Beryl Racing Aboard the Rhapsody of the Seas

In July of 2024, we celebrated a couple of family birthdays with a cruise out of San Juan, PR. that would see us visit five other Caribbean islands while avoiding Hurricane Beryl, the earliest category five hurricane on record.

Getting there and back

Sailing out of San Juan is awesome. Puerto Rico is two days sailing away from South Florida, meaning you can squeeze more stops into a cruise when you start that far south. Having a non-stop flight from St. Louis made all the difference since we didn’t have to worry about missed connections. We still played it safe and got down to San Juan a day early and did some minor exploring. Coming back was a different story. Anyone that’s cruised more than a couple of times knows the challenge of picking a flight home. You can roll the dice on a morning flight and hope that ship arrives back in port on time, there are no delays getting off the ship, and then hoping that getting a ride to the airport is inexpensive and reliable. If you’re not willing to take that chance, then your next flight options are typically middle afternoon. Cruise lines will often times offer an excursion to kill time and keep track of your bags, but it’s usually just a bus tour and the price is steep. We opted for the early afternoon flight, so we hung out on the ship until “We love you” turned into “please leave”. Three hours at the San Juan airport and a two and a half hour long flight later, we were in Orlando. Instead of a three-hour layover, we were looking at delays that turned into a six hour stay. There was a brief update that saw us leaving at midnight to get home at 2 am, and then another update that had us leaving back on time, but the pendulum finally settled back on a six-hour delay, getting us home at about midnight. We found out the next day that we weren’t alone in our travel difficulties. The TSA announced that they set a record for screenings on that day, making it the busiest US travel day up to that point in history.

A brief stay in Old town San Juan

Miranda and I spent a great week in San Juan to celebrate a wedding a few years ago, so there wasn’t a huge need to make this any longer than needed. We picked the Hotel Casablanca to give us some dining and walking options on our arrival date, and because we were under the false impression we’d be sailing out of the Old Town San Juan Cruise Terminal. We scheduled a transfer from the airport, with twelve people, we didn’t want to leave too much to chance. We discovered the next day that Uber’s are plentiful and cheap, so that became our first choice for the next two rides.

Since we left St. Louis at 9:30 am and got checked in to the hotel in the 4 pm hour, we decided to look for dinner rather than wander around town. We could have gone up to the old fort, but we knew we probably wouldn’t have had enough time to do it justice. There were a few options very close to the hotel for dinner and settled on a little restaurant called Ajo del Pais. It seemed to be popular with the locals and the prices were affordable. Our meals were pretty al a carte and that worked well for us as we tried a handful of options and ordered more of what we liked, including the empanadas. We stopped by the SuperMax for wine and snacks to bring aboard. Our last stop of the night was Fat Tuesday for a frozen drink to take up to the rooftop of the Casablanca and enjoy the breeze of the warm and humid night. We checked the weather one more time to see what Hurricane Beryl’s projected path was. Lucky for us, it looked like it was headed a little further south of Barbados and Saint Lucia, our two most southern stops. Anything could change and we still had several days before we’d make it there.

The next morning we got breakfast at Pilao Bakery-Cafe, packed up, and grabbed our Ubers to the cruise port. We had initially thought we’d be able to walk, but we learned that Royal Caribbean docks at the Pan American piers on the other side of the harbor. The Uber ride was very inexpensive, which was great since we needed three of them to get the whole clan to the ship.

Castillo San Felipe del Morro as we left port

Rhapsody of the Seas

There’s no getting around that she’s an older ship. She was refurbished in 2022 but there’s only so much you can do with a ship that first went to sea nearly thirty years ago. The windjammer was doing the best it could with the space available, but it was hard to get around all the folks during peak hours. The food was pretty disappointing with the windjammer lunches being nearly the same thing every day and the dinner regulars were scaled back in the Edelweiss dining room. The sirloin has been replaced with chicken and mashed potatoes as an every night staple and the shrimp cocktail was only available half the time. The service during meals was also very hit and miss with dinner usually being pretty good and breakfast being disappointing. During the at-sea day brunch, we spent nearly two hours at the table and still didn’t get everything we ordered. The pizza bar in the solarium was probably the saving grace for lunch time. The cabins were pretty dated with some carpeting and toilet issues. Getting aboard was easy with most of the work being done through the app and room keys being on the doors when the room was ready. Our room attendant Freddy was a ninja, getting in and out when we were barely gone long enough for it. The entertainment was a little sparse with trivia, karaoke, and guest games being the primary source. We always look forward to the comedians but no such luck on this one. At the end of the day, cruise ships are mobile hotels and it got us everywhere we wanted to be. 5 pm trivia became our pre-dinner staple with occasional checks on the game shows and karaoke after dinner.

We also used the little utilized trick of bringing a bottle of wine aboard each, and thanks to family members that don’t drink much, we had a few extras. This saved us from considering the drink package and allowed us to spend more on drinks at our stops. Cruising is widely considered to be a boom to the local economies, but we learned on this trip that a lot of that money goes back to the cruise lines. There’s also a reluctance to spend money at bars and breweries when there’s “free” drinks back aboard the ship.

Centrum decked out for the Forth of July

Saint Croix, U.S.V.I.

