The next morning we had breakfast in the hotel and talked with our trip leader. He told us that last night was the Lotus Lantern Festival Parade for Buddha’s Birthday celebration. The lanterns are still hanging at the Jogyesa Temple. The street in front of it would be shut down today and booths set up selling food and other items. The festival is on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List.

We planned to arrive one day early for our guided tour of Korea and Japan. This will allow us to get through the 14 hour time difference. We have been getting up one hour earlier each of the past four days. We get up at 3 am the morning we leave to catch a 3:50 am ride to the airport for our first flight to SFO.

We have been to Half Moon Cay in the past.

Donna wanted to go to Coral World Ocean Park. We booked a shore excursion from the ship which included transportation and the entrance fee.

We wanted to go to the beach on St. Kitts, and had originally decided to go to Cockleshell beach on the south end of the island, but the wind was fairly strong from the south and we were worried about the swell being bad. We decided at the last minute to try South Friar’s Beach which might be a little more protected.

Our ship docked at the commercial dock instead of the cruise ship dock, but the ship had some shuttles available for minimal cost if you wanted to go over to the other dock. We hired a bird guide, Bertrand Jno Baptiste, also known as Dr. Birdy, and he took us and two others to the Syndicate Trail for the day. He is very good at identifying the local birds and other animals.

We have a tour in the afternoon, so went birding on our own in the morning. There is a little canal that leads to Aimé Césaire park a half-mile from the dock. We started in the little green space by the hotel by the dock and then walked up along the canal.

In Antigua we booked a tour to go to the south side of the island to take a short kayak ride through the mangroves out to the sea and then go snorkeling out on the reef followed by lunch a beach resort.

The directions to find the meeting point were complicated, but our ship ended up docking on the pier right by the meeting point, so we didn’t need go out through the port complex and walk around. The directions would have been needed if we had docked on the other pier.

We visited St. Maarten in 2022 on our cruise to the Amazon River.

The cruise we booked is actually two back-to-back cruises sold as a bundle. The ship returned to Ft. Lauderdale.