Florida + West Caribbean Cruise 2016

Day 6 – 30/03/2016 – It’s 5 o’Clock somewhere! Yaman!

Our alarm was set for 6.45am. This is early! No room service today. We went to the breakfast buffet. More than enough for everyone.

We were allowed to leave the ship and enter the port of Falmouth,  Jamaica at 8.15am. We hurried to ‘the station’ where we had to gather for our excursion. We had booked the Grand Jamaica and Dunns River Falls Tour, which would last 8 hours. A lady took our ticket and looked at it in a strange way. This didn’t feel right. She took our tickets to a colleague and then told us to come with her to someone from the Royal Caribbean entertainment team. He said our tour was cancelled?!?! We didn’t know! He told us there were not enough participants, so it was cancelled. We should have received a letter in our room. But no, we didn’t get anything! We were not amused. We had to choose another excursion in a few minutes time.

We chose the 1700’s Plantation Tour. The tour only cost half of the original one and took about 3 hours. We now also had some time to shop, which was a nice extra.

The tour brought us to “Good Hope Plantation”. This used to be a sugar plantation, but now only oranges and coconuts are grown here. The plantation was almost closed when slavery was abolished.

We had 2 guides, Lydia and Reagan (the bus driver). We went to see buildings that were built 260 years ago to house the slaves. During the tour the bus stopped and we could taste fresh oranges.

After we visited the plantation we were taken to the house of the former owner of the plantation. He was British. Up till 2007 the house was used as a resort, but now it can only be visited with a guide and be rented for weddings. In the front yard we had an amazing view of the Jamaican nature.

At the end of the tour we drove to a picknick area where we were served lunch. The daily menu was vegetables with pieces of chicken and a fried corn bread. Not really our thing.. But the fruit punch was very good!

The guide also taught us some Jamaican words. Yes is “Yaman!” and No is “Uh-Uh” while you shake your head.

At 12pm boattime we were taken back to the port. We still had some time to spend at the port since we would only have to be back on the ship by 4.30pm. We looked around in the port and did some shopping. The port is actually a pier that had been built especially for Royal Caribbean 5 years ago. It felt a little fake. This is not the real Jamaica.

By 2pm we returned to the ship. At the Information Desk we asked how we would be refunded for the tour. It would be subtracted from our bill.

We went to our room to freshen up, but there was no water. We called Service Desk and they told us that a water pipe was broken and they were already working on it. This should take about an hour. After half an hour it was fixed. We quickly took a shower because we wanted to attend a presentation about cruising to Alaska at 4.15pm.

The presentation started with an introduction of the largest ships of Royal Caribbean. After that we got information about the different cruises to Alaska. We definitely have to put this on our list. But still have to find the time and money..

We had a reservation at 5.45pm in the Main Dining Room. The theme of the day was Greece.

After dinner we went to the casino until 10.15pm. We were going to the evening show “The Love and Marriage Gameshow”. They picked 3 couples from the audience. The longest married one, the least long married and 15-25 years married. The oldest couple was married for 50 years and the youngest couple was married only 4 days ago! The funniest couple were the people that were married 20 years. The man sat down on his chair and he fell through. HILARIOUS! Also their answers were always funny. It seemed like they were hired to participate. During the show the couples had to answer questions without consulting each other. If they gave the same answer, they got a point.

The youngest couple won and got jewels and a voucher to ride the Zipline in Labadee the next day. This voucher was worth 90 dollars! The comical couple was second and got a treatment in the spa. The oldes couple got a bottle of champagne.

After the show there was a party with liveband next to the pool. We only stayed for a short time before returning to our room. It was already past midnight.

Tomorrow we will dock at the last island of the cruise: Haiti. We have booked the 10.30am “Haitian Cultural Tour and Beach Break at Paradise Cove”.