A Tour of the British Caribbean

In January of 2026, we went on a cruise that was fast becoming a tradition, our third straight MLK week cruise. We again found ourselves sailing out of San Juan, Puerto Rico, this time on Royal Caribbean’s Brilliance of the Seas. Amazingly, this itinerary had a lot of new destinations for us. Other than Puerto Rico, each of our stops would be British Commonwealth countries.

Getting there and back

Sailing out of San Juan is a great way to see more with fewer days at-sea. We were able to take advantage of Southwest’s non-stop flight from St. Louis on our very last open seating flights. We’ll likely look back on this years later and either fondly remember the cattle call seating or be happy it’s gone, who knows? Whenever possible, it’s best to get in a day early, and this trip was no exception. As much as we would have loved a non-stop flight back, those are rare from San Juan to St. Louis, and in the end, it probably saved our bacon. Coming back we had to contend with winter storm Fern, which covered 40 states with snow and ice. Due to our 4-hour layover in Orlando, we actually managed to wait out the storm and land in St. Louis with nearly a foot of snow on the ground.

Staying in San Juan

Our ship would be docked in the PanAmerican port facility, so there was no need to try to find a pricey place in old town. The prices in the rest of San Juan were a little higher than we thought they would be, then on the flight down we learned that the locals would be celebrating the Fiesta de la Calle San Sebastian all weekend and it suddenly made sense.

We arrived, after our four-hour flight, grabbed our bags, and then spent the next 30 minutes trying to get a ride share. We got cancelled on several times on Lyft before shifting to Uber for our 15-minute ride to our Airbnb in the Loíza district. We were sharing the place with Todd and Vivian, and it was nothing special, but it was inexpensive and walking distance to a handful of restaurants. For dinner, we walked to the Raices Urbano, a place that Todd had found that would be showing the Bills game.

Miranda found a duck at Ocean Lab Brewing Co.

At halftime, we grabbed an Uber to head towards Ocean Lab Brewing Co. but somehow ended up getting dropped off at a Marriott down the street. By the time we realized where we were, the driver was long gone. We decided to walk the .7 mile trek down a very poorly lit road, but we didn’t die. Ocean Lab had been a recommendation from some friends and it didn’t disappoint. The beer was good and the swag was awesome, with plenty of entertaining shirts and water apparel with their cleverly named drinks on them.

The next morning we had breakfast at Kasalta, our driver from the airport recommended it, and it seemed to be popular with locals and tourists. There was a hot menu and then an assortment of breakfast pastries that held us over until it was time to head to the ship.

Brilliance of the Seas

Our boarding time wasn’t until 1:30, but we didn’t have anywhere else to go at 11 so we chanced it. Our Uber driver dropped us off at the wrong ship, so we had to walk across the parking lot to get to the Royal Caribbean facility. As laughable as this was, it was also eye opening, the line to get aboard the Norwegian Epic was…. well, pretty epic. It took us all of 25 minutes from baggage drop off to butts in seats for our first drink by the pool. That included making a change to our dinner reservations and checking in at our muster station.

Brilliance of the Seas is a Radiance class ship, just like Radiance of the Seas that we sailed three times in the previous year. Launched in 2002 and refurbished in 2013, Brilliance has held up better than her sister. We noticed all week long that the carpet, decor, and layout just had a better feel to it. There’s still no getting around that she’s an older ship, but the crew has done right by her. Our usual hangouts were the Schooner Bar, the Windjammer, and the main dining room and we had no complaints, except some of the speakers in the Schooner Bar weren’t working, which made trivia a little challenging.

We stayed in a suite again on this cruise, and likely for the last time in a long time. We wanted the double points so that we’d be Diamond at the end of the cruise. The room wasn’t as spacious as our last one, but it fit our needs just fine. The balcony was a good deal smaller, but that’s just one of the advantages of those aft balcony rooms that we didn’t get this time. Our luggage arrived in enough time to get dressed up for dinner the first night, where we met Therina and Gil, who would be our server team for the whole trip. Our first night was pretty uneventful with trivia, dinner, and then off to bed. We had a pretty packed cruise ahead, with only one at-sea day on the last day.

