Trip Report: Caribbean Cruise (Day 4)

Day 4:

On Monday we were scheduled to arrive in Labadee, Haiti, which is a private part of the island you can only get to by cruise ship. As was becoming my routine, I woke up that morning in time to see sunrise.  We hadn't quite gotten to land yet, so it was another beautiful sunrise over the ocean. Because I woke up early I had time to go get a coffee from the cafe and also take some pictures of the deserted Promenade.

Another beautiful sunrise over the water

Our first view of land was so pretty! I really love the layers of hills.

A pretty sculpture in the Promenade

The base of the sculpture

The Promenade is like pedestrian mall, but on a cruise ship!

Here's the wine bar called Vintages

This is the Two Poets Pub, which was always packed every night with people watching the musicians they had onboard

A tall shot of the Promenade (and yes, that is a classic car on the left)

The cafe was my favorite place to get specialty coffee and tea, plus snacks 24 hours a day

It's so big that it's easy to forget you're on a ship!

The ship arrived at about 7am but we had decided the night before that we would take our time and not rush to get to the beach right away. We met for breakfast at 8am and then grabbed our beach stuff to get off the ship. I had already scoped out the map of the island and new exactly which was the best beach to go to. The island is not very big, so it didn't take us very long to get to Columbus Cove. The attendant grabbed four lounge chairs for us and got them situated so that one of them was in the shade for me. We got in the water right away and it was heavenly. It was so blue and so refreshing and it honestly felt like we were in paradise.

Off this ship for our first port

Time to take a selfie!

The water was unbelievably clear!

Lots to do...

Plenty to see & do for the day!

For some reason I have a hard time relaxing on trips and can't sit still for very long.  So I broke up my time on the beach by listening to an audio book and also listening to music. When I got too hot I would go hang out in the water and then go get a fruity drink from the bar. It was a good way to break up my time and it let me do a bit of relaxing without getting too bored by staying in one place too long.

​After a couple of hours we went and ate the buffet lunch they were serving. Then we went to the souvenir shop and I found all kinds of fun stuff to take home. By that point I was pretty much ready to go back to the ship and we only had about an hour left before we had to be back onboard. So I took my time walking back to the ship, got one last frozen drink for the walk, and took some pretty pictures along the way.

Columbus Cove

The ship off in the distance

I thought about renting one of these, but apparently this beach is really rocky and hard to walk on. I ended up liking Columbus Cove better.

The top of the zipline

Pretty views headed towards the water

Such a gorgeous place! I'd definitely come here again!!

Once I got back on the ship the first thing I wanted to do was to take a shower to wash off the sweat, sea water, and sunblock that was all over me by that point. I felt like a new woman after getting all cleaned up and then I was ready to meet up with everyone for some more Phase 10. We played until it was time for dinner and then we went and sat in our favorite section with the waitstaff we had enjoyed so much the night before. 

One of the tricky things about being a vegetarian on a cruise is that there aren't a ton of options at dinner. There's one pasta dish that's available every single night and then one option that changes every night. On this night I wasn't too excited about the eggplant parmesan choice on the menu so I asked if they had a vegetarian Indian option for that night. They said they did and I decided to give that a try. I'm glad I did because it was really good! 

Once dinner was over we thought we'd try to play a game of mini golf. We went up to the top deck but it was way too windy to play, so we ended up grabbing the cards and played some more Phase 10. We got wrapped up in our game and didn't go to the theater in time to get good seats for that night's show. The others decided to stand at the back of the theater and watch the show but my feet hurt too much to be able to do that, so I decided to call it an early night and go to bed early. I had been waking up early every morning so I definitely needed a chance to catch up on my sleep.  I was in bed by 10pm and was out like a light.

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Stay tuned for tomorrow's post to read about how I spent the day in San Juan, Puerto Rico!