Carnival Glory:Day 5:Grand Cayman

Writing about a 2 week vacation is daunting! Especially when you’re trying to do it 6 months after the fact. Luckily I have a few notes from each day jaunted down during the trip to help me remember some of the details.

Let’s jump into Day 4 of our Back to Back Cruise on the Carnival Glory. We arrived at our docking location near George Town, Grand Cayman. The thing about this port is you don’t dock next to the island. You dock a ways out and have to get on a tender boat that brings you to shore. Then, you may pop over here if you decide to go on a shopping spree.

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We got breakfast at the inside buffet before heading down to the Amber Palace lounge and wait for them to call our excursion so we could get on the tender.

The process that occurs when having to tender to the island for an excursion is usually a bit tedious. It’s a bunch of hurry up and wait and walking in large groups of people…blah blah blah. There are so many ways they could stream line this. So I’m just hopeful that one day they will do that.

The excursion we signed up for was called the Stingray City Sandbar and Starfish Point. Here is what Carnival says about the tour:
During approximately 35 minutes, the boat will cruise to the world-renowned Stingray City, where you will experience exploring this majestic sandbar to interact with friendly Southern Atlantic Stingrays, as featured on several nature shows! After departing Stingray City, participants will enjoy a short cruise to Starfish Point where guests will discover starfish of various sizes in shallow waters. After your visit with your new friends, enjoy the secluded tropical setting on Starfish Beach. Take the opportunity to swim and relax in the shallow waters or explore the surrounding area of this location before the trip back to your ship.

Here we are leaving on our tender. They will often have 2 embarkation areas open to allow you to exit front and back of ship, which is really nice.

After getting off the tender we stood under a tent and waited for our guide. She got there and we walked over to the bus that would take us to another boat. That boat took us out to Stingray City, which took about 35 minutes. You do get to see some beautiful islands with beautiful luxurious owned by celebrities and millionaires.

We did a very similar excursion that went to Stingray City on our very first cruise back in 2001. Sadly, I believe that too many boats go to this area and what used to be 100’s of stingrays swimming around you is now more like 4 or 5 that swam by and kept right on going.

Here’s our captain of our ship who was the stingray handler.

Here’s Rob in the water. All the boats circle around the island backed in, so you just go down the ladder. I think really tall people could touch right there, but if not you just swim a couple feet to you’re to where you can touch to bottom.

So about the photos…Most of these photos are taken with my water camera >>> Olympus Tough TG-6 Digital Camera. However, the ones taken of Rob and me together were taken by the tour guide on the boat. She went around to all the folks on the boat and showed them their pics on an iPad as we headed to Starfish Point and finished on the way back to Grand Cayman. I continued to hear her charge people $40. When she got to me she asked if I was interested in purchasing. I told her it depends. She showed me the pics and they were ok. Not great! I edited the 2 you see above. I think the girl could probably tell I wasn’t impressed by the pics because of the look on my face when I saw them. Found it interesting, we were using the exact same camera. So she only charged me, I think $20. She airdropped them to my phone and we were done. I just wish they would have an option to take your own photos. Many people had their phones in waterproof cases out there. Let us pay $10 more dollars to do our photos or something.

While on the charter boat they served punch. A lot of time its rum punch, but I don’t believe this had rum in this time.

When we got to Starfish Point we jumped into the water and made our way over to the shore to grab our lunch.

Our lunch was more like a snack. We each got this. Pretty pitiful.

We walked around part of the island. Here’s a view from the island with the boats docked around.

Then, we got back in the water to check out the starfish. We would see them on the ocean floor where we were standing and we could swim down and get them.

From there we got back on the charter boat and headed back to the bus that took us back to Grand Cayman cruise port.

Instead of just getting back on the ship, we knew we needed to get a shot glass for our cruise collection, but we were starving. We ended up at Cabana for lunch. Rob had the Shrimp Scampi.

I had the fish tacos.

We both enjoyed the local beers. I had the White Tip Lager and Rob had the Caybrew.

The views were spectacular

After lunch we did a little shopping and actually got rained on as we went from store to store. It ended up stopping just as we got in line for the tender back to the ship. The sun came a blaring out and I got sunburned waiting in line.

That was one thing that’s painful about having to tender is that you can’t just walk back onto the ship, you have to wait in a line and once the tender boat fills up they have to get another in place for people to get on to it.

When we got back on the ship, we headed back to the cabin for a shower and I took a nap. That evening we enjoyed the Amor Cubano show and dinner.

Dinner:
Rob had:
Fried Mozzarella
Ceasar Salad
Tuscan Minestrone
Grilled Beef Tenderloin
Double Roasted Pineapple

I had:
Fried Mozzarella
Baked Meatball
Mango Cream
Roasted Broccoli & Three Cheese
Grilled Beef Tenderloin
Bitter N Blanc

That evening was the the 80’s Rock & Glow Party, which was a lot of fun.

See all the pics from our day in Grand Cayman>>>>Day 5