A Journey of Infinite Enchantment
in the Lesser Antilles on the Explora 2
12/5/2025 to 12/14/2025

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Page 1 – Embarkation, Ship
Page 2 – Ship (Continued), Cabin
Page 3 – Entertainment, Activies, Ports of Call: Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas; Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadalupe; Saint Pierre, Martinique
Page 4 – Ports of Call: Castries, St Lucia; St. George's, Grenada; Kingstown, St Vincent & Grenadines; Bridgetown Barbados

Ship (Continued)

Entertainment

This was an area we heard the most complaints about online. I didn’t expect large production shows on a small ship. That just doesn’t happen. But I hoped that they would have some good singers and guest entertainers. We were very pleased with all the entertainment on the ship. It was much better than expected.

We had a very good Cruise Director, Martyn Moss. He had a dry sense of humor and didn’t smile much, at least when I was trying to take his photo. I liked him a lot. Very good at his job, entertaining and a quite a funny guy.

Our Captain was Serena Melani. She attended shows welcoming us at the beginning of the cruise and thanking us at the end. She seemed to very well liked with the staff.

Guest Entertainers –

Danny Buckler – He is described as a global comedy performer. He is also a very good magician that mixes his comedy with magic. He is absolutely hilarious! He just lights up the stage with his comments to the audience and his antics. He performed two shows. They were both great. He calls on people in the audience to ask them questions, which he turns into very funny conversations. He called on me the first night. On the second night he brought me up to the stage to assist in a magic trick. It was a hoot! If you ever get a chance to see him, don’t miss his show.

Jenna Lee-James – Jenna is a West End performer who recently starred as Elsa in Frozen there. She also toured globally with Hugh Jackman. She has an amazing voice! We were so glad she did two shows, so we could enjoy her twice as much.

Duo Sunrise – This was an acrobatic couple from the Ukraine who performed just a few minutes before two other shows. They were very good. We were surprised we didn’t see more of them during the cruise. They are also aerialists, but the ships theater wasn’t large enough for that type show. Perhaps they had longer performances on the second leg of the cruise. Here is a link to their website with some videos of what they do: https://beyondtalentgroup.com/artist/duo-sunrise/

Production Shows –

Our expectations were low for production shows on this small of a ship. The band was quite good. There were five singers, 3 women and 2 men. They were as good as most we have seen on cruise ships. Although the shows didn’t have any dancing, they were most entertaining with a good selection of music. Below are the singers.

Below are the five production shows we had during the nine night cruise:

Motorcity – This show featured Motown music.

Cast by Candlelight – The show was illuminated with lots of candles. The music celebrated love.

The Movies – This show featured music from popular movies.

Playlist Party - They performed a selection of music from disco classics, rock anthems and sing-along favorites.

Songbook Billy Joel - This was obviously a tribute to the songs of Billy Joel.

Activities

Enrichment Speakers

Jay Levy – He is a composer, author, rabbi and performer who has been honored with gold and platinum records. He has worked with many well-known performers. He is an expert in history, religion, culture and entertainment. With us only having two sea days, he just did two presentations, both about pirates. The presentations were outstanding, educational and most enjoyable. He told me that the talks on the next leg of the cruise that returned to Miami would be about his experiences in the entertainment business. I would have enjoyed seeing those.

Leo Rossi – Leo was the former stage manager for Fleetwood Mac and shared the stage with many iconic artists. Now he brings his “Knights of Rock” story to life in his presentations. His stories about how he moved up to the stage manager and his experiences were just amazing. We didn’t want his presentations to end. The Knights of Rock are friends of his that were in the stage crew that worked with Fleetwood Mac and other great artists. Their YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/@knightsofrock) has many videos telling their stories. I will be watching some of them when I finish writing this review.

Neil Noah Preston – Neil is one of the most respected photographers in music history. In his 40 years in the business, he has captured iconic photos of some of music’s greats. His works are in the Smithsonian and National Gallery. He talked about how he got into the business and his experiences with many of the big-name musicians he has photographed. He did his presentation along with Leo Rossi. It was a lot of fun listening to them talk about their experiences together. You can see some of his work on his website, https://www.prestonpictures.com.

Karen Warral – Karen is a travel speaker and writer from Scotland. She writes for National Geographic Traveler and has a cruising YouTube channel. Each afternoon she would have a presentation in the theater about what to see and do in the port we would be visiting the next day. They were quite informative and helpful. They weren’t just promos for the tours that weren’t sold out, although those were briefly mentioned for some of the people who hadn’t booked tours.

Ports of Call

Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas

After two days at sea, we arrived at St. Thomas. For the first time in my many visits to St. Thomas, we were the only ship in port. Unbelievable! It was a lovely clear day for us. We arranged for a private food tour through TripAdvisor with Flavors of St. Thomas, LINK.

