which looks like a dump but I'm glad I stayed - the mallorcas were excellent) and explored Fort San Cristobal before it closed at 6. I enjoyed the fort a lot more than I thought I would. We walked to El Morro, explored the grounds, and made our way to Paseo del Morro, the beautiful walkway that follows the shoreline outside the city walls. It was here that we were surprised by the feral cat colony and counted 43 cats on the shoreline, not counting the 20+ we saw between El Morro and San Juan Gate. That was a big highlight for us - we're definitely donating to SaveAGato.com, which provides food and care for the cats. This pathway became our favorite place in Old San Juan, and we saw an excellent sunset there. Had dinner and the flamenco show at Barrachina, home of the pina colada. As expected, they were the best pina coladas we've ever had. Food was good enough, but not memorable. The flamenco show by all rights should have been cheesy but we really enjoyed it, you can tell that it's VERY hard to pull off those moves. Read more