Tortola, British Virgin Islands

Tortola, the main island of the British Virgin Islands was our first stop. Sailing in that morning, we passed several small islands with anywhere from two to a dozen large homes built on them. Our excursion was the Tour to Virgin Gorda Baths, booked through Royal with a start time of 8 am! Once organized in the Pacifica Theater, we were taken to the pier and loaded aboard a ferry that would take us to Virgin Gorda, named that way because Christopher Columbus thought the island resembled a fat virgin reclining on her side. We learned fun facts about each of the islands we sailed past on our half-hour ride and then arrived at the dock to catch the 15-minute ride up to the Devil’s Bay National Park. We were given a couple of options one if you were in decent shape and could make it through the narrow trail from the first beach to the second, and the other was just a direct walk to the second beach. We chose to hike down to Devil’s Bay Beach, spend about 20 minutes there, and then walk through the narrow path between the boulders to get to The Baths Beach. We were warned that the lines could build up because of the low ceilings and narrow path, unfortunately it was made worse by folks that ignored the ask to be in somewhat decent shape to be able to get through efficiently.

The slow line did provide some opportunities for pictures of the beautiful path. Once through, we spent about 30 minutes at The Baths Beach before heading back to catch our ride back to the dock. We caught a little rain on the ferry ride back, occasional rain showers would follow us during the week, but that seemed to be normal this time of year.

We went back aboard for lunch and then took a little walk through town. There wasn’t much, this was just a typical town with banks, bars, restaurants, and grocery stores. Not sure what we thought we’d find, but we didn’t.

With our 6:45 dinner time, we were able to make afternoon trivia and the 6:15 trivia that was sometimes in the Schooner Bar and sometimes in the King and Country Pub.

St. John’s, Antigua

Miranda had been to Antigua before, we both tried to make it there a few years back, but the weather kept the ship from being able to dock. We had an afternoon site seeing excursion scheduled so we started the morning with breakfast and a walk through town. We got some badgering on the way out of the gate, but after a block or two, they were all gone. Our first stop was the St. John Angelicin Cathedral on the high ground in the city. The price to get in seemed a little steep so we walked around the outside, got a few pictures, and started back towards the main drag near the port. Shops were just starting to open up as we made our way to the public market. Along the way we stopped at the VC Bird monument, built to recognize Antigua and Barbuda’s first prime minister.

Before we started back, Miranda and Vivian noticed a man getting out of a beer delivery truck and began questioning him about the local beer. He delivers Long Bay, a local brewery with several options sold locally. He said the brewery does tours, but it sounded like it would be a bit of a hike out of town, so we instead endeavored to find the beer at the shops that were now open on our walk back. Several failed looks later we found their lager and stout at a shop and drank them on our way back to the port.

After lunch in the Windjammer, we headed back out to meet our tour guide, Omega. We loaded aboard a bus for eight people and started off on our Nelson’s Dockyard excursion towards the southern tip of the island. Along the way Omega pointed out new and old landmarks, including the pink Our Lady of Perpetual Help (OLPH) Tyrells church, the Chinese hospital, the new cricket stadium, and his favorite restaurant, KFC. The first stop was the Blockhouse, perched atop the highest cliff in the area with a view of the sea and surrounding safe harbors. The second stop was Shirley Heights for some quick pictures before we continued on to Nelson’s Dockyard. The van dropped us off and we picked up a local guide who walked us through the grounds of the old Royal Navy harbor including the inn, workshop, and maintenance area where they used to tip warships over to expose parts of the hull for cleaning and repair. There were a number of impressive looking ships docked here and there’s a pretty well attended race yearly. A rum punch, short walk, and t-shirt purchase later and we were back in the van, headed back to the ship. Back aboard we continued our nightly ritual of afternoon trivia, evening trivia, dinner, and then we setup shop at the gin bar (Vintages) near the Centrum for drinks and that night’s entertainment.

