Let's Go on a Cruise--with a stop in the Dominican Republic!

We've spent the last nine years driving around the United States and Canada in our motor home. When traveling full-time in an RV, we didn't have much reason to travel using other modes of transportation. But we had some airline miles that had to be used or they would be lost, and our beloved motor home is sitting on a consignment lot so we can't RV travel. So we found a 9-day cruise on a great sale, and used our miles to fly to Miami. Let's go on a cruise! We chose the 9-day Southern Caribbean cruise on the Norwegian Cruise Line's ship "The Gem."

We love cruising, and over the years we've been on nine different cruises leaving from seven different ports. But the last one was around a dozen years ago. A lot has changed in the travel industry in those years, so our cruise skills needed to be updated. We did remember that you want to arrive in your departure city the day before, to be sure that delayed flights won't make you miss the boat. We arrived in Miami the day before, and stayed in a less touristy part of this touristy city. Then we figured out how to ride the free trolley system that linked the Coral Gable Trolley to the Coral Way Trolley to the cruise port. We are frugal travelers so we are always looking for free or cheap options. Even though it was slower, it saved us an expensive taxi ride and gave us a little tour of the city. Yes, we had to walk another half-mile further to get to our cruise terminal--but it was free!

We left our suitcase at the port to be delivered to our room, and boarded the ship. We had views of the Miami sky line as we started exploring the Gem. You can tell that our room isn't ready because we are still wearing our backpacks.

 It didn't take us long to find the soft-serve ice cream machine, and Mark had his first cone just minutes after we got on the ship.

The cruise industry has changed, and NCL is proud of their "any-time-dining." Supposedly that means that you can eat wherever and whenever you want. But if you decide you want to eat at the most popular times, you might have a considerable wait to be seated. So we booked a reservation for one of the dining rooms at 5:30 each evening. That gave us time to eat before going to the early show. The two of us were often seated at a table for four, and we enjoyed meeting other travelers that were sometimes seated with us. At least on NCL, the days of sitting at the same table of eight with the same people and same servers every meal is gone. 

While not all ships have complimentary ice cream, Mark is excited that the Gem does. We're still waiting for our room to be ready, and he's having his second serving of ice cream. This time he's enjoying the hand-dipped ice cream in a bowl.

After a day at sea, our first port was at Puerta Plata, a city in the Dominican Republic. We pick a cruise based on the port stops, and this Southern Caribbean route gave us many ports we have never visited. The Dominican Republic is a new country for us.

We were one of four different ships in the port this day, so we knew it would be busy. The big tour busses were lined up, ready to take bus-loads of ship passengers on canned tours around the island. Even though this is the easiest way to see the sites, this is not our style. It's crowded, it's touristy, and you have no control over what you see and how long you see it. It's also very expensive.

Another option for ship passengers is the man-made beach area just outside the port. It included a lazy river and beach volleyball, and would be a cheaper way to spend the day.

This area is called Taino Bay, and it was very nice. But it's not our style either. It is man-made and feels very fake. To spend the day here means that you had been in the Dominican Republic, but you really hadn't seen the island at all.

Our style is researching the best things to do in a day, and then figuring out the options of how to get to those places. We decided that this was a walking day, and we headed out of the busy port area toward our first point of interest. We had printed out our maps at home, and we were planning to first make the uphill walk to the highest point of the island. But taxi drivers kept yelling at us that the area wasn't safe to walk, and their prices to give us a ride kept going down as we continued to walk. We finally made a deal with Jose, who agreed to drive us to all the places on our list for a fixed price. That will save us some time and miles on our legs, so our walking day turned into a taxi day.

The first place on our list was Teleferico Puerta Plata Cable Car. Getting a taxi ride to the cable car allowed us to beat the big bus tours and long lines that can happen on a day with four ships in port. We bought our $10 tickets for the cable car that whisked us up to the highest point in the Dominican Republic.

We had read that the ride to the top wouldn't be worth it on a cloudy day, but we were blessed with clear skies that afforded a view that stretched all the way to the horizon. We could see our ship parallel parked in Taino Bay as the city of Puerta Plate stretched out in front of us.

This ride to the top also brought us to one of Dominican Republic's national parks--Isabel de Torres. A map of the park showed the trails and highlights that we would see. It looks like we are still going to get some exercise on this port day.

We stopped in at the church at the top . . .

and then headed down the trails.

The park is sprinkled with colorful photo-ops, and we took a picture at most of them.

We are in the tropics, and we saw flowers that are normally grown as prize house plants in the United States. But here they are growing wild in the gardens in the national park.

It was a beautiful place to start a beautiful day in the Dominican Republic.

Jose promised to pick us up in an hour, which was really a perfect amount of time for the cable car ride and walking through the gardens. Because we were here early in the day, we didn't have a line for our trip back down on the cable car.

It was nice to have an air-conditioned taxi ride down the hill and into downtown Puerta Plata. It was the right decision to hire Jose for the day! The next stop on our list was a chocolate factory tour. Jose delivered us to this little shop that gave out free samples of chocolate, and the tiniest goblet of chocolate wine.

Then he walked us to San Felipe Street, which is better known as "Umbrella Street."

Having our own driver also meant that we had our personal photographer to take the iconic picture on Umbrella Street.

Just a block away is another item on our list--Paseo de Dona Blanca.

The Pink Alley is a popular tourist stop where everything is painfully pink.

Dona Blanca is the inspiration for this very pink alley, and Denisa spent some time on the bench with Dona while we were there.

We always visit local churches, and the Cathedral of St. Philip the Apostle was the biggest in town.

Fortaleza de San Felipe didn't look so far away on our map, but once again we were glad that we had a ride to get to the fort instead of walking on this warm day.

One of the pictures that Jose took at the fort has our ship in the background. So you can see that we have traveled almost full circle back to where we started this morning.

This is an interesting area on the coast, and we can easily walk back to the ship from here. So we paid Jose for his transportation early, hoping that he might be able to get more fares from other cruise passengers on this busy day in port. Then we meandered around the plazas along the coast.

We're only including the more picturesque spots around Puerta Plata in the blog. But we have to report that while we were off the normal tourist path, we saw plenty of garbage strewn around. 

It's not a sparkling clean place, and sometimes it was hard to take a picture that didn't include garbage.

Denisa loves a good lighthouse, so this big gold tower was obviously on her list. But when we got closer we found that it was locked up and in disrepair. It could be such a neat tourist stop with just a little upkeep! 

That was our overall opinion of Dominican Republic--it could be such a neat tourist stop with just a little upkeep. But after a port day, we have determined that we won't need to return to this country. It shares the island with the country of Haiti, which is going through some serious unrest that makes it unsafe to visit. While we never felt unsafe on the Dominican Republic side of the island, by the end of the day we were glad to have had our local taxi driver chaperone.

We walked back along the coast and through the man-made Taino Bay area with its many photo ops.

As our ship pulled out of the port, we could see the mountains that surround the city of Puerta Plata. It looked like the top of the cable car was in the clouds this afternoon, so we were lucky to get our cloudless views this morning.

We sailed past the rocky shore line that housed the fort and the lighthouse and waved good-bye to the Dominican Republic.

We are really enjoying our ship. We're finding that the Gem has a great outdoor walking track that encircles the entire ship. That helps to walk off all those calories we are consuming in the dining rooms--and at the ice cream stations. It also makes for a nice place to watch the sunset (on the way to the buffet for a night cap of ice cream for Mark).