Trips

Winter is always a good time to leave Estes Park and go somewhere warm, so when the opportunity presented itself to take a Caribbean cruise with Holland America, we jumped right on it. We left Estes Park on February 11, used our United Frequent Flyer miles to fly to Tampa, and then spent several days visiting Lois Hitchcock in Ft. Myers before embarking on our two-week Southern Caribbean cruise.

Trip Map
2/11-15	Visiting in Florida - Ft. Myers
2/16	Tampa-Sail-Away
2/17	Key West
2/18-20	At sea; San Juan, PR
2/21	St. Thomas, USVI
2/22	St. John's, Antigua
2/23	St. Lucia
2/24-25	At sea; Willemstad, Curaçao
2/26	Oranjestad, Aruba
2/27-28	At sea; Georgetown, Grand Cayman
3/1-2	At sea; Tampa
3/3-6	Visiting in Florida - Ft. Lauderdale
3/7-8	Fly/drive home
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Holland America's Southern Caribbean cruise

While in Ft. Myers we were able to do one of our favorite things: to go look at the little burrowing owls in nearby Cape Coral.

Protected owl burrowing site

Burrowing owl

After our Ft. Myers visit, we returned to Tampa to board Holland America's MS Ryndam on Sunday, February 16.

Tampa Skyway Bridge at sunset

Tampa Skyway Bridge

We arrived in Key West at 11 AM and disembarked at 11:30. The temperature was 73° with a light breeze – just beautiful. Our ship docked at Mallory Square, which was very convenient to tourist attractions, which we basically avoided – museums, aquarium, and old houses. We walked down Duval Street, which was crowded with pedestrians and bars, cigar stores, boutiques and T-shirt shops.

Islands off Key West

Self-explanatory

We walked to the southernmost hotel, the southernmost house, and the Southernmost Point in the Continental US. We had someone take a picture of us at the Point and then walked back along Whitehead St. past the lighthouse, and the end of US Rte. 1.

We got back on the ship for lunch, went back to a shop in Mallory Square to buy a spoon, and then relaxed for the afternoon. We sailed away from the Southernmost City in the Continental US at 5 PM and headed down toward Puerto Rico.

Southernmost House in the US

End of US Highway 1

Thurs., 2/20/14 – San Juan
After a day at sea, we finally arrived in Puerto Rico and docked in Old San Juan. We set off to tour the two large old forts that guard this natural harbor. Both forts were used to protect the Spanish fleet carrying gold, silver, gems, spices, and furs from the Americas back to Spain.

We stopped and went inside the San Juan Cathedral and saw the tomb of Ponce de Leon and walked to look at the Statue of Christopher Columbus. It was hot but breezy and the walking felt good.