agreed! San Juan is fun - good food, gorgeous battlements, and everyone wears tight pants all over the place.
Labadee sounds pretty missable altogether - what Spalding Grey would have called a pleasure prison. Perhaps we can convince them to alter course to the BVI instead... The baths at virgin gorda are amazing
I was in San Juan on a cruise 10 years ago, on a different line, and the port visit was similarly short. In that case, it was our last port of call before sailing back to Norfolk, Virginia, and we wound up going through US Immigration & Customs in San Juan. We shouldn't be doing that on this trip, since we have Labadee after, which despite its nearly-sealed-environment status, is still legally Haiti.
What's more, on that particular cruise, the ship had a propulsion problem and couldn't run at its planned speed, so transits took longer and they shortened every port stop on that trip. San Juan was already scheduled to be short anyway, and they lopped a couple hours off that, plus the time waiting in line for I&C, meant we had just enough time to walk over to the Old Town, get an ice cream, and sit on a bench near the port watching the well-heeled passengers of one of the Crystal Cruises ships disembark. Considerably more car service vehicles than taxis for that one.
A year later, we were back, on yet another different line, and had a full day. Go figure.
I hated labadee last year. The food had little to do with the locality...the vendors were aggressive as hell and mostly junk. Unless you have your beach or zip line quota unmet there seems little that is worth the time..at least to me. I went on the walking history tour and it was not much. My .02 and YMMV. Game room time!
I just noticed the short port time the other day. I have a geocoin (geocaching) to deposit somewhere in San Juan and really hope I will find an appropriate cache to drop it off in the time allotted. I've been holding on to this particular coin for WAY too long and the owner is getting irate with me.
Comments
A year later, we were back, on yet another different line, and had a full day. Go figure.