St. George’s, Grenada

We split up as a group for our trip to Grenada, Miranda and I did the Spices and Sunshine excursion offered through the ship and Todd and Vivian did their own thing, we would eventually end up on the same beach, unbeknownst to us at the time. Our trip started well enough, loaded into the 8 person van, we stopped at Laura’s Spice Farm and toured the site to see peppers, cinnamon, vanilla, cocoa, all spice, and several more being grown. The shop was cash-only, so we grabbed some cinnamon and moved on to the next stop. This is where things started to slide. The distillery was Clarke’s Court Rum with its tasting room and onsite distilling operation. We were allowed three tiny tastings that wouldn’t hide the bottom of a thimble and then a 20-minute walk through the distilling floor with hard hats that are basically handed to you by the previous visitor. We skipped that part, because if you’ve seen on Caribbean rum distillery then you’ve seem them all, besides, the tasting room had Wi-Fi! Our last stop was Grand Anse beach with its small craft and spice market. We were told we had 30 minutes here before we had to leave because we were supposedly behind schedule. This didn’t sit well with us, 30 minutes isn’t worth getting the sand between our feet, let alone having to dry off our clothes. We decided to find our own way back, initially looking at a cab, and then talking to the water taxi folks. Unfortunately, a situation where I was wearing my swim trunks, so no money belt, and forgetting to replenish the cash envelope, meant we couldn’t take the cash-only water taxi. While on the beach, we ran into a couple we’d seen on a previous day and asked them what their driver had said. They were getting a full hour and a half on the beach and got there not long before we did. We hatched a plan to use the van jump seats to catch a ride back with their driver and then proceeded to enjoy our beach time. We felt vindicated when we talked to the second driver and learned that he was pretty pissed off at our driver for leaving early. He was more than happy to give us a ride back to the boat.

That evenings festivities had a minor change, after both trivia sessions and dinner, we tried to catch a show that ended up just being awful. The singing wasn’t great, the musicians were lacking, and one-by-one we left to head over to the King and Country bar, where a guitarist was entertaining the crowd. There’s something still unbeatable about a singer with a guitar taking requests at a bar.

We made a quick swing into the casino to try our hands at the slot, but we basically just spent our free money until it was gone and left. It was cool to see that the craps tables are only at a $10 minimum, it seems like most casinos have moved up to $15, might need to give it a try on a future cruise.

Kingstown, St. Vincent

When we explored the options for excursions in St. Vincent, we didn’t really love what we were seeing. Both the ones offered by the cruise line, and stuff we saw on travel sites weren’t really seeming worth it. We decided to do a little self-guided tour and get some exercise in at the same time. Our first stop was to get a ride to Ft. Charlotte, although we could have walked up there, it didn’t seem like the best use of time. The drive up cost $10 each, but luckily the fort was free since it’s under renovation. We were still allowed to go in and wander around and even climb out to some areas that would never have been allowed in the states.

Ft. Charlotte overlooks Kingstown, as well as a second small commercial dock on the other side of the hill. The forts cannons were strangely pointed towards the towns, not sure if it was just for show or part of a story that we would have heard if there had been guides. We were able to climb up on the walls for some unique shots before heading down the hill back towards town. On the way, we stopped at a little bar and grill called Oleander, seemingly to the surprise of the woman working there. She grabbed us four beers and we enjoyed them there with her before continuing on to the botanical gardens.

We didn’t really have any expectations going into this one, we just assumed there’s be some cool plants and signs explaining a little about them. Getting in is very inexpensive, but they also offer a guide for $6 per person, per hour and it turned out to be well worth it. The site dates back to the 1760’s and is full of both native and transplanted species including teak, mahogany, hibiscus, and many more. One of the flowers blooms for only one day, so it provided an opportunity to have a little fun with the flowers. Towards the back of the garden there’s an area for the endangered St. Vincent Parrot. Our self-guided tour ended at the markets near the port, we were looking for chocolate from St. Vincent Cocoa Company and any other spices that might catch our eyes.