We docked at the Havensight pier, so we needed to take one of the many shuttles that go into town to get to Fort Christian where the tour began. It is just under 2 miles into town and the shuttle only costs $6.00 per person. It didn’t take long to get to the fort. The brightly colored large structure is easy to find, plus, that is where most of the shuttles stop.

We arrived early, since I didn’t know if we would need to wait for the shuttle to fill up. The van took both of us as soon as we walked up. We went to the fort entrance where we met our wonderful guide for the day, Michelle. We couldn’t believe that she was 68 years’ old. I liked the statement on her t-shirt.

As we walked around, she pointed out important buildings and places we were seeing. She pointed out the impressive Governor’s mansion on the hill as well as an important Lutheran church.

Our first of the five stops was at the 758 Bar where we were served Bushwackers, a very yummy beverage. It was a good way to start the food tour.

We continued our tour passing by the Emancipation Gardens. There is a statue called the Conch Shell Blower. It symbolized a newly freed slave. Michelle told us that the statue is on the St. Thomas license plate. I had to take a photo of one.

Across the street is Educator’s Park. There are three statues of educators that made a significant difference in education and other areas on St. Thomas. They are J. Rothschild Francis, Antonio Jarvis and Edith Williams.

Our next stop was at E’s Garden Teahouse.

We had some salt cod quiche and raspberry/elderberry tea. They were both most enjoyable.

Michelle pointed out a house that had an area of stucco removed. It showed what the buildings originally looked like.

We next walked to the Bunker Hill Hotel where we climbed three flights of stairs to get to the Sugarcane Grille.

The view from there was quite nice and we were able to sit outside to enjoy some curry chicken, rice and plantains.

I liked the cute sign on the wall.

On the way to our next tasting, Michelle wanted to show us an interesting building, the Taphus Beer House. It was nice looking bar. She pointed out the brick roof. Something I hadn’t seen before.

Our next stop was at the Tuck Shop. It was in a building with a great balcony on it. The owner was happy to have us there and posed for a photo.

We enjoyed some delicious conch fritters.

We then were shown how to make a drink called the painkiller. It contains orange juice, pineapple juice, Coco Lopez, cinnamon and of course rum. We each got to make our own drink following the recipe. It was a winner.

Our last stop was at Virgilio’s Cuisine Restaurant. Now this is quite a place. There is art covering the walls. I could have stayed a long time looking at everything.

We watched the chef make bananas foster for us.

He did a great job making a most delicious dessert for us.

On the way back to the starting point, we went through one of the many narrow alley ways, where we were able to see more of the original building construction.

It was a very good food tour, made even better by our excellent Michelle. We lucked out having her. On the way back we had a nice view of the Explora 2 waiting for us. We really enjoyed visiting this island with no other cruise ships in port. I have never seen the town with so few people walking around.

Shortly after leaving St. Thomas, there was a nice sunset.

Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadalupe

We had another beautiful day as we entered Pointe-a-Pitre. Just like in St. Thomas and every other port on this cruise the high temperature was in the low 80’s with a nice breeze. We approached islands on the way in, some with resorts.

As we docked, we were able to see some tall buildings in town. It was a bigger city than expected.

In the harbor we saw the DreAMBoat (SIC) yacht. It is a 295-foot yacht that cost $200 million and is owned by Home Depot cofounder Arthur Blank. Mighty nice!

We booked a ship tour, Botanical Gardens and Locations of TV's Death In Paradise. Since we watch the TV show, we thought that this would be a good tour for us. We had a very good guide named Devon, that for some reason, I didn’t take his photo. Our drive to the western side of the island took about an hour. Our first stop was the Deshaises Botanical Garden. We weren’t excited about seeing another botanical garden. Living in south Florida, we have similar types of plants, plus we have been to so many other botanical gardens; but we hoped it would be a nice visit anyways. As we entered, it did look like a good one. Close to the entrance we came to a wooden deck looking out on a small lake. It was filled with gold fish.

The guides were given buckets of fish food, which they gave to those on the tours. When someone through in a handful, the feeding frenzy was so voracious. It was quite a sight.

As we walked through the garden, we saw some beautiful flowers and great views of the ocean.

At one point, we were on the other side of the goldfish lake looking at where we threw in the fish food. No goldfish on this side.

We continued along the path.

We then came to a lorikeet enclosure. There were so many of them and they were so pretty. I got a kick out of the one that was taking a bath and shaking his feathers.

We saw more beautiful plants and trees.

There was a small waterfall and then some flamingos.

As we finished the garden walk, we went into a pavilion where we were going to have a snack. With the tour running from 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM, they had to feed us something. There was a table set up with some food and drinks. As soon as we got there, Devon told us to sit down, and he would be back shortly. He wasn’t. When he did get back, he told us that there was a screw up and they hadn’t made any food for us. The delay took over half an hour. I was concerned, since I didn’t want our time visiting the Death in Paradise sites to be shortened.

At the front there were two types of punches, with or without rum. They were OK. The food was cod fish fritters and black pudding. The fritters were pretty good, but black pudding isn’t my thing.

