With winter wearing us down we felt it was time to book another cruise to soak up some sun and heat. We ended up choosing Windstar because 1) It wasn't departing out of the cruise ports we'd done many times before (Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, etc.) and 2) the ports were not, with the exception of Castries, places we had been to before. Yeah, basically we wanted to try something different in the Caribbean!

We ended up flying in the day before to Bridgetown, Barbados. I'm not a fan of flying in the same day as the cruise especially during winter storm months as the likelihood of delays is high and who wants to miss at least one day of cruising because of flight delays! It's also a great way to get in a day of exploring at the homeport.

And were we ever glad to go in the day before! It seems like all the major airlines arrive at the airport at about the same time, resulting in very long immigration lines. In fact, a number of people arrived on the ship on departure day during the lifeboat drill due to the length of time it took to clear customs. Read more