Everyone’s heard of the US Virgin Islands, but most people don’t realize how many of them there are. We’d never been to Saint Croix, the largest of the U.S.V.I.’s, and there aren’t a lot of ships or itineraries that will take you here. As of the time of this writing, only one ship a week visits this island of 40,000 people. Right off the boat there is Fort Frederick and then a small oceanfront walk with a handful of bars. We decided to skip the fort and settled on a rainforest walk and beach stop excursion sold through the ship. We met our guide, Steve, on the pier and he loaded us aboard one of the open-air taxi trucks and led us to their property. He lives on the northwest corner of the island with his wife Rebecca. The property has been in her family for one hundred years and they have been building a trail for hikers while preparing to leave the land in a conservatorship after they are gone. The hike was a short uphill span followed by mostly flat and downhill from there. We stopped at a great overlook of the port and then dropped into the rainforest and saw massive termite nests, huge black millipedes, but we missed out on the large number of birds that we could certainly hear. We were accompanied by the couples two dogs, who playfully ran all along the trail and caught up with us periodically, usually soaking wet. We made a brief stop at the Creque Dam, which was built nearly a hundred years ago to provide fresh water to the town. Our hike ended with some rum punch and then a road walk to find our wayward driver, who then took us to the beach right by the cruise port to finish off the excursion. After about an hour in the warm water, we went searching for a beer and a wine opener. We brought wine aboard but totally forgot an opener. Our first stop was St. Croix Ultimate Bluewater Adventures, with their window bar, aqua equipment, and souvenirs. They didn’t have an opener but we grabbed a couple of $5 cans of Leatherback Brewing IPA. We followed the road down to another small shop but no dice there either. Our final stop was Jordan, a small corner store that not only had an opener, but $2 cans of cold beer. If you’re looking to try some of the local stuff, consider heading back to Jordan’s rather than the bars. On our way back to the boat, we saw a couple of sea turtles swimming next to the dock.

St. Thomas, U.S.V.I.

We’d both been to St. Thomas multiple times so we tried something a little different. Well, not that different for us, we went looking for some breweries. First we caught one of the cabs to the Fort Christian area and looked at some of the shops. From there, we walked to the other cruise port area and visited the Tap and Still. This stop was a little confusing, as it appeared to be the location of Rock City Brewing, but the bartender wasn’t sure what the story was, while standing in front of Rock City Brewing signs on the wall. A few beers and a funnel cake later, we were off to Leatherback Brewing. This brewery was about 800 ft away and had a wide selection of beers. They aren’t open on the weekends, so we got lucky that we arrived during the week. We split a flight and started back towards downtown to visit St John Brewers on the Waterfront and then catch a cab back. Somehow during the mile walk, we completely forgot about the brewery and jumped in the cab for the ship. We realized this as we were boarding and had a good laugh about it. The waterfront area is really split up between the two cruise ports and the downtown in the middle. Walking doesn’t get you any hidden gems and is really just for the steps and memory lapses.

Sint Maarten

We decided to take the path less traveled, literally, we found a trail and hiked to the Devil’s Cupper. On the way out though, we did learn that cabbies were offering a $27 per person 3 hour driving tour of the island. That might not be a bad option for next time. Once out of the gates, we started the 1 mile street trek towards the trailhead and past Caribbean Island Brewery, we planned to stop here on the way back. The hike was along the eastern coastline, and the residual waves leftover from Byerl made the view all the more impressive. The hike itself could have been a loop, but we turned around at the natural pool and trekked back. The trail becomes a little less obvious and we had one missed turn but it didn’t set us back very long. We made it back to the brewery just to find out that it still wasn’t open. The neighbors said that the brewery keeps irregular hours, so we made our way back to the ship disappointed. Miranda decided her love of the beach could not be ignored so she took the $7 round trip water taxi, but a jellyfish sting and cut foot ended her day. Once back aboard, we headed past Ft. Amsterdam and back out to sea towards our next stop.

Furthest point of our hike, Devil’s Cupper, with the rocky beach on one side and the natural swimming pool behind us.

Castries, St. Lucia

This was another repeat stop for us. We’d already seen the highlights like the Pitons, Sapphire Falls, Diamond Botanical Gardens, and the Sulphur Springs. This time we had planned a short hike to the Castries City View Point and then a trip to the beach. Miranda’s injured foot took the hike out of our plans, so we just decided to explore the cruise village and make this a boat day. In the village we visited Antigua Brewing for a couple of beers. We also took pictures in front of the Saint Lucia sign. We found some deals at one of the local shops and grabbed a couple of shirts, including a nice Hawaiian. It was nice having the boat nearly to ourselves for the afternoon.

Barbados

We weren’t sure if we’d make it here because of Hurricane Beryl. The storm subjected Barbados to heavy winds and flooding as it passed south a few days earlier. Luckily they escaped the worst of it with the only remaining evidence being some damage to the sea wall and a few small boats flung ashore. After breakfast we made a b-line for Agapey Chocolate Factory and bought them out of their last four Espresso chocolate bars and a couple of other items. We were happy to see that they were still there after six years. We did the tour on a previous cruise, and it was one of our favorites. We loaded the chocolates into our makeshift climate bag and headed back to the ship, changed, and then grabbed a taxi to Pebble Beach next to the Radisson. Initially we looked at walking, but for $5 a person, it just didn’t make sense. We arranged with our driver a 2 pm return pickup time and then enjoyed the prettiest beach we saw on this trip. On the way back to the boat, we passed by a tree that’s roots had been completely exposed by the hurricane a few days earlier.

During trivia that afternoon, we were informed that the ship would be making a stop in St Vincent to drop off supplies for the residents of the island. Apparently they had a rougher ride during Hurricane Beryl than some of the other islands did.

our trip

Traveling in a group of twelve can be challenging, it was a first for us, but it couldn’t have gone much smoother. Royal Caribbean got us setup with a large dinner table after the first day, so each night was a recap of the trivia questions and who did what. By the end of the trip, it had also turned into a review of the desserts at dinner, which were plentiful. Even though we were incredibly lucky to have avoided Hurricane Beryl on the trip, it still impacted our flights home and two days later, the remnants visited us in St. Louis as a full day storm.