Third (and last) Summary and Ports - Celebrity Mercury Jan 11-Jan 23

From part one - Good embarkation

**The Dis-Embarkation was good too. - Probably better than the next
cruise which probably got back into Baltimore on Feb 1 in after a
snowstorm. We got about 14 inches of snow on Jan 30th, and had
another minor snowfall last night.

We were given a time of 8:15 and we were off the ship and picking up
our rental car by about 0900, even though the cab driver accidentally
went through the tunnel first, and even though Bob (from the back
seat) directed us all around the rental car terminal before we found
the entrance. Drove home and got there before noon. Bob got the cars
started and the water turned on, and then we turned in the rental car,
and picked some stuff up from the commissary and unpacked - all on
Saturday. Love cruising out of Baltimore

We liked our room - it was quiet, comfortable and well laid out. I
found the charts on the TV and the one in the lobby to be deficient,
and the weather forecast to be about useless. The captain's
announcements ("from the nav-i-ga-tion-al bridge") at noon were
stilted.

The button marked "WakeUp" call on the room phone did not really work.
I asked for 7 am and it was the day that we turned our watches forward
(and they didn't remind us in the daily program) and the call came at
8 am. Other times, it just didn't work at all. There was a procedure
to follow listed in the room book which did work, but I don't think
they should have a button marked "Wake-Up Call" if you won't get one.
Also they said we would have beach towels in our room and they weren't
there. At the first port they said the room steward would give them
to us but he didn't know anything about it and didn't have any. He
said they would be at the gangway and they weren't. Bob had to go up
to the pool and get them. After the first port, they were at the
gangway.

The theatre was nice and Bob liked some of the shows and didn't like
some others. I didn't like the layout of the promenade deck because
you couldn't walk all the way around, even when you climbed stairs.

We couldn't get early dining, but liked our table partners. I did not
think (in spite of the heart healthy and vegetarian options) that the
food was as 'healthy' as other ships and my impression was that the
meat/entree servings were bigger (which is not a good thing IMHO).
When they say something has asparagus, there are two tiny pieces on
the plate kind of like a garnish. Not really vegetables at all. The
lunch menus especially had a lot of fried foods. Really did NOT like
the buffet - layout or service or offerings. .
**Ports
The itinerary was 3 sea days, five ports, 3 sea days. The ports were
St. Thomas, St. Croix, St. Kitts, Antigua and St. Martin. Although
the weather forecast said "Sun with chance of showers" every day, we
had rain all day in St. Thomas and St. Kitts, and no rain anywhere
else. Might as well not even SAY what the weather is going to be. Of
these ports, the only one we hadn't been to was St. Croix.

The ship information on the ports was a little lacking or was wrong.
For instance they said it was a 10 minute walk to where the excursion
vans were located in St. Croix, and it was not - they were right there
on the pier next to the gangway so that we didn't have to walk at all.
And they didn't mention the walk on St. Maartin, so I didn't know that
I could pay $1.00 and get a golf cart ride down the pier. As it was,
I had to stop and sit down about four times before I even got to where
the taxis were. I took a tour everywhere except St. Martin.

*St. Thomas, I took the BOSS (Breathing Observation Submersible
Scooter formerly called BOB) tour. This was the picture they took of
me.
http://cache.virtualtourist.com/4733...-St_Thomas.jpg
I had been given a digital snorkel camera and I wanted to try it out.
Since I was in the water anyway, it didn't matter that it rained all
day - I think the beach excursion people must have been very
disappointed. I enjoyed the excursion. Bob just took a cab down to
the marina and took some pictures.

*St Croix I took the round the island tour because I wanted to see
both Christensted and Fredericksted which meant that we missed the
Whim plantation etc, but all of those tours seemed to involve a lot of
walking. The van drove us out past the fort at Fredericksted. We
stopped at Cane Bay and then at the site of Columbus's Landing in
1493. We went on from here to Christensted Harbor.

