In this travel vlog, Josh and Rachael Fillbrandt document a full day exploring Antigua during a Celebrity Eclipse cruise. After a brief walk through St. John’s port, they shop for beach gear and try local snacks before heading inland to book a private, self‑driven mini‑boat/snorkeling excursion with Reef Riders (booked via Viator for $360). The 3.5‑hour tour takes them about a mile offshore, where they snorkel among vibrant coral, spotting a turtle, shark, barracuda, stingrays, a large lobster and dozens of fish. They praise the personalized experience, the ease of driving the boat, and the safety compared to a jet ski. Returning to port, they find many restaurants closed for a holiday, but eventually dine at Cheers, enjoying chicken samosas, curry chicken, fish burger, hot wings, and local beer. They reflect on the high cost of port‑side dining, the surprise of learning Antigua is a separate country, and share upcoming cruise stops (St. Martin, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic). The video ends with calls to like, subscribe, and follow on social media.
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Hey everybody, I'm Josh.
And I'm Rachael.
And we just had one of the best Caribbean port days we've ever had here in Antigua.
Join us for some snorkeling and some great food. Let's go!
All right, good morning.
Good morning.
Welcome to Antigua.
Yes, another new country.
Yes.
I'm so excited.
And so today we are doing something off ship, not part of Celebrity.
Correct.
Which we don't do a lot of these, so I always get nervous and Rachael tells me you'll be fine.
It'll be fine.
Yeah, but we're gonna go check out the port area for a few hours, try to find something to eat, and then we've got a little mini boat excursion or something.
Mini boats, self-driving, so we get to drive it ourselves, and snorkeling. And coming in this morning, snorkeling seems to be a key. Like, there was a lot of beaches and a lot of rocks, so I'm very excited.
Speaking of a lot of beaches, we have heard that there are 365 beaches on this island, one for each day of the year. Let's go see some. All right, so we were trying to go to a place called Roti King, which we had heard is good, but unfortunately it's not open. So then we walked through the town a little bit and it seems like there's a political demonstration going on. So we came back to the port.
Yeah, so we're back.
We're gonna grab a drink, a little bit of food, and there is Wi-Fi. We've seen that there's Wi-Fi at a lot of the restaurants and bars, so if you need to catch up on things— because we don't get the internet package, maybe you don't either— but we're gonna grab a bite to eat and a drink before the excursion. And as usual, we'd like to try some local beer, so this one apparently is made here. All right, for lunch we did go with some chicken samosas, and then there's some sautéed Chicken skewers. I believe it was chicken.
Yeah, it did say bar bites, so it's more like appetizers.
That's true. Yeah, they also do sandwiches here, but we didn't feel like it. Yeah, we got a cool view though. Just for reference, we were just sitting right up there. It's a cool little spot. All right, so we got about 45 minutes before our excursion starts, and Rachael— I'm on a mission.
I need a new beach hat.
Yeah.
The other one, like, the Velcro is all wearing out, so I need a new beach hat.
I got mine right here. I'm a big fan of it. I got it in Costa Rica. Perfect colors. So we'll wear that later. But let's find Rachael a hat because there's a ton of shopping here. And if you don't get enough casinos on your cruise ship, they do have casinos. We've seen at least 2 or 3 of them just in our random walks.
New hat acquired, and she was trying to get Josh, so I ended up buying a dress too. We'll see that later.
Yeah, she said sexy, so obviously you gotta get it. Hoping these are just some, uh, midday quick showers before we get in the water. But hats, hats are working.
Yeah, and hats are required, so we're good.
All right, we are at— I don't know where we are. Uh, we've driven about 25, 30 minutes, but we're gonna be here with Reef Riders. This is not sponsored, but we did book it on Viator, which we're not sponsored there either, but we'll try to leave a link down below so that you can do it if this looks cool. And I'll tell you the price afterwards because Rachael knows it, not me. We're on our jet ski boat type thing.
Yeah.
On around. It's only us with the guide, so this should be a lot of fun.
This should be good. Yeah.
All right, so we're out a long ways off. And I think we're gonna do some snorkeling, so he's gonna be parking over here. But check this out, look at these freaking waves! Like, I don't know, a long ways off, maybe a mile off, I don't know, but I think it's really cool. What do you think?
I'm excited, this is so cool. Yeah.
All right, let's see how this goes, GoPro. There's Rachael.
I'm struggling already. There we go.
It is crazy. So Uh, yeah.
Okay.
