The ship, Costa Mediterranea
Obviously Italy inspired, on an Commedia dell´arte theme, a gaudy cross between Las Vegas and La dolce vita. Apart from a few blemishes well kept, and the public premises conspicuously well cleaned. Our cabin, in a "superior" class, was about the style of a midrange hotel room shrunk to a minimal size (Two persons could hardly pass each other anywhere on the floor).
But the public spaces, dining rooms, bars, theater, pool decks were generous. There was a fair size gym, and even a library with a copy of "Gone girl". WiFi existed on board, but was atrociously expensive
.The staff
I had expected (correctly) a lot of Phillipinos and Thais, but found to my surprise many Indians, and
quite number of Chinese. In China we always felt that hotel hospitality was not the country´s strong suite, but our waitress and assistant waiter were both Chinese and did very well.The guests
A fair number of European old people, (my initial guess was an average age of 60+) but to our great surprise even families with small children. Italian was the language heard most often, with perhaps French almost as common. Among French speakers very elegant dark skinned families predominated - we got to exchange a few words with an extended family of grandparents, parents and small children and it appeared that cruising is a popular passtime for the middle class from francophone West Indies. Many German speakers of course, and even a sprinkling of Russians.The food
To my unschooled palate, the food was excellent. Italian style ala carte dinners, with a good choice of meat, fish or vegetarian entries, a huge choice of different breakfasts, from omelettes, egg and bacon to croissants and waffles with whipped cream and jam (my favourite) and a good choice of different dishes for self-serve lunches.There was live music in several bars practically the day long, and evening shows in the theatre, but especially in the theatre, the music - clasic, soul, or whatever style - was only bearable with earplugs, and we did not bring enough of those.
The excursions
We had been forewarned that the cruise organized excursions are overpriced, but could not have quessed the size of the difference. Booking similar excursion in port was almost half the price, and it turned out that some of the ship´s excursions´ intinerary (" a tour of the island and a beach") was easily covered by taxi for a quarter of the price, and with better flexibility.
One unsung amenity of Grand Turk is that the cruise ship quay leads directly to a beach, so for swimming, it was by far the most convenient stop, but the island itself is flat and dusty, with salinas along the cost. Salt production apparently used to be a good business, one can see 19th century wooden houses of "salt barons" but many not very well kept.
Samana, Dominican Republic
The island is hillier and greener, so it makes a good background to the sea. The thing to do in Samana - when in season - is to go whale watching. We missed the established company´s multi deck boat and had to make do without the whale science explanations, but on our small plastic 4 bench boat, we went to the same spot, saw the same whales and felt very close to the sea. The whales were few, far between and kept their distance, even if our fast boat did its best to get close.Tortola, British Virgin Islands
This was one of the high points of the cruise. A taxi took us over the green crest of hills to Cane Garden Bay beach, we had a "happy hour" taste of the local rum punch, and enjoyed the sea. A particularly novel experience were the seabirds, brown pelicans and one other species, watching from a tall tree and then diving vertically for fish in complete disregard for the bathers - one hitting the water two meters from us.
Another of my favourites. The cruise ship docks right in the centre of a real city (Guadeloupe is a an overseas department of France and Pont á Pitre its commercial hub) so apart from the tourist market (we bought beautiful gift sets of local spices there) there are real fishermen selling slices of a man sized tuna on the dock and there is wonderful choice of shops for everything, from rum to swimsuits (Annika bought two). Local bus took us to a beach opposite Ilet de Gosier. Swimming was great, seabirds flew around and in a tree, we got to see a huge lizard, green iguana.
Lucaya/Freeport Harbour, Grand Bahama
People rave about Lucaya, I found it the least interesting of our ports of call. The harbour facility is just a few tourist shops, neither Freeport nor Lucay, each of those is twenty minute´s taxi drive, and the taxi "queue" at the port shambolic and the taxis not quite in prime conditions, which was surprising. All along the wide roads to Lucaya the impression was of riches, fancy bungalows set in large gardens, clubs, hotels. made me think of expensive sunny parts parts of the US. We ended up on a free beach next door to the Casino and one of the resorts, Grand Lucayan. The beach was ok but the water cooler than in the other islands, and the mammoth hotel complexes at our back spoiled some of the fun.
All in all - cruising is fun when you enjoy your company (which we did) and it would be perhaps even more if we had made the right preparations (which we did not). Fodors Caribbean Ports of Call
in our tablet was definitely not enough, and with the astronomic cost of onboard Internet connection, you would not be Googling the sights of the islands at breakfast.