Royal Caribbean's Explorer of the Seas

The next cruise on our trip down memory lane is our June 2008 trip. This trip consisted of a road trip, which I will cover under different blog entries, and a 9 night cruise on Royal Caribbean's Explorer of the Seas. The cruise left out of Cape Liberty Cruise Port in Bayonne, NJ. As usual lets get a little info on the Explorer before we get into the actual cruise.

Explorer of the Seas is a sister to the Navigator of the Seas which I already covered in an earlier entry. It is part of the Voyager-class of cruise ships. She is 137,308 GRT, is 1,020 ft long, 125 ft wide, and can carry 3,100 passengers. Explorer does have one thing that her sister ships do not. She has a built-in atmospheric and oceanographic laboratory operated by the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.
This was the first time we had left out of cape liberty. We had a send off from the fire department. It was neat getting to sail past the Statue of Liberty.  It was way off in the distance, but still cool. Also, this was the first time we got to sail out of a port that has a bridge across it. It looks so close as you go under it. AMAZING!

We went to the parade they hold on the promenade. Some of the ships have Dreamworks characters in the parades now. Get there early or you won't get a good spot. We ended up on a deck above over looking the promenade and had a decent view.

Our first stop was Bermuda. As we pulled in it was looking like a pretty gross day and we thought our tour might be a waste but it ended up being a nice day. Since this was our first time here we were glad the weather turned out nice in the end.

We ended up doing a pretty neat little tour. It was a Segway tour. My wife didn't think it was that great, she said it was too much work. I enjoyed it though. We toured the fort and some of the older parts of the port area.

 We had a sea day between ports. The pool was crowded this day as it is on most days at sea. We hit some pretty crazy seas on the way from Bermuda to St. Thomas. We were rocking so hard the water in the pool was splashing out! No one at the pool now!

 Back to St. Thomas again. Here is a nice view of the ship from across the bay as we head to town.

We took a taxi into town to do a little shopping! Then headed back to the ship to enjoy the solarium without the crowds. We were pretty much all by ourselves.

Next stop San Juan. I don't think we even got off here this time. I did get some nice shots of the city and fort as we sailed out.

We got a Coast Guard escort out of the port which was pretty neat. Look at the waves they were hitting, Crazy!!!

As usual we had great servers in the dining room. Here are all the servers during one of their "performances".

Overall this was a wonderful cruise. We loved getting the extra time on the ship with the 9 day itinerary and the staff and entertainment were excellent as always. We had a great room steward and we got some different towel animals this cruise. This guy was watching TV when we came in from dinner.

He also knew we were celebrating our 5 year wedding anniversary on this cruise so he had a romantic surprise waiting for us.  My wife thought I had ordered this but silly me gave the credit to our room steward rather than taking credit for it.  What was I thinking?!  Either way, it was a nice end to a great trip!

To see the rest of the pictures from this trip please visit Partridge Pictures.