Having failed to do any posting whilst on holiday before Christmas, here are some random thoughts from our cruise:
Travel
Airport noticeably quieter on the way out. Shame that Dixons travel stores are no more, obviously another victim of lower travel volume during the pandemic. Breakfast at the Ramsay restaurant at T5 was decent but not spectacular. I spent the entire outbound flight watching the LOTR trilogy on the plane - certainly passed the time - made it half way through part 3 by the time we landed in Miami. Immigration still a pain, but wait probably less than an hour. We were last to our little minibus group to be transferred to the Mandarin Oriental for overnight stay. Mandarin good, but not a patch on the Four Seasons where we stayed for the last leg of our trip in Feb 2020. Slightly disappointed that we were sent to one of the conference rooms for breakfast with the rest of the cruisers rather than being able to use the main hotel restaurant.
Ship
Explorer awesome. Hard not to gush! Our 'penthouse' cabin (even if it was on deck 7) was extremely nice. Going to be very hard to contemplate going on a different cruise line in the future, although I would be willing to consider stepping down one level to 'concierge' to avoid the slightly painful butler. Food onboard amazing - main dining room (Compass Rose) had a great menu, and the speciality restaurants (Prime 7, Chartreuse and Pacific Rim), all of which we tried, were even better. Our favourite location for breakfast was al fresco on the veranda, and lunch at the pool grill. Spa was fab, and yes, I did have three massages during an 11 night cruise!
Ports of call
To be honest, some of the ports of call were not all that much to write home about. Nassau continues to be a bit of a dump, and Bridgetown (at least the parts of it we saw) didn't seem a very nice place. Most of the islands seem to be heavily reliant on the tourist, and in particular the cruise trade. A couple of the excursions were pretty good - the cocoa plantation in Dominica and the Rainforest adventure in St Lucia (where we thought we were going on a leisurely tram/gondola ride through the rainforest and ended up ziplining as well - along with the legend that was 84-year-old Bob).