So he did say that it is, uh, 7 miles of shoreline riding, 1 mile out to open sea, which this is the 1 mile, I would assume. But it's fun. All right, uh, so those are some of the experiences that are really hard to like truly bring you along and talk. Yeah, but I'll tell you, holy crap, that was awesome!
Antigua Reef Riders, holy Moses, that was one of the coolest experiences ever!
All right, how did we book it?
We booked it through Viator. Total, I think it's about a 3.5-hour excursion. Total for us was $360. You can book it directly through them. We'll put the link to their website down below, but highly recommend. Again, wasn't expecting an individualized tour, but it was. It was just Josh and I. It was so cool.
Because when we got there, there was like 6 people that were just getting off of the tour. So it was really cool that it was just us. The snorkeling was probably the best ever.
Well, hands down. Like, I'm blown away. My mind is blown.
So you will have seen a turtle, a shark, a barracuda, 2 stingrays, and the largest lobster I've ever seen in my life.
Huge! Let alone the coolest coral.
And like 50 different fish.
Yeah, it was just amazing. Amazing.
And the ride itself was a lot of fun. You get to drive it yourself. It is less, um, oh, what do you think? It is not as dangerous feeling as a jet ski, which if you want dangerous, that's, that's probably a jet ski. But this was a lot of fun. It didn't feel like we're gonna fall over or anything.
No.
But we also got to go fast. It was a ton of fun. They picked us up down by the port and they dropped us off right here.
Yep.
So we're gonna see if we can find some food. Unfortunately, we did learn that is— well, fortunately, unfortunately.
Yeah.
It is a holiday, and so the couple places that we wanted to go eat at are closed.
And one of these times, one of these ports, Josh is gonna trust me when I book one of these off-cruise ship experiences because this one was one of the best.
It was fantastic. Like I said before, we're not sponsored by Viator, we're not sponsored by Reef Raiders, but, uh, yeah, trust us because we're not paid. Later. Unfortunately, it was closed when we went earlier. We just drove by again, it It was so close. So we're gonna try Cheers, which is right over here. You know, we tried.
We tried. But Roadie King, the driver did say she goes there every Saturday, so it must be worth trying.
And of course we asked her, is there anything close or anything similar that's around here? Nope, of course not. So let's go to Cheers. I wish that you could smell this. I'm not gonna lie, this— the price tags are expensive here. It's right at the port. Yeah, and you're paying for location.
You are.
But this curry chicken smells freaking fantastic. You can see some rice and beans, some vegetables. And then we did the hot wings— hot spicy wings, that is. French fries.
And then I did a fish burger. It looks like a nice Oh, 2 nice boys.
Yeah, and we got some beers after some rum punch. We deserve it. Well, what a difference a few hours makes.
A few hours? A few minutes.
Yeah, look at this. This place is dead, but it is 5 PM, so that means everybody's getting on their cruise ships. What'd you think of today?
I loved it. I would come back. Oh man, I would come back and take what I think it's Antigua. Whatever, I'd still come back.
Yeah, um, I will admit we did not know that this was its own country until about 6 months ago when we booked this cruise. Yep. But we were like, we should probably go at that point. I think it was freaking fantastic.
It was great.
I think it was some of the best snorkeling I've ever done.
Hands down.
My God, I would do that every time.
I would too. Yeah, I would be a repeat visitor to Reef Riders.
I know, and like we try to do like different things all the time, but if we found our way here, I, I think we would easily just do that again.
I agree.
All right, so if you haven't realized this yet, we are on a cruise right now. We are on Celebrity Eclipse. There's a video about it, probably happened before this one, but we are going to be on it for the next, I think, 6 more nights.
5 or 4 days.
Yeah, something like that. 5 or 4.
We have 3 more port stops.
Yes, so we are headed to St. Martin, Puerto Rico, and Dominican Republic. It's gonna be a blast.
I'm so excited.
2 more places that we have not been to, and St. Martin tomorrow. We have a private excursion booked where we're gonna try to do as many possible things you can even think about.
I'll say as much as we can.
Yeah, inside of like, I think, 7 hours.
Yeah. What was your favorite moment of today?
Favorite moment of today was seeing the turtle. Oh, it was the first like major thing to see, and I think snorkeling with turtles is probably one of the best things ever.
I, I think seeing the turtle was amazing. I think all of snorkeling was amazing, but to me it was the end when you jumped off the boat to get the snorkel or to get the stingray.
Yeah, that was so much fun. We had already put away all of our snorkel gear. Yeah, everything was in gear. My fins were off, my sunglasses were on, and I— the guide just said, there's stingrays right there, you should jump in. So I did, and once I got in the water, I realized I have sunglasses on. I can't even see