It's always a bittersweet moment, to pull back the stateroom curtains and find yourself back where you started. We had returned to San Juan, Puerto Rico. I snapped a few photos, then scrambled to get ready and pack up our remaining items.
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It's always a bittersweet moment, to pull back the stateroom curtains and find yourself back where you started. We had returned to San Juan, Puerto Rico. I snapped a few photos, then scrambled to get ready and pack up our remaining items.
On Day 4 of our Southern Caribbean Cruise on Jewel of the Seas, we docked in Port of Spain, Trinidad.
On Christmas morning, we docked in Bridgetown, Barbados. We had made plans to meet for breakfast in the main dining room at 9AM, but discovered that morning that the dining room closed at 9AM. Judy and Stove "just happened" to be ready early and went to the MDR for breakfast. The rest of us headed up to the Windjammer.
On Christmas Eve, we woke up to a surprise from Judy!
Judy and Stove used these magnetic dry erase boards to leave messages to Stove's siblings on their New England cruise on NCL in September. NCL has a no door decorations rule (loosely enforced), and one of his sisters was actually told that she had to remove the whiteboard from her door. Royal Caribbean allows door decorations, so no issues here!
I brought Christmas stockings from Amazon for our doors that Aaron and I hung up with magnetic hooks.
The interesting thing about Embarkation in San Juan is that it was very late. I believe the earliest possible check-in time was 12:30 PM. Aaron and I, as well as Stove and Judy had a 1:30 PM port arrival time. Rachel and Landon waited until like two weeks before the cruise, so they had a 3:30 PM check-in time. Rachel and I briefly looked into getting The Key, but it didn't seem like that great of a value, and we couldn't book it for six guest by the time we looked into it, anyway.
We had a 2PM checkout time at Aloft, so we weren't in a hurry to get up and get ready. Except for Landon who was stir crazy and I guess hungry... so he and Rachel set out on a mile walk to get a bagel, while Aaron and I stayed in the room and watched a totally unhinged adaptation of A Christmas Carol on BET (you know I had to look it up.... it's Christmas Deja Vu).
Ahoy! I'm here with another cruise review!
If you're a longtime follower of the blog, you probably know that it is Shinglebell family tradition to cruise over Christmas. In 2020, my sister Rachel and I started alternating Christmases with our boyfriends' families, and we went on our first cruise as the Shinglebells + Boys on the NCL Encore in 2021. Last year, I spent Christmas with Aaron and his parents at sea on the Celebrity Summit. Which means....
It's a Shinglebells Christmas cruising year!
In case you're new to my trip reports or just need a little refresher, meet the Shinglebells:
It's the holiday season! Many associate the Christmas holiday with cozying up by the fire, but for me, there's no better way to spend Christmas Day than in a tropical location (as the late Jimmy Buffet sang, hang your stocking on a coconut tree). My family, a.k.a. the Shinglebells, set sail on our first Christmas Cruise in 2009 (when I was 18, and my sister, Rachel, was 16 years old), and we had such a wonderful experience that we have cruised over Christmas every year since (with the exception of 2020 for obvious reasons).
Over the past (almost) fifteen years of Christmas Cruising, we've spent the holiday on five different cruise lines (Royal Caribbean, Carnival, Norwegian, Princess, and Celebrity), on small and large ships (ranging in size from the 670-passenger Pacific Princess to the mega-ship Harmony of the Seas) to a variety of warm-weather ports of call. There's nowhere I'd rather spend the Christmas holiday than out at sea. I hope that I can share my experiences so that you can determine if cruising over the holiday would be a good fit for your family!
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Shinglebells Christmas on Royal Caribbean Adventure of the Seas, 2011 |
I've cruised over Christmas for nearly half of my life, so cruising definitely feels like Christmas to me. However, whether or not it would feel like Christmas on a cruise ship was a question that we had before our first Christmas Cruise. Each cruise lines celebrate the holiday differently, but all cruise lines that I've sailed on over Christmas have decorated the ship and include special holiday programming.