Hearts in Hawai'i
Our Caribbean Cruise (2011)--Day 1
4/17/2011
About These Pictures
The pictures you'll find on these pages were taken using a Nikon D90 dSLR and a Canon Powershot S90 (the nicest point-and-shoot digital camera I've used!). Some of the D90 pics were taken using a circular polarizer filter. If you want to view a larger version of any picture, click on the image!
Overview
This was our second ship cruise, and also our second cruise using Royal Caribbean Cruise Line. Our previous cruise, in 2006, took us to five destinations in the Eastern Caribbean. This cruise, billed as the "Ultimate Caribbean Cruise" by RCCL, would include five stops; Aruba, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica and Grand Cayman, and would take twelve days to complete.
Bruce picked us up at the house promptly at 8:50 a.m. and drove us to the Radisson Hotel in downtown Duluth. Skyline Shuttle arrived at 9:30--there are only three of us on the shuttle including a young man on his way to visit family in Sao Paolo, Brazil. After picking up a lady at the Grand Casino in Hinckley, we continued on to the Twin Cities.
We got to talking with this lady and learned she had grown up in Minnesota (Sandstone area) before moving to New York after she married. After her husband died, an old flame of hers from Minnesota who had recently divorced re-established contact. They are now married and living in Sturgeon Lake. She was on her way to the Minneapolis airport so she could fly back to New York to visit family. She loves cruising the Caribbean, having done several of these on Holland.
After calling ahead to the Best Western Dakota Ridge hotel in Eagan, we found them waiting for us as we arrived at Terminal 1 at the MSP airport. Check-in went smoothly and we realized Lisa (our travel agent) had booked us into a pretty nice hotel! Bill (shuttle driver working for Best Western) recommended not going to Al Baker's for dinner. We had figured Al Bakers was a logical dinner choice, being so close to the hotel, but Bill said we could do far better. Eventually, we ended up eating at Ci-Ci's, a pasta and pizza buffet located a half mile from the hotel. It was pretty decent food but certainly nothing to rave about.
I needed a workout, so we hit the hotel's workout center for a half-hour after dinner, after which we went back to the room to relax. The front desk will call us tomorrow morning at 3:30 prior to catching the 4:30 a.m. shuttle back to the airport. Tomorrow is going to be a long day!
Previous: 2/16/2011--A Special Day
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