We left the garden and headed into the town of Deshaises. It is the town of Honore in the TV show Death in Paradise. Our first stop was at the Honore police station where the detective and his crew work.

We were thrilled to go in and see where so much of the show takes place.

I got to sit in the detective’s chair with Cathy by my side.

As we left, we had a photo taken in front of the station. We were enjoying this stop.

Not far from the police station was the bar that is called Katherine’s Bar on the TV show. It is pretty much just a tiki hut and much smaller than it looks on the show. I took some outside photos and then went in to where most of the scenes are shot. They must fix it up better when filming.

Across the street is the actual bar. Some scenes are shot there, but most are in the hut.

We hoped to be able to see the house where the detective lives on the beach, but it is taken off the beach when filming is completed. Plus, the beach isn’t reachable by vans.

We then drove back to the ship. The scenery was very pretty, but the dark windows prevented any photos from being taken. On my first visit to Guadaloupe, I only went to the eastern side of the island. The western side we just visited was much prettier.

That night we had an unusual looking sunset.

As we were leaving port, the illuminated bridge caught my eye. I was glad I was on our balcony at the right time.

Saint Pierre, Martinique

I have been to the main cruise port in Martinique, Fort de France, before; but never to Saint Pierre. This is a much smaller and quieter town. It is a cute town from the water. This was the only port on the cruise where we used the tenders.

I originally booked a private tour but then found out that they could only do it from Fort de France. Since there were supposed to be some interesting ruins in town, we just decided to do our own walking tour. We passed by a cute building and then came to the local cathedral we saw from the ship.

The interior had some beautiful stained glass, much of it going around the entire roof line.

They also had some very nice wood carvings.

As we left the church, we were able to see Mt. Pelée. Since it was mostly covered with clouds when we anchored, this was our first view of it. We hoped the clouds would clear later. This was the volcano that erupted in 1902 that destroyed the town and killed 30,000 residents. Only one person escaped alive, a prisoner in a prison cell. The ruins from that eruption are the main tourist attraction in the town.

As we walked through town we came to a colorful statue in front of the local market.

The market itself was small with not much going on that day. But it was Wednesday. I’m sure it is packed on the weekends.

Our plan for our walk was to see some of the destruction sites. As we walked down the street, we could see Mt. Pelée very close by. The clouds cleared, but it was an obstructed view.

We shortly came to our first ruins. There were steps up to a higher elevation, but we chose to just walk along the street. It was a pretty large area, so I took photos from several angles to show as much as I could.

I wanted to find out how to get to the prison cell where the prisoner survived. We walked up to a fellow working at a small restaurant to find out. He told us to just follow the blue lines on the ground. That sounded easy enough. I also pulled it up on Google Maps. The paths were not the same. I took the blue path. The climb was pretty steep, so Cathy stayed at the restaurant and got something to drink while I climbed.

When I arrived at the higher level, I saw some steps leading up to the Theater of St-Pierre. I had to climb up higher to get a better view of it.

As I was taking photos, an Asian couple was also looking around. On the Google Map, it appeared that the prison cell was very close by. I asked the couple to see how to get to it. They didn’t speak English, so I showed them the name of what I was looking for. They pointed for me to go back down the steps and take a right. The map showed left, but an indirect way to get there. I took their advice and was glad I did, since it was a short walk to the area where there were more ruins.

The prison cell was at the back corner. It was very small.

I went inside of it. The wide-angle photo makes it look larger than it is.

I wanted to see the small opening on the top of the cell that the prisoner cleared of ash to get rainwater to survive until he was found. He was just jailed the night before the eruption.

I took a different road down that was closer by to get back to Cathy. It was a steeply crowned road that was more difficult to walk on, especially since it was steep. I took a photo looking up when I got down.

One of the places we wanted to see was the Mémorial De La Catastrophe De 1902 museum. As we were looking around, I looked up and saw the building on top of the hill I just came down from. I would have liked to see it since it was so close to where I had just been. We weren’t going to climb the hill, especially since we wanted to get back to the ship for lunch. We were pleased with how many of the ruins were still there. It is good that they didn’t knock them down, since it is the town’s main tourist attraction.

We took the road back that was along the water. We enjoyed the promenade and pretty beach.

We walked on the tender dock to get back to the ship. When I looked back at Mt. Pelée, it was cloud free. Even though the tender was about to leave, I had to take photos of it, since conditions change quickly.

After lunch, I went out on deck to get a photo of the whole volcano. Some clouds had returned. Looking at the town just below the volcano shows how an eruption could do so much damage.

I took some photos from the tender and ship of the town.

There was a statue of Mary on the top of a hill. We hadn’t been able to see it from the town. It was quite far away, but the zoom lens helped me get a better photo of it.

That evening we had a very nice sunset.

A Journey of Infinite Enchantment in the Lesser Antilles on the Explora 2 12/5/2025 to 12/14/2025