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Cruise Day #8: San Juan

We docked in San Juan early this morning. Overall, this disembarkation process went well, especially after we got off of the ship. We seemed to be running a bit more than 30 minutes late and not knowing how long it would take to get from the pier through airport security, I opted to have us leave with the ’12’ luggage tag group rather than our assigned ’18’. This had us off the ship by 8:45 or so…

The customs/immigration line was a bit long, but it didn’t take too long for us to pas through it. From there, it was smooth sailing to and through the airport. All told, we were sitting in the JetBlue terminal’s food court sipping coffee by a little after 10:00.

We happily passed two hours playing with Emerson and then boarded our plane on time for a roughly 3 hour flight back to Tampa.

Here’s a cool photo from over the Bahamas:

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While it might seem like a hassle, I actually think San Juan is a fairly ideal cruise port. The cruise fares usually seem to be a bit cheaper, thereby offsetting the cost of the flights. Plus, with direct flights on a good schedule from Tampa, it’s not much more time consuming than driving down to Port Everglades and Miami. What’s more, the itineraries are usually better. By “better” I mean a greater variety of ports and fewer sea days. San Juan: two thumbs up.

For this trip, I’ll skip writing an in-depth cruise review. Overall, it was a good cruise. We like this class of ship (having sailed on her sister ship, Brilliance, twice) and the large balcony was awesome with the little one (as I expected). I think our cruises aboard the Caribbean Princess (itinerary, food, and truly “escaping completely”) and Norwegian Dawn (duration, family, Freestyle dining) were a bit better, but it’s been our best RCI cruise in the Caribbean.

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