First leg of B2B with my husband
I’m not wanting to do a full review but wanted to mention a couple things about the Magic. First I’ll say, I had an amazing time with my husband being able to relax. The ports were all nice (some better than other as usual) and it was nice to just have a couple laid back weeks. That said the Carnival Magic is my least favorite Carnival ship I’ve been on. It was too big, buffet too small, service was good, people were annoying. All those stereo types you hear about Carnival were alive and well on our cruise. 99% of the time we ignored the bad stuff though and had an amazing time.
Cruise 1 stopped at: Half Moon Cay (still my favorite), Amber Cove and Grand Turk. We got cabanas at both Half Moon Cay and Amber Cove. Both were very nice and worth the money. HMC was beautiful, it’s still my favorite Carnival only destination (well HAL goes there too). Amber Cove was nice and we just relaxed. Staff did a good job of keeping people out. Grand Turk we did our own thing. Walked to Jack’s Shack which we felt was overrated, got in the water a bit and my husband got some local beer.
Second Leg of B2B with my Cousin
The B2B was pretty simple but a little confusing, like my second room key was not at guest services or my room. No biggie, they just made me a new one. Embarkation was easy. There were some big groups on board this week which made it more crowded than the previous week. I boarded early and almost all the cabanas had already been claimed by a big group. Should have just asked if I could do it the night before probably. The groups were obnoxious and quite honestly pretty rude for the duration of the cruise. But the ports were a lot of fun. We stopped again at Half Moon Cay and Grand Turk, but also Curacao which I’d never been to and also Aruba.
First up was Aruba. We were lucky enough to trade a couple spots in our cabana on HMC with someone who booked the Renaissance in Aruba so we could go to the flamingo and iguana beach. It was a super nice day. We finished the evening with a sunset tour which I probably wouldn’t do again (too many people using it as a quick way to get drunk).
In Curacao we took a taxi to the caves. It was pretty easy and we didn’t want to be confined to a tour. We then walked into town and did some shopping and got some gelato.
I somehow managed to get no photos of Grand Turk and HMC on the second cruise… but both were amazing and duplicates of the week prior. I definitely look forward to doing another cruise to Curacao and Aruba (and hopefully Bonaire also). I still love the Southern Caribbean and I’d still cruise Carnival if the price and itinerary is right. For now I still am mainly sticking to European holidays though while we live here in England. I have some really exciting 2020 and early 2021 trips coming up!
Jaunting Around The World 