Today is our fifth port of call, St. Lucia. It's also our last scheduled beach day. Because of the distance between our last island (Antigua) and St. Lucia, we arrived at 9am instead of the usual 8am.
I mentioned in yesterday's post that the Captain warned us the night would have more motion than we were used to but I felt the amount of motion was akin to what I'd consider little motion on most other cruises I've been on.
We went to the Windjammer for breakfast and for the sake of keeping my breakfast posts interesting, I'll note my omelette order was messed up twice. The first time they added ham to a veggie omellete and the second time they omitted the Jalapenos. If that's the worse I can say about my cruise than I'm doing well.
We got off the ship, which had by far the smallest pier ever. No mile walks to be found here! Once we got there, we started negotiating with the taxi drivers. We wanted to go to a beach with a view of the Pitons... until we were told it would take about 1 hour and 20 minutes just to get there!
We huddled together to figure out our options. If it were just me and my family, we would have gone back to the ship for swimming but our friend's child can't swim in the ship's pools so we talked with the taxi driver about other options and he recommended a beach about 20-25 minutes away.
St. Lucia also has a reputation for being expensive and our taxi ride would cost us $50 each way for the 6 of us. I think we just took a "whatever" attitude and went with it. The driver was fine, but compared to other drivers we had not very interesting. Nonetheless he was nice and got us to the beach quickly.
We arrived at Pigeon Bay, which was a fairly unremarkable Caribbean beach. Water was crystal clear and had great color, although it did have a bit of a current despite not being very deep at all.
There were locals at the beach who rented us 2 chairs and an umbrella for $10. There was free WiFi also, but you had to walk off the beach to access it. Nearly as quick as we sat down, the horde of vendors started trying to sell their stuff to us. Some of them were pretty aggressive, meaning a simple no was not enough to send them off. Luckily they all got it in fairly quickly and didn't bother us for most of the day, like had happened in Antigua.
We decided to spend the day at the beach, having our taxi driver pick us up at 3pm. The kids loved the beach and ran around to their hearts content. There were another 6 people or so at the beach, so it was not crowded at all.
There were two restaurants right behind the beach that offered local food. I tried the stewed lamb which was tasty and a rather large portion.
After a few hours of swimming our driver returned and got back to the ship for a late lunch and to get ready for our second formal night.
Before heading back onboard I explored the tourist trap area outside the ship on the pier. You standard issue selection of overpriced jewelry, clothes that change color in the sun and other nick-nacks made in China. I wil say there is a rum shop all the way in the back that offers free WiFi, which had a huge crowd around it. Not sure how much rum they sold, but getting people in the door is half the battle.
My take on St. Lucia is it's beautiful, but expensive and really too large for just a cruise ship stop. I'd have rather spent another day in St. Maarten or Antigua but you don't know what you like best until you see other things you don't love as much. It's a notch on my "cruise ship belt" and I can't say I had a bad time.
This formal night dinner we were in the main dining room and it's "lobster night". I'm not one to eat lobster but our friends were and said it was good. I should mention I brought a bottle of wine to the main dining room and was charged the corkage fee. It seems like if the waiters assume you brought the bottle, then no corkage fee. So it seems pretty hit or miss but the value savings even with the corkage fee really makes a difference.
After dinner I went to the "Top Tier Crown and Anchor Society Event" for C&A members Platinum and above. Met the Captain and other senior staff and had the usual assortment of free drinks, which were quite plentiful. The event itself was, well, a dud. The cruise director came out and thanked us all and shared how telling staff members we remember them makes their day. Then the staff danced and that was it. I'm guessing they figure everyone is just there for the free booze and cut out the filler.
After the event, we had reserved in-room babysitting again so we put the kids there and it was time for adult night out.
First up, the girls had drinks at the Schooner Bar while us men played a couple rounds on the self-leveling billiards table. Billiards is free and the table is cool, although Tim had his doubts the table was 100% effective. A good time all around even if I was beat both times.
Next up we went to the casino. Once again the girls went to the bar and drank while us men played blackjack and roulette. And lost. It was fun but we had bad breaks everywhere. Like I said, we had a good time but gambling is a lot more fun when you're having fun. If you're wondering, Guest Relations will not advance you money on your SeaPass account, however the casino will for a 5% fee.
Next we headed up to the Vortex bar for 80s & 90s party. The Vortex bar is just fun because it's neon and spins very slowly. Silly things like that amuse me and we had fun, although the music mix wasn't great. Rather than playing a mix of music from both decades, all we heard while there was music from the 80s. And some of the selections aren't exactly dance party music (like "Walk this Way" by Run DMC/Aerosmith). Alas, the girls had drinks and had a good time.
By now, we were ready to head back to pick up the kids from the babysitter because we have an early morning tomorrow. The babysitters were great and both kids loved spending time with them. Well worth the money for the escape for us adults.
Tomorrow we are going to our last island of Barbados. We have a tour booked through a group of people I "met" on CruiseCritic so I'm excited to see how that goes. Leave your question and thoughts in this post's coments!