http://www.cruisereviews4u.com/ 97-55 http://www.cruisereviews4u.com/cruise-reviews/carnival/carnival-destiny.html This was my fourth cruise (2 on Royal Caribbean and 2 on Carnival). Having travelled with Carnival before I had certain expectations, though not as high as others, and I found they have been met by this cruise. Though other people I talked to on this sailing wouldn't agree. My husband and I flew into Miami on the morning we started and had no problems getting to the boat early. We decided to get a taxi and arrived quickly at the pier. The check in process went smoothly and in a matter of 10 minutes we were on the Destiny and eating lunch. The boat looked very similar in appearance to the other Carnival ship we were on before. Are there better ships out there, yes but it was clean and nice. I had no problems with the overall quality of the ship. There were plenty of activities, but my favourite activity was finding a quiet spot to just relax and read my book and soak in the sun. Our first port was on Wednesday (after a day at sea) at Grand Turks/Caicos. This poor island has been devastated by hurricane Ike; Though getting off the ship we did find a shopping area to the right of the pier. They had good shopping, great eating (Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville was THE place to be), a nice pool, and a beautiful, easy to access beach all right there. The pool and beach access were free and we enjoyed snorkeling off the shore. It was a rather short day as we had to be back on the boat early, I think at 1:00. The next day we stopped at Half Moon Cay which is Carnival's private island. We ended up renting a cabana for the day for $225 which is worth it. The cabana was air conditioned, had a fan that sprayed mist, a shower for rinsing off, soft drinks, snacks, and hammocks for relaxing. They also provided snorkel equipment for 4 and floats. I would really recommend this option. Our final port was Nassau. We didn't end up doing much at this port as we didn't book any shore excursions ahead of time. I would recommend for this port that this would be a good idea. There was a local market nearby so we did a bit of shopping The food was good and we ate in the dining room all week long. By the end of the week though I was getting tired of the food. I am not used to eating so much all the time. On the day of disembarkation we got off the ship around 9:00am and quickly found our luggage and were on our way. Overall we got what we wanted from this cruise and that was a nice relaxing vacation. ]]> Tue, 11 Nov 2008 23:23:11 -0600