New York to Miami - Port Calls and Tips aboard Oceania Insignia

November 1st and 2nd - St Georges, Bermuda

We literally entered Bermuda with a "Bang" as a blunderbuss toting local let go with a 1-gun salute as we passed by this fort on our starboard side.  Yeow - with all the things going on these days, hearing a loud bang when you aren't expecting it is scary -- so be warned when you're entering the harbor...

Fort "Bang"

Right after getting our breath back, we looked forward and saw this very narrow passage dead ahead -- fine - so first the natives are shooting at us and then the local pilot's going to put us on the rocks...  Actually looking at the narrow passage reminded us a little of transiting the Bay of Kotor enroute to anchoring off of Kotor town in Montenegro.  Fortunately, its all a matter of perspective -- once we brought the mirrors in port and starboard, we hardly lost any paint...

Our big day in Bermuda was centered on playing golf at Port Royal Golf Course.  The very cool part about this was that we got to see much of this very beautiful country along the way.

Great Day of Golf at Port Royal

St Georges is in the top right - the eye of the fish hook and Port Royal is all the way down on the bottom right where the hook curves up to the tip.  Transportation wise, there were plenty of cabs available pierside - all cabs run strictly by meter - no negotiating or potential for monkey business - very civil actually.  The ride which took us down the east coast of the island was very picturesque, took about 45 minutes and cost us $55 US Dollars (dollars are readily accepted).  After a lovely round of golf and with sage advice from the course starter, we headed back to the ship by local bus heading first to the largest town in Bermuda - Hamilton - where we changed buses to head up the west side of the island this time and back to Insignia.  The bus ride cost us about $10 total.  One of our strongest impressions of Bermuda was how unfailingly polite they are to each other and to visitors - as each person got on or off the bus, they exchanged pleasantries with the drivers.

On the flip side, the only bus drivers that drive faster than our bus driver from Hamilton to St. Georges are the bus drivers that take you from the port in Sorrento up the hill to the main piazza -- these guys seem to defy the laws of physics that say you can't lean something as heavy as a bus so far over without tipping all the way over.

Very picturesque course

We overnighted in Bermuda and awoke to another picture postcard day with temperatures in the low 80's and a very nice cooling breeze.  We stayed aboard and on departing St Georges, kept a weather eye on the fort to our port to make sure we didn't get another surprise 1-gun salute from our piratical friend.  Off to the south we sail for Saint Barthelemy (St Barts) three days away.




November 5th - Gustavia, St Barts

Well, when you're cruising to smaller venues, the day of the week has a very important influence on what you might consider doing.  Arriving on a Sunday, we didn't even think about things perhaps being closed up, right?  I mean small island, lots of one day visitors, 60 days after Hurricane Irma hit the island... We got off the tender (you tender in here) expecting to do some wine and cheese shopping in a French influenced setting and found that just about everything was closed.  But as this sign indicates, things are back to semi-normalcy post storm - just don't come looking for lunch on a Sunday in Gustavia.

So added a tickler to self when looking at port calls...  Look at the day of the week and then do some digging into the local culture to see if your port visit might be impacted.  So with no shopping available, we took a nice 2 hour walk around town and the hills surrounding Gustavia to get a view of things.  One thing for sure, St Barts is a more prosperous island than most of her neighbors and this shows in the streets and buildings around the port.

Streets of San Francisco - really steep but no cable cars

When walking around Gustavia, we could see evidence of Irma damage, toppled walls, broken trees, and a statue laying on its back but by and large it was clear that Gustavia - located on the west side of the island fared far better than the east side of the island where entire resorts will be closed until winter 2018.  Nature is so capricious - from Gustavia, you could look north across the channel and see St Martin (Maarten) just a few short miles away and realize that St Martin took a hugely damaging hit from Irma.  With our port call in St Barts, the tempo of our cruise aboard Insignia was hitting high gear, over the next three days we were visiting Antigua, St Lucia, and Grenada as we made our way to the south.

November 6th - St John's Antigua

Following on our theme of Hurricane Irma is the tale of two islands in this tiny country - Antigua which was ready to receive us and spirit us away on a beautiful catamaran - Mystic II - for a day long tour of Antigua's beautiful western coastline and whose commercial harbor was receiving containers and cargo as if nothing had happened - and her sister island of Barbuda which when we visited was still completely evacuated as a result of damage received by Irma's Category 5 fury (185mph winds).

