Shopping on Western Carribbean Cruise

[Laurajean1014]

Can anyone tell me what the best stuff is to purchase on each port and where to purchase it?

Also, I've heard very little about GC on the boards! Did everyone stay there that loved it? Was anyone disappointed?

Please advise......

 

[jennifersmith23]

Hi Laurajean - First of all Grand Cayman was a lovely island. Unfortunately my family did not get to see very much of the island, but what we saw was very nice. Unfortunately it is so nice that everything is VERY expensive. This was by far the most expensive stop we made. The cheapest tshirt I saw was like 20 dollars. I highly recommend the Del Sol store (I love those color changing shirts) and that you just poke around the rest of the stores. They have interesting knick knacks and souvies...

As for Cozumel, they give you a shopping in paradise guide that gives the names of a few stores. We went to Viva Mexico and found several things there that were reasonably priced.

In Key West, just go to different stores...They had one store there that was 4 tshirts for 10 dollars that we bought a few things at. You can find deals like that all over Key West. Beware of some of the stores that offer "discounts" to cruise ship passengers or "everything 50% off". We walked into a couple of these stores and these so called "discounts" were non existent. It is kind of ironic that this was the case only in the US and on no other island...hmm...

 

[keenercam]

Hey Laura---Here is what I posted yesterday on another thread. Hope it helps.
when we were in western caribbean 2 years ago, we loved the tortuga rum cakes in Grand Cayman. We bought an assortment of 6 or 8 different flavors and gave some away, but ate most ourselves. A lot of the small shops had huge trays of rum cake for sampling. Anyway, I have been craving that since then. But the rest of the shopping there was very expensive. About $1.25 american for $1.00 GC. So, a $2.00 ruler cost us $2.50. Surprisingly, we got home and opened a bag of 10 pens I had grabbed (they were loose) and one of them was from Barbados or somewhere--that was funny!
In Cozumel, Los Cinco Soles had awesome souvenir shopping--we bought a mexican blanket for about $5, lots of brightly colored paper maiche coasters, a capiz shell windchimes, tequila, rum, leather hair accessories, and awesome pure vanilla. I have heard of others buying silver, but we didn't look for that at all. We bought my daughter's sapphire ring in cozumel too, and the price was great, because we negotiated it down about 40%.