I'm going on a cruise to the Caribbean. Witch route is the best? southern, or western. For the best beaches.

Question

Witch islands should we consider when we chose our cruise?

We have teenagers Thanks.

Answer 1

The beaches are all great. You will have a good time on either.

Regards,

Dan

Answer 2

We have done southern, western and eastern cruises with teens. Western cruises tend to have the Central American stops, which are better for excursions than beaches. If you are big on beaches over everything else, I suggest southern over western.

Among the southern islands, Antigua, Aruba, Barbados, Curacao, Martinique and St. Lucia are all nice islands for different reasons. But if you are hitting beaches on a cruise, you have to do some extra research to find which beaches are close to the cruise ports.

Antigua has numerous beaches and some that are close to port. At Aruba, Eagle and Palm beaches are just north of the port. It should take 10-15 minutes to reach them by taxi.

You'll of course need to get a taxi to get there unless the cruise provides an "excursion" at a pretty steep price.

Answer 3

That's tough because all of the beaches are beautiful! You really can't go wrong with any of the islands. When looking at cruises, you have to consider all of the islands you will be visiting so I would pick your top 3 most interesting cruise routes and research the islands that cruise will be going to.

For example, if you go west you usually get to visit Jamaica (which is AWESOME), Mexico, etc. Personally, Mexico wasn't my favorite for beaches, but I've seen some awesome pictures taken there...so maybe I haven't been to the good places yet ;)

If you go south or east, you get places like Aruba, Curacao, St. Lucia, The British and US Virgin Islands, etc. The Bahamas is great, too. Most cruise lines offer plenty of tours and activities to choose from so you'll never get bored. I've been on about 6 or 7 cruises and they were all fantastic. I don't know which cruise line you're looking at, but I think Royal Caribbean is the best. Check out:

http://www.royalcaribbean.com/home.do

Also, I bought the booked called "Caribbean for Dummies" and that had a lot of useful info in it. Hope this helps!