Should We Stay or Should We Go - Our Travel Journal

The last port of call for this cruise was Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic.  We were very much looking forward to this port of call as we had an excursion booked to go up the mountain to hike to some waterfalls and to some zip-lining.

Photo by Nils Huenerfuerst on Unsplash One of my favourite places in the Caribbean is San Juan, Puerto Rico.  I was so happy to see that it was one of our ports of call on this sailing.

  We woke up in the Bahamas - at MSC's private Island, Ocean Cay. Ocean Cay is a man-made island that was created in the late 1960's for the purpose of mining Aragonite sand. The island sat abandoned for many years before MSC signed a 100-year lease in 2015. After spending 5 years and 200 million dollars the island was cleaned up and transformed into a beautiful 95-acre cruise resort. The island has eight white-sandy beaches and plenty of room for 5,000 passengers to spread out and explore. 

We sailed out of Miami for our cruise, but to save some money (even with the rental car), we flew into and stayed in Fort Lauderdale the night before. With our check-in time at the pier set for 11:30, we had a relaxed morning without the need to rush. It set the tone for the whole week – just take it easy and enjoy! We had a laid-back breakfast at Starbucks (mostly because it was convenient) before heading to Miami.