Our cruise aboard Mystic II was advertised as a Lobster and Champagne cruise - and they delivered on this promise.  This was our first Oceania shore excursion and we were very happy with the value and experience delivered.  What would be interesting to find out though would be if the folks on our catamaran from other cruise lines (two other ships were in town) were paying the same or different prices for the same excursion.  Be that as it may, the view of the coast line was beautiful, the grilled lobster lunch was quite good and the booze which was included in our excursion price, never stopped.  All in all we had so much fun that we're looking for similar excursions for our upcoming cruise on Oceania Marina.

The Booze Pirates - Arrgghh

November 7th - Castries, St Lucia

We have visited St Lucia several times and very much like the island's vibe.  Since we've pretty much seen everything on our various visits, we decided to stick around the port town area and do some shopping at the local farmers market and the adjacent supermarket -- our stash of hot sauce and cabin wine had been depleted by this time so it was time to stock up.  Dodging intermittent rain showers under a couple of small umbrellas we'd packed, we shopped for local artisan crafts at the farmers market and hot sauce at the supermarket - the prices for everything were very reasonable which is something we've found to be true in St Lucia.  We loved the juxtaposition of day time and night time shots of Castries - the cars moving through the hills at night looked like fire flies floating down the hill.

November 8th - St Georges, Grenada

Our arrival aboard Insignia marked my first visit to Grenada - I didn't know what to expect but very much looked forward to visiting the town and surrounding environment.  First thing I noticed is how tall the locals are - these guys must have been at least 9 feet tall - don't know if they'd be able to make it down the Sendall Tunnel without bending over...

All kidding aside, we first walked north along the docks looking at the shops and old businesses (Abattoir - A butcher shop) that used to be the life blood of daily shopping before being replaced by supermarkets.  We turned around at the bus terminal and walked several hundred yards south where we could see the Sendall Tunnel to our left and stairs leading to Ft George on our right.  Since it looked like Ft George would have a great view, we headed up the stairs.  When we reached the top, we met a very nice young lady who volunteered to give us a guided tour of the fort and its history.   As expected, the view from the top was spectacular.  Historically speaking, Ft George is where Prime Minister Maurice Bishop was murdered in 1983, providing an excuse for the US to invade Grenada six days later.

When we asked our guide where we should eat lunch, she brought us over to the Fort's inner harbor view (above) and told us how to walk down the hill to reach BB's Softback Crab - what a great recommendation!  The softback crab dish was so tasty and our table was right on the water. Great food, great view, and even better company... From BB's we took the Sendall Tunnel back to the port and Insignia.

We could definitely envision a longer stay in Grenada the next time - really enjoyed our time there.

November 10th - Aruba

Aruba's another island we've explored end to end several times so we chose to stick close to town and do a little shopping.  The port area has lots of shopping, a very nice mall, several supermarkets, and of course, a place to have a beer on the water.

November 11th - Santa Marta, Colombia

Our visit to Santa Marta was our second to Colombia -- our first visit to Cartagena had been so wonderful, we were ready to be "wowed" by Santa Marta, Colombia's oldest city.  Well, sometimes things don't turn out as you'd planned.

As is our preference, when we are visiting a port for the first time, we like to walk the port and surrounding neighborhoods to get a feel for the people, their culture, and their lifestyle.  So after getting off the ship, we headed right (south) along the sidewalk adjacent to the beach.  If we visited St Barts on the wrong day (Sunday) we were visiting Santa Marta on the right day (Saturday) the seaside was busy and lots of hustle and bustle on the streets.  The beach was nothing to write home about - lots of locals were in the water and enjoying themselves but after seeing the beautiful beaches in Aruba, Antigua, St Lucia, and Grenada, these beaches were "meh".  So no beach for us...  What about shopping?

The streets and stores were packed with vendors and customers along Carrera 5.  We went into a supermarket which I would say was similar to a Walmart - grocery, home goods, and clothing.  Unlike our visit to Cartagena where we fearlessly trekked throughout the old town, for some reason, our guard was definitely up when walking through the streets.  As it would turn out, perhaps we had that "itchy" feeling for a reason...  While we were pricing wine and cheese in the supermarket, three young people (20's) approached us and asked where we were from, offering to exchange dollars for the local currency.  Mind you, we are in a large, well lighted, and busy store...  Anyway, there is no doubt that the two guys and a girl were pick pockets - trying to get us to pull out money so they could distract us long enough to get some.  We backed right away without letting them within touching distance and put a few aisles between us immediately.  After dealing with that (and no, we aren't paranoid, we were street smartened about pick pocket scams when we lived in Naples Italy so we know when things aren't right) we decided to head generally back to the ship.  Along the way we saw some very nice historical buildings, one of which had a very long line of locals waiting to get in.  Just as we were getting ready to figure out what the buzz was, an altercation broke out between about 6-10 men in the park across from this building - with all the shouting, a crowd quickly gathered to see why everyone was so angry.  That was our cue to go the other way and head back to the ship without delay.  Did anything come of it?  Most likely not but coming on the heels of a pickpocket experience, we were getting the distinct impression that Santa Marta was not our kind of place.

