We had a great time on our cruise! We’ve been on a couple cruises together and I have been on a couple with my family, but they’ve all had pretty similar itineraries because we tend to leave from Galveston and Florida. I’ve been to Cozumel every single time - which is fine, because I enjoy Cozumel - but we wanted to do something a little different this time. We ended up picking a 5 night cruise from New Jersey to Bermuda, and it was wonderful! I added a few pictures here, but Lee posted them all on Flickr!
Our cruise was on the Anthem of the Seas, which is one of Royal Caribbean’s newer ships. It is a very technology heavy ship – a lot of which seemed kind of gimmicky – and I don’t think we’d choose this class of ship again, but it definitely still enabled us to have our completely unplugged relaxation time which was the goal!
We spent the first day at sea getting familiar with the ship, eating (of course), and just hanging out. Coming out of New Jersey, it was so very cold the first night and a good part the first day, that we didn’t spend a ton of time outside.
The second and third days were spent in Bermuda. We’ve never been on a cruise that had an overnight in a port before, but we really enjoyed it and would definitely do it again. We didn’t have to rush to get back to the boat the first day, so it was a much more relaxing time, and we felt like we got to see so much more than we would have with 2 short days at different stops.
The first day we took the ferry to the opposite side of the island - St. George - and spent our day there. We had lunch at Wahoo’s (a local seafood restaurant – no affiliation with the national chain in the US), which was delicious, and then we took a long walk to the Unfinished Church, and then to Fort St. Catherine, before finishing our day at Tobacco Bay Beach.
The next day we took a ferry to Hamilton, which is the capital of Bermuda. We spent a couple hours walking around (all the while noting how very “British” everything was) and then we took a taxi to Horseshoe Bay to spend our last few hours there on the beach. There is a reason Horseshoe Bay is the most popular/well known beach in Bermuda - it was beautiful! We were there right at the very beginning of the high season, so the weather was perfect, but there weren’t a whole ton of tourists yet (aside from all of the other cruise guests).
The boat headed out that evening and we had one more day at sea before arriving back in New Jersey. It rained for a good part of the day, but that gave us some time to do some of the fun amenities on board like iFly and bumper cars. We also spent some time vegging in the Solarium, reading, and seeing a really neat projection of an orchestra concert. The boat had a cafe on the back with a huge wall of windows that they turn into a screen. It was almost like being there live.
We were back in New Jersey when we woke up the next morning. We made our way to Newark, and then eventually back to Austin. It really was a great vacation: a perfect mix of relaxation and activity!