Here Bob used the bathroom and then took pictures of the fort and
harbor. I watched a chicken cross the road, and then went into the
National Park bookstore and stamped a piece of paper (since the map
didn't have on it the NPS site, I didn't know to bring my NPS Passport
book with which I could have gotten into the Fort for free) with three
NPS stamps. Instead I went to the Christensted National Historic
Site across from the fort. This was a Lutheran Church originally.

Then a stake body truck with huge speakers in the back playing at full
volume came up the road. There was to be a parade apparently. The
truck led off with four National Guard flag bearers, and then there
was a whole platoon of baton twirlers in royal blue outfits with white
boots - all the way from about 5 years old on up. After them came the
baseball teams. Apparently there was to be a tournament, and they
were marching up to the ball fields. After this we went to the
'industrial' side of the island which has the 2nd largest oil refinery
(no pictures allowed) which used to be a Hess refinery, and we saw
some goats, and the University of the VI.

*St Kitts - it was Sunday, although the program says Monday. Our tour
was called Essential St. Kitts. Because of the rain, the photo
people were inside the ship. This time we really DID have to
walk the length of the pier to get to the tour buses. I buttoned my
raincoat over my camera and got into the front seat of the van.
It was still raining quite a bit, so I took pictures between wipes of
the wipers or rolled down the window to take out the side.

The guide decided to go to Brimstone Fortress first and we were about
the first people there -it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The road
up was very narrow. (Bob's comment was that they had not wasted any
asphalt in building it). At each curve was a small sign which said
HORN and the driver honked his horn. We got to the admissions booth
and I rented an audio guider for $5.00

It was raining a little, but not a downpour. I sometimes had to wipe
drops off my camera lens and whenever I sat down the surface was wet.
I asked Bob to go up to the top of the fortress, and he did and took
some terrific pictures up there. We left the fortress and drove down
the narrow road, meeting people coming up - each car had to get off on
the side of the road to pass. On the way to the batik factory, we
stopped for the guide to show us some Carib petroglyphs and a man with
a monkey came by begging. Bob took his picture and gave him a little
money because from the front seat I couldn't turn around far enough to
take the picture.

At the batik factory, because I stopped to take photos of some
flowers, I got there just in time to hear the end of the presentation
so I don't have a good idea of how it is done, but I did buy some
items there which are to be shipped to me at home. When we got back
to the ship, I was soaked to the skin.

*Antigua - We took the helicopter tour of Montserrat. We flew over
the harbor with the ships in it and in 10 minutes we were
over the ocean heading to Montserrat. We were over the old airport by
1020. The pilot was saying that he was going to take us over to the
old capitol but then he said - Hey there's a pyroclastic flow that is
fresh. It was coming down and turning the sea water to steam and the
buildings that had been there were burning and marked by smoke plumes.
So we couldn't get over to the old capitol because of ash in the air.
We couldn't see the top of the volcano because it was in a cloud, and
we didn't see any red lava or anything - it was all grey. But the
flow of ash was very dramatic and we got some good pictures. I even
took a short video. The pilot tried a couple of ways to get over to
the old capitol but was blocked each time by dust clouds. By 1050 we
were on our way back to Antigua and we were back on the ground by 1100
and by 1120 we were walking back down the dock to the ship

*St Maartin - No tour. Before we rented a car to try and get a photo
of a lighthouse I saw on the first visit, but we couldn't get there
because of road construction. So this time we just took a taxi there.

** Ship activities
We went to the Cruise Critics "Connections" Party. There was food
and juice and coffee available, and four of the men got together and
sang an a cappella barbershop quartet which was really good and
enjoyable Some of them also got together and sang "I want to take you
on a Sea Cruise." I was a bit disappointed that everyone didn't get
to introduce themselves to the group. We didn't participate in the
gift exchange, or the other activities.

The Cruise Director and the Activities Directors were at the
Connections party and they had both just gotten on the boat in
Baltimore so they apologized for the lack of activities but said that
the programs for the first two days were printed before they got on.
Later these two guys were on the TV every day explaining what was
going on that do - they were so frenetic that Bob wondered if they
were 'on' something.

