Carnival Sunshine Review, Part 9: Christmas in Grand Turkfeatured

There’s a scene in Home Alone 2 where Kevin rhetorically asks his parents who’d want to spend Christmas with palm trees? They weren’t in Grand Turk in the Turks and Caicos islands, though. I think they were going to Miami. We’ve never spent Christmas anywhere but Chicago. Granted, we don’t celebrate Christmas, ourselves, but we have our own traditions and we enjoy the spirit of the holiday.

Usually, we sleep in, lament about all of the places we can’t go because everything is closed, have an early dinner at our local Chinese restaurant and then hit the movies.

And, oddly enough, we were able to keep most of our “traditions” on the ship. But Kevin McAllister was right – it is weird spending Christmas with palm trees.

We were already docked in Grand Turk when we woke up. We headed up to the Lido deck for a quick breakfast of the made to order breakfast pizza’s we’d discovered the morning earlier and found a pool deck full of hogs…and zebras, crocodiles, frogs and all kinds of towel creatures!

We settled in for a leisurely breakfast when Jaime came over the PA to announce that the Splendor would be docking alongside us in about a half hour and at that time, they’d shut down the pier for about 20 minutes while the Splendor docked. We had no time sensitive plans, but we also didn’t want to be sitting around waiting, so we wrapped up our breakfast quickly and disembarked.

I’ve never met anyone who has claimed that Grand Turk is their favorite island. We’ve been there at least half a dozen times and, don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice island. It’s just…lacking of things to do.

Though the largest Turk island in the Turks & Caicos chain, Grand Turk is still less than seven square miles. From the Lido deck, you can see the ocean touching the coast on the other side of the island. It’s that small.

And not only is it small, Carnival has pumped millions of dollars into the creation, renovation and upkeep of the port, so walking around “downtown” Grand Turk is just like walking around Roatan and Costa Maya: completely commercialized with minimal local flavor. So between the size and the Carnival factor, there isn’t a ton to do. You can shop. You can go to the beach. You can brave Margaritaville. There are a handful of excursions that take you on a tour of the island or to a private resort. We just wing it.

Usually we shop and then head back to the ship to swim. This time, we decided to walk down the beach to see what we’d find before shopping (…and heading back to the ship to swim. Why hang around a very crowded beach when you’d have a nice and empty Serenity deck on the ship?). We walked towards the gates and hung a right and then we just kept walking until there weren’t any people around. We found some rock formations that were stunningly gorgeous and took some pictures that looked like they were postcards. Grand Turk may not be anyone’s favorite port, but it is a gorgeous one.

We also found a small monument to NASA and the space program. Did you know that Grand Turk has played an integral role in the space program? They even have a little shop at the periphery of the shopping area.

When we were done exploring the beach, we headed back to the downtown area to finish our shopping. The shopping in Grand Turk is better (price-wise) than the shopping in Bonaire, but neither are as good as the shopping in Aruba. We picked up a few handmade rings and called it a day. More than the shopping, though, we enjoyed the holiday spirit tucked into every corner of the island. Between the holiday decorations and the reggae Christmas carols, Christmas was all around.

We walked through the small crafts market on our way back, but nothing seemed all that unique – it was just the same stuff sold in the shops hocked in a stand.

You need to walk through Dufrey to get back to the ship, and Stephanie wanted to stop and buy some liquor for her boss, but man, it was so crowded. It took forever to find the one tequila set she wanted and pay for it. And if you need pharmaceutical goods or last minute sunscreen? Don’t buy it at Dufrey. The convenience is great but the prices are outrageous.

We snapped a couple of last minute shots of the beach before reembarking the ship. The beach is always super crowded in Grand Turk and when there’s more than one ship docked, it’s borderline ridiculous, but it always makes for a pretty photo op.

We dropped our stuff off at the room, changed into our swimsuits and headed up to Ji Ji’s for our traditional Chinese Christmas lunch. The lines had been outrageous all week, but being in port helped alleviate that. And the stir fry was good.

And for dessert, they put out a special display of cupcakes in the Marketplace. They were adorable and tasty!

We headed up to Serenity, grabbed some primo seats by the pool and alternated between swimming and staring out at the island.

When our shoulders were starting to get red (even with the copious amounts of SPF 50 we were slathering onto ourselves), we headed inside to shower and get ready for formal night. Counter space to get ready is a premium in our family and we negotiate it as if it were prime real estate. This time, since sailaway overlapped with our get ready time, we had a clear compromise: we all did our hair, then Stephanie and I went out to deck 3 to watch sailaway while Mom did her makeup and got ready.

We hadn’t seen a Caribbean sunset on this cruise, mostly because the sunsets come earlier in the winter and overlapped with our dinner time, but we did get a spectacular view of the sun peeking out from some fluffy clouds as we left Grand Turk.

Once we were all dressed and ready, we headed up to Ocean Plaza to check in for dinner and take our obligatory formal night pictures. The ship was really starting to rock again, and I had to hang on to Mom so I didn’t topple over in my heels.

There was a special Christmas gala dinner in the dining room, and it was refreshing to have new options to choose from. Everything we tried was fantastic, and I have my fingers crossed they rename the Christmas Salad and add it to their regular rotation.

Pumpkin Bisque

Shrimp Cocktail x2

Chilled Tomato Soup with Wild Berry Salad

Christmas Salad

Petite Filet Mignon and Braised Boneless Short Rib

Slowly Roasted Tom Turkey with Our Christmas Stuffing

Zucchini Fritters

Caramel Praline Crème Brulee

After dinner, we headed to the Liquid Lounge for a viewing of the Studio VIP show. They were looking high and low for some VIP’s to star in the show. Audience participation is not really our bag, but they were offering free drinks and special access to anyone who would participate. And while I’ve been (and will likely continue to be) critical of the Playlist Productions shows, I think this is one of the stronger ones. The setlist was on point and the performances were so good that I barely noticed those awful animatronic backgrounds.

We walked through the shops to peruse the sales after the show and then stopped into Cherry On Top to grab some candy to enjoy during the movie before heading back to the room to change.

And finally, waiting for us in the room, were the invites to the Platinum/Diamond Party. We had almost given up on this party – we were nearing the end of the cruise at this point.

We didn’t spend much time contemplating the late invites, though: we had a movie to catch. Going to the movies on Christmas is one of our family traditions, and we were excited to be able to continue it on the ship. We caught the tail end of The Grinch, but the big showing of the night was a 10:00 pm screening of Home Alone. I’ve seen Home Alone more times than I can count, but watching it on a cruise ship under the stars with a sippy cup of bubbly is infinitely more fun than watching it at home on my couch!

They were also doing a special midnight showing of Mad Max, but we were too tired to sit through a third movie. We grabbed some pizza and called it a night. We only had one more day left on the ship, and so much left to do.