Back aboard the ship we had a late lunch and settled into our normal routine of trivia, trivia, and dinner, but tonight included a special treat. The thing that Miranda looks forward to the most on a cruise is the Love and Marriage game. Amazingly, it was at a decent hour this time. On our last cruise, they scheduled it pretty late, which was a bummer and caused us to just watch it in our room. The game was entertaining, as always, and we were off to bed with one stop left on the trip.

Roseau, Dominica

This was our last excursion, and we picked another early morning one for no apparent reason. A quick look out the balcony as we were approaching the dock revealed rain, rain, and more rain. By 8 am we had eaten breakfast and were waiting in the Pacifica Theater for our Emarald Pools and Trafalgar Falls excursion. We jumped in our 8 person vans and headed off into the mountains with our guide Davisha. Our first stop was the Emerald Pools, which was a bit unfortunate because of how cool and rainy it was.

The drive out was about 45 minutes and the hike down to the pools was only about 10 minutes. The path is nice with a couple of spots under construction, and some areas had standing water from the rain. The Emerald Pool has a nice viewing platform above the pool where we got some fun shots of the brave members of our band who decided to get in the cold water. This would have been a lot of fun on a warm sunny day, but it is what it is. We only had about 15 minutes down there before we were headed back to van. The second stop included having to drive all the way back into town before heading out a different direction for another 20 minutes. This stop was the Trafalgar Falls. The hike was another 10 minutes to another viewing platform. We were able to walk down to a less crowded lower section for some pictures and to enjoy the view before heading back. The cool thing about the twin falls is that they are actually two different rivers hitting the same drop. Dominica has 365 different creeks and rivers, meaning fresh water is never a problem here. On the way back, there was a short stop for a beer or rum drink before driving through the botanical gardens. The highlight was a tree growing out of a school bus. The tree crushed the bus during Hurricane David back in 1979. We might have felt bummed that this was just a drive through tour had we not experienced the St. Vincent Botanical Gardens the day before. The tour’s final stop was a nice overlook at the former Morne Bruce Garrison overlooking the city. We had lunch back on the ship, Todd and Vivian decided to walk back to the botanical garden and returned drenched in sweat. There are supposedly black sand beaches on Dominica, but none of the pictures we saw led us to believe they were anything more than just dark grey, so we decided against catching a ride to one of those.

That evening we did our normal trivia, dinner, gin bar routine. The highlight of the night was running into the head of dining and head of housekeeping and getting to chat with them to heap praise on our waiters and room attendant and provide feedback. It’s nice that they get out and are willing to talk to folks, even if those folks have had a little too much to drink.

our trip

We spent our last day at-sea, lounging, enjoying more trivia, packing, and saying goodbye to our favorite folks. Miranda had a favorite bartender who worked with her on developing a new peanut butter martini. We also said goodbye to our wait staff who put up with our weird orders and rotating seating game. This was a trip full of firsts and one last. We got to enjoy our $100 on-board credit for being stockholders for the first time. We also spent our $6 free gambling credit for the first time ever. Several of our stops were firsts, which seems rarer and rarer these days with the amount of Caribbean cruising we’ve done. As for our last, it was our last time buying the drink package because we officially earned Diamond status with this cruise! For those non-Royal Caribbean cruisers who are reading this, that means four free drinks a day on all future cruises! As always, we had a great time traveling with our friends, meeting new people on the ship, and just relaxing. The only downside was that a huge snowstorm enveloped 40 states as we were travelling home. Many people got their flights cancelled, and we had some worries there for a while. Luckily our plane landed in St. Louis about an hour after the snow officially ended.