There were movies, but one of our table-mates said that he went to see
"Slum Dog Millionaire" but the screen was too small for him to be able
to read the captions. People played shuffleboard. I saw people
playing games in the atrium. There were golf putting games. The
library appeared deserted when I looked in there, but they had
computer classes which appeared to be well attended.

I didn't think there were as many lectures about the Caribbean
locations as usual and the ones there were, were not re-broadcast.
They had dance parties for various eras, but they didn't seem to have
things like the Newly Wed/Oldly Wed Game. They did of course have
shopping talks, which are of absolutely no interest to me. The port
maps showed ONLY the shops. There was nothing whatever on there about
any other possible attractions - no museums, no forts, -- nothing.
When I asked, they said it was because of liability. Bunk. Noting
the locations of the museums does not expose you to any liability.

There were a lot of hot tubs including one that was in between the
pool sections. This made it absolutely impossible to swim laps of any
kind. I did not see any place on the ship where that would be
possible.

One of my children commented that all we seemed to do on the cruise
was eat and play trivia. And that was almost true. After the first
day when there was only one trivia, there were sometimes 3 or 4 trivia
a day. We played all the trivia we could. The procedures were a
little different than on other ships - they did not limit the number
of people on a team (a larger team would give you more ability to have
someone on the team who knew the answers but most of the time it was
just four of us or maybe as many as 6), and they let us mark our own
papers. Before, we've always switched papers and marked someone
else's paper. This was only a problem because we won A LOT. Bob and
I came back with a T-shirt, 2 golf hats, 1 luggage tag and 8 Celebrity
pens from a 12 day cruise. It gets embarrassing after awhile (but not
enough to stop playing)

I gave extra tips to the waiter and assistant waiter, but not to the
room steward - this was the first cruise where I have done that.

After I got home it took me over a week to get my computer back to
where it would both get and send emails.

--SNIP--

*St. Thomas, I took the BOSS (Breathing Observation Submersible
Scooter formerly called BOB) tour. This was the picture they took of
me.
http://cache.virtualtourist.com/4733...-St_Thomas.jpg

*** Thought I was looking at Mickey Mouse when I first looked at the
picture... Like the porthole ears!

--SNIP--

Here Bob used the bathroom and then took pictures of the fort and
harbor. I watched a chicken cross the road, ...

*** Why did the chicken cross the road? ;-)

--SNIP--


Thanks for the reports.

On Wed, 3 Feb 2010 13:46:13 -0500, "LVTravel"
wrote:

--SNIP--

*St. Thomas, I took the BOSS (Breathing Observation Submersible
Scooter formerly called BOB) tour. This was the picture they took of
me.
http://cache.virtualtourist.com/4733...-St_Thomas.jpg

*** Thought I was looking at Mickey Mouse when I first looked at the
picture... Like the porthole ears!

That was my thought too. I think the bubble make my head look smaller
than it is.

--SNIP--

Here Bob used the bathroom and then took pictures of the fort and
harbor. I watched a chicken cross the road, ...

*** Why did the chicken cross the road? ;-)

Don't know. There was a lot of traffic and it took the chicken
several tries.

--SNIP--


Thanks for the reports.
YW

The chicken crossed the road to get to the other side, any one should
know that





cruise lover(~~~~~)






..

Sounds like you had a good trip. Enjoyed every word of your report(s)!
Thank you so much for sharing.

We like playing trivia, too!

Diana Ball
Austin, TX

I put pictures of the food on Mercury here

http://www.cruisemates.com/gallery/view.php?id=5265

This is the album of photos on Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/reqs.php#!/a...&id=1643993700

I put the pictures with the narrative and they are here

Embarkation and sea days
http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/tt/afeb1/#TL

St. Thomas (including a shot of my purple bruised thumb
http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/tt/b0028/#TL

St. Croix (including the chicken crossing the road)
http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/tt/b002c/#TL

St. Kitts
http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/tt/b002f/#TL

Antigua (Montserrat)
http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/tt/b0030/#TL
http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/tt/b0032/#TL

There's also a short video of the pyroclastic flows
http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/vv/3234/

St. Martin and coming home
http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/tt/b0034/#TL