Going way down south to Dixie? Nope, Southern Caribbean this time!

A huge thank you to the folks who checked out my blog post on how I pack for cruises! I really appreciate that you guys came back to check out my ramblings in between trip sagas. What other cruise or travel topics would you like to see a post about?

So where have I been for the last 12 days give or take a few days of getting out from under the piles of laundry and backlogged work? If anybody feels like hiring me just to go cruising and share with you all so I don't have to get my work done before blogging, I will gladly grant that wish for you. :)

Without further ado, we have just returned from yet another Daddy/Daughter cruise, this time back on Royal Caribbean (RCL)'s Grandeur of the Seas for a 12 night Southern Caribbean route that I jokingly called the Holy Land. Our ports were St. Croix, St. John's Antigua, St. Lucia, St. Kitts, and St. Maarten. The first three we'd never visited before, the latter two we have (St. Maarten as recently as last year if you recall my Oasis blog posts) but found something different to do this go around.

Ran into some cousins of our old friends in Key West while in St. Croix.

And yes, we once again booked a suite cabin. This time we put ourselves on a waiting list for any cabin from a two bedroom grand suite on up since at the time this itinerary showed completely sold out of any suites. That means we were limiting our chances to only the two bedroom grand suites (coded as GT on the deck plans), owner's suites which basically are like grand suites except they have a door separating the living room space and the bedrooms, and the one Royal Suite on board this ship that doesn't have beds that separate at all but has a piano in your cabin. Sure you have to sleep on the couch bed if you're not a couple but you can tell all your friends you sailed with a piano. Fast forward a few months of checking the website for availability, a week before final payment was due, an opportunity to book a two bedroom grand suite guarantee cabin showed up in the search results. For those who aren't cruise lingo savvy - booking a guarantee is usually slightly cheaper because you are giving the cruise line the choice of where to place you within that category or above. Some people don't like taking that chance because there are less than ideal cabin locations and you have little control over changing cabins if your assignment isn't to your liking. Plus you could be waiting right up until boarding day to find out where they've placed you at the most extreme cases and that uncertainty isn't pleasant for a planner like me. On the upside, it is a little cheaper and you have the small chance of getting a cabin category higher than you initially paid.

After some discussion, we agreed that it was worth the risk in our case because there are only four two bedroom grand suite cabins on the Grandeur. Two midship (one port, one starboard), and two that wrap around the aft corners all on deck 8. I believe every full suite on this ship is on deck 8 so you'll always have that minor drawback of being under the pool deck or the buffet. If you go in expecting to hear the routine creak or scraping sound as tables and chairs are moved above, it isn't as jarring or invasive.

A minor hassle ensued trying to book this guarantee because we once again had to convince the phone rep that it was okay for us to book a cabin that could sleep several for just the two of us. Then when the rep tried to find the guarantee on her computer that I was seeing, it wasn't showing as an option. Finally, she realized that my looking at it on my computer at the same time meant that I had it held from anyone else being able to see and potentially book it, including her. She told me to go ahead and book it online to see if it would let me and then confirmed that it showed as booked for us while we were still on the phone together.

Fast forward a month or two of neurotic checking to see if we'd been assigned a cabin yet and what suites were still available. Just after I convince myself to take a break from checking so often, Dad randomly decides to check and discovers that we'd been assigned cabin #8018, the midship GT cabin on the port side. Secretly I'd been hoping for one of the aft cabins because I'm a sucker for the aft wake view and love lounging on the balcony watching the water go by. Dad liked the idea being assigned the midship cabin because it was a great middle of the road so to speak position from our frequent destinations. As many cruisers say - who cares as long as I'm on the ship!