A relaxing seven-day trip! Our trip began in Tallahassee on February 3rd as we drove to West Palm Beach. We stayed at the Courtyard Marriott in West Palm Beach (a 40-minute drive down I-95 to the port). The hotel was over $100 less than similar hotels near the port in Ft. Lauderdale. We had an excellent dinner at Nick’s 50’s Dinner about a mile from the hotel on Okeechobee Blvd (large portions at a reasonable price). For the convenience, we parked at the port - $15/day. Since the Celebrity Silhouette was docked at Pier 29, we chose to park in the mid-port garage after dropping off our luggage at the pier. A free shuttle is provided from the garage to pier 29 as this pier is located inside the container loading area. We arrived around 10:30 a.m. and check-in was very organized and a pleasant process. We found one advantage to being at Pier 29 - boat and ship traffic are continuous down the channel. Also, while we were having lunch in the Oceanview Café, we observed two pods of manatees swimming in the channel, as well as several dolphins cruising the channel.
Western Caribbean Cruise
The Silhouette is a beautiful ship and was clean and well maintained. We stayed in cabin 7248, a veranda room. The room was well maintained and outstanding service was provided by our Cabin Attendant (Florisa)! The only issue we had was that our safe would not open one evening; we called to have this remedied; it took several calls and waiting over an hour before someone arrived to address the issue.
See above.
Our first stop was in Key West. Since we have been here before, we elected to take a walking tour on our own. We walked down Duval Street to the Southern Most Point in the U.S. monument. We enjoyed going into the many shops and sampling the various pastries along Duval Street. We once again went to Conch Republic for lunch and had a great fish lunch. Dessert was at the Key Lime shop directly across the street – a frozen chocolate covered piece of key lime pie. While walking on the board walk around the marina we observed several large tarpon swimming around the boats. We really enjoyed our day in Key West. We wish more ships would include Key West as a port of call.
This is a very small port with shopping near the pier. We walked around in town and did a little shopping before returning to the ship. We enjoyed the rest of the afternoon in the Solarium as we basically had the place to ourselves. When purchasing anything in Costa Maya, you have to barter as many times you can buy things at a third to a half of the original asking price.
We always enjoy coming to Cozumel. We elected to take a cab into town ($4) per person and requested to be dropped off at the Forum shops. Our favorite place for t-shirts, vanilla, and art work is the Los Cinco Soles. This shop is located on the main street just a little past the forum shops. We also found excellent prices on cologne in the shops near the pier.
Tenders are required at this port. The staff did an excellent job organizing the process of getting on the tenders, which resulted in minimum wait times. It was a smooth boat ride into port. Since we have been to the island several times, we elected just to walk around the city and explore the shops. The shopping was disappointing as most shops were just cheap t-shirt shops with the same merchandise.