Cruise to Cuba with Kids

Over Thanksgiving break we went on a cruise to Cuba and it was a fun adventure. The last time I was on a cruise was my honeymoon over 15 years ago and that was a bit different than this time around. When my mom asked if we wanted to travel with them I said yes right away because we love to travel. {you can see our other trips here} Cruising with kids is a great mix of relaxation and adventure. Here are the photos from our trip. {warning… there are A LOT of photos!}

Cruise to Cuba –

I am by no means a cruise expert, so I will not pretend to this. This will be more our story and some things we learned along the way. We started our trip with a day and a half in Miami before boarding the ship. We were on the Royal Caribbean Empress of the Seas. The kids hadn’t been to the ocean for awhile so they were thrilled to spend the day on the beach in Miami.

On another note… I love my new bathing suit.. believe it or not I got if off Amazon HERE. It runs pretty true to size and the shipping was free… I got several compliments on it during our trip.

Our cruise was a 5 night trip, we boarded Monday, had a sea day on Tuesday and then spent Wed in Key West. {we weren’t overly impressed with what we saw there. Has anyone had a fabulous trip to Key West?}

We spent Thur and Fri until noon docked in Havana, Cuba and then speed back to Florida to get off the ship Saturday morning. Before I talk about our time in Cuba, I’ll talk about the things we loved about being on a cruise. The kids thought the ice cream machine, pools, kids clubs and pizza bar were amazing. The fact that any time they were hungry they could get food, they loved it!! We ate dinner every night in the dining room {the kids had banana splits for 5 nights in a row and we were served by these two kind men each night.}

We did not spend extra money on our room and had an inside cabin. My parents were right across the hall and the boys took turns spending the night with them.

This is a smaller ship in the fleet but it still had some fun things to do. My husband went to the art auction for an afternoon, the kids spent two different afternoons in the kids club {love free childcare!!!} And on Thanksgiving night we sat in a hot tub and watched a football game on the big screen below.

We brought games with us and also enjoyed the ones on the ship. After dinner tea and more food for the kids was a great way to spend a couple of evenings.

We also had so much fun with the ship game shows. We watched a couple of music ones and it was so fun to watch how competitive people were over cheesy cruise swag.

The boys also did a scavenger hunt at the pool one afternoon. They loved it.

The sports area and rock climbing were also really fun and not too crowded.

Ok! So then we actually got off the boat in Havana.. It took us a couple of hours to to get off the ship and through passport control, but after that it was easy and we had free range. We were told when we booked the cruise that we had to have a tour booked in Cuba to go on the boat… well… I will say that they didn’t actually check this and we could have just gotten off and found a driver to show us around and take us to the beach… I’m not telling you to break the rules, I’m just sharing our experience {wink, wink} The first day we had a tour and learned so much. The cars and buildings in the main areas of town and JUST like you think from photos! SOOOO many old cars and from far away they look gorgeous, but up close the paint jobs aren’t perfect and there are a lot of patches. We spent time at the beach {GORGEOUS!!!} and then went through an old fort from the early 1700’s, and saw the four mains squares of the city. The 500 year anniversary of Cuba as a country is next year, so there was quite a bit of renovations going on. The second day we took a tour of a cigar factory {fascinating, but they didn’t allow photos and no kids were allowed in} We also spent more time walking around the old part of the city and spent our last Cuban Pecos on some ice cream. Did you know the Mojito was invented in Cuba?? I did not ;o) Enjoy the photos…

The ship behind us when we got off the boat in Havana.

Okay, I’m going to stop this long rambling post and sign off for now. If you have specific questions about our trip feel free to email me. Here are a few other favorite trips we’ve taken.

Dominican Republic