So going ashore with high hopes, we returned chastened by our experience.  Perhaps this was the port where we should have taken an excursion away from the port and been wowed by the natural wonders of Colombia - live and learn is a great motto indeed...

So, with our departure from Santa Marta, we headed almost due north bound for Miami.

On our trip back, I decided to jot down a few notes and tips we'd gathered from our experience aboard Insignia which we'll share now...

Impressions and Tips 

Casino - First up is an observation about a place we never frequent but always end up passing through whenever we're on a cruise ship -- the Casino.  So why would non-gamblers care?  Because the casino is non-smoking!  You can walk through it without getting slimed which in our memory was a first - love it...

Shipboard Service - Regardless of where we were - on the pool deck, doing Happy Hour, or eating in any of the restaurants, the service was always, "High Touch" meaning that it was impeccable - the staff was there on a moment's notice - more often than not before you'd even asked because they are paying attention and seeing what needs to be done.

Properly Hydrated Workouts - In both the gym and beside the walking/running track are coolers of water bottles or sports drinks to ensure you stay hydrated - all completely free.

Learn about streaming - Something to consider when you are aboard ships is that you may miss important sports or live TV events - all depends on their on-board programming.  Aboard Insignia we didn't get ESPN so were going to miss a very exciting World Series unless we streamed in onto one of our digital devices.  Taking advantage of our free wi-fi package, we were able to see all the games live - but if you're planning a cruise during Superbowl, Olympics, World Series, World Cup, try to find out if on-board programming includes the right channels.  If not, you will usually be able to find a website that is streaming the event live on the internet.

Wi-Fi Calling - This one's on a similar line to the last tip - the internet, if you have it available, can keep you connected with your phone.  In our case, we have AT&T on our iPhones.  Our iPhones allow you to put them in "Airplane Mode" so you don't get hit with International cell roaming charges -- but while you are in Airplane mode, you can turn wi-fi on and assuming you have an internet connection, will allow you to make and receive phone calls if you enable "Wi-Fi" calling in General - Settings - Cellular - AT&T - Wi-Fi Calling "On".  This actually worked quite well and we were able to keep in touch with folks ashore to resolve a couple of thorny issues.

Plugs in your Cabin - As advertised, we had two US electrical plug outlets in our cabin; there were also two European electrical plug outlets - which were unusable for us because we hadn't brought European plug adaptors.  We'll add these for every cruise henceforth.  Generally, our issue is the amount of plug-ins needed for our devices (yes, I know, we're on vacation and supposedly digitally detoxing) but there you are - if there's a connection available, we're on-line.  Anyway, all of our digital devices are dual voltage so no transformer is required so by carrying a couple of European plug adaptors, we will double the amount of plugs available to keep things charged up.

Water and Coffee - We are used to seeing bottles of water in our cruise cabins with "dust" on them because like us, no on wants to pay $4 for a bottle of water.  But on Oceania, we had three tall bottles of water on our ice tray each time our cabin attendant refreshed our room - free of charge...

While we're on the subject of water, we actually had several choices of bubbly water (with gas) with each meal - Pellegrino, Perrier, or a third more generic sparkling water.  Having three different choices was really nice - and once again, included free of charge.

If you're a big coffee fan, you'll also appreciate that Oceania's Barrista staffed Cafe uses Illy equipment to crank out perfect Cafe Latte's and Macchiato's - once again included and something we looked forward to getting each morning and afternoon.

Bottom Line - At some point you've got to quit writing and say what you really think.  I would say at this point - 15 years since my first cruise - I am a middling experienced cruiser.  Valerie's been cruising 30 plus years and was an officer on a cruise ship for 3 years.  We've been on bigger ships and smaller ships, mass market cruise lines and those purporting to be more exclusive - we haven't been everywhere on everything - yet - but our experience aboard Oceania Insignia was the best we've had to date.  Dollar for dollar we got exceptional value for our money.