Summit Southern Caribbean Cruise - Part 1

Embarkation

This cruise was all about the ports. We love short cruises but after three trips to the Bahamas last year, we were ready for something different. A cruise to Cozumel was another option, but we weren’t excited about spending that much time at sea just getting there and back. Then Ron got an unexpected email offer for a 4-day Southern Caribbean cruise on Celebrity Summit. Southern Caribbean cruises are usually seven days or longer but since Summit was about to head into dry dock, the itinerary had been shortened. The ship left out of San Juan and stopped in St Thomas, St Kitts and Antigua – a different port every day!

We flew into San Juan the day of the cruise. Our plane landed at 1:30 and within an hour, we were onboard the ship. The first thing we did was drop off our luggage in our cabin, a balcony stateroom on Deck 9. When we’d booked the trip, we’d chosen an oceanview guarantee stateroom, but a few days later we got an email from Celebrity giving us the option to bid on an upgrade. Celebrity recently started a new program called “Celebrity MoveUp”, a way to fill the higher-level cabins that hadn’t been booked. Ron and I were perfectly happy with an oceanview cabin but decided it wouldn’t hurt to make the minimum bid for a balcony. We bid $100 thinking we didn’t have any chance of winning. Surprise – five days before the cruise we learned that we had been upgraded! The cabin was small and there was an overhang from the deck above that blocked some of our view, but it was wonderful having a balcony.

landing in San Juan

There's our ship!

We spent the afternoon hanging out on deck and going to the emergency muster drill, which oddly was at 4:45 even though we weren’t scheduled to leave port until 8:30. There were A LOT of people missing at the drill, probably still out in Old San Juan taking advantage of the late departure time. When muster was over, we cleaned up for dinner at the Cosmopolitan Restaurant, the two-level main dining room. There was a waiting list for a table for two but that gave us just enough time to have a pre-dinner martini at the Rendezvous Lounge before our pager buzzed. Our table was on the lower level of the dining room next to a window so we could look out at the darkening sky. We really liked our table location and our waiter Jaime (pronounced “Hi-May”) so we decided we would request his section the rest of the cruise.

Cosmopolitan Restaurant

Instead of having dessert in the dining room, we picked up some hand-dipped ice cream from the Oceanview Café. They had cinnamon ice cream, my favorite! Of course, I had to go back for a second bowl. :-)  We watched the sailaway from the Sunset Bar until the ship had backed out of the channel and was out in open water, then we went down to the cabin. From our balcony, we could see the pilot boat riding along beside us, preparing to pick up the pilot. When the pilot stepped onto the pilot boat, a cheer went up from the upper decks. It had been a long day and we didn’t have any trouble falling asleep that night to the rocking of the ship.

St Thomas

Summit was already docking at Crown Bay in St Thomas when we woke up. While Ron was in the shower, I went up to the Solarium for some fresh pressed juice. The Solarium was the spa-like adults-only pool area with padded lounge chairs and a café with healthy food options. Weirdly, there was a statue of a very plump woman next to the pool. To remind people not to eat too much at the buffet, maybe? I wondered if she would still be there after the dry dock. I ordered a “Purple Rain”, which had blackberries, blueberries, pear, apple and acai. But instead of pressing the fruit in a juicer, the attendant blended it up in a blender with ice. Umm, that’s not a juice, that’s a smoothie… Oh well, it still tasted good. :-)

Solarium

juice or smoothie?

main pools

I was antsy to get the day started. We had booked the St John Beach and Snorkel Tour, a beach day at Trunk Bay. I’d only been to St John once before, over 20 years ago, but I still remembered how gorgeous it was. Our tour met at 10:30 at the dock, where we boarded the Island Girl for the 45-minute boat ride. As we cruised out of Crown Bay and along the coast of St Thomas, the crew provided commentary and pointed out various sights. It wasn’t obvious from the boat, but St Thomas was still recovering from the back-to-back blows of Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017. The crew told us that only two of the island’s ten resorts had reopened since the storms, with a few more slated to reopen in 2020.

the ride to St John

There were three tour groups on the boat – besides our group headed for Trunk Bay, some people were taking an island sightseeing tour and others were planning to explore on their own. Once we arrived in St John, we piled into different vans based on our tours. The road to Trunk Bay reminded me of the west coast of Maui, steep, narrow and winding with lush vegetation, except the water was turquoise blue, as if Hawaii had been transported to the Caribbean. We made a couple of stops at scenic overlooks for pictures and waited patiently for a group of donkeys to move out of the road. Ron joked that this was the appropriate time to say, “Get your asses out of the way!” :-)  The only thing that confused me was that we drove on the left side of the road. No one really knows why, but it is probably because left-side driving was already established by the time the US bought the Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917.

At the beach, we had about two hours to snorkel the underwater snorkel trail or just hang out and relax. We decided that relaxing sounded good. I ordered a frozen Bushwacker from the beach bar which had reopened at the end of December. There was also a food truck and after we’d had a snack, we took a long walk down the beach. What a beautiful day and a beautiful place. I just wished we’d could have stayed a few hours longer!

Trunk Bay

That night was Evening Chic Night (formerly known as Formal Night). We took a few pictures in the Grand Foyer and went to the Martini Bar for drinks before dinner, where we were seated in Jaime’s section again. After dinner we decided to check out the casino. We found a $10 Black Jack table, but Ron wasn’t feeling the luck so we didn’t stay long. Since we had to be up fairly early for our tour in St Kitts in the morning, we headed off to bed.

Grand Foyer

Martini Bar

continued on Part 2