I booked on Emarald Princes on Nov. 28th. 2010 It is an Eastern Caribean, visitng Antigua, Barbados, St.Kits, St. Lucia, St. Thomas. Did anyone gone on this cruise or want to share their expereince. Also, like to know your favorite things to do on these ports. Thanks

Hi somans, welcome to Cruise-Chat! Congratulations on your up-coming cruise! The Emerald Princess is a beautiful ship and I hope you enjoy her as much as we did. Be sure to try the Crown Grill or Sabatinis or both. Be sure to try the gelato at the International Cafe on the Plaza deck. Be sure to visit the Sanctuary. Without knowing what your interests are, it's hard to suggest things to do. If you'll check out our Caribbean Port Chat section a little further down on the main page, you might find something of interest. You can use your "Find" feature, in the upper left hand corner and type in your ports, it will pull up all the posts made about them.

Best wishes for a fabulous cruise!

Hi Penny,

I would like to do know the best place to do shopping for watches and jewvelary, do hiking, best beaches and also visist some rural places. thanks

Out of your ports, St. Thomas will be the best for shopping. Antigua has 365 beaches. My recommendation there is to negotiate with a driver outside of the terminal to go on a tour. We did one for $25/pp. He took us to Shirley Heights, Nelson's Dockyard and a nice beach with a restaurant/bar. Barbados, if you like snorkeling, do the Tiami catamaran sail/snorkel through the ship. The Tiami crew are wonderful, their catamarans are immaculate, and the one with the lunch has wonderful food. They usually great you with a mimosa for the early sail/snorkel. St. Kitts is a beautiful island, the batik factory is a good stop. My suggestion there is to do a tour through the ship, a "best of" or "island" tour. St. Lucia is one of my favorite islands, a snorkel to the Pitons is wonderful. We also did Pigeon Island, if you want to do that, I'd suggest taking the ship's Pirate tour. We paid the driver $85 each way to get to Pigeon and then had to pay an entrance fee. The Pirate ship was $49/pp. They didn't get to stay as long, they stayed about 1 1/2 hours, but it was a LOT less expensive.

Hope this helps some.

Hi. I've been on the Emerald Princess for this exact cruise. It was a 5-star cruise all the way, so you're in for a real treat! You'll need to spend lots of time planning your excursions, and if you want to save money do your own research and make your own reservations with the reputable tour guides who are online. In Antigua we did the Paddles Kayacking excursion - it was good, not great but there's not much else to do in Antigua besides visit one of the 300+ beaches. We hiked in St. Lucia, shopped in St. Thomas (also took the ferry to St. Johns) and went to Meghan's Beach (slightly over-rated IMO), did a volcano hike on St. Kitts (driver's are nuts there) and also did an ocean kayak trip there on a previous cruise, and did the catamaran cruise on Barbados through Silver Moon. We're going back to 3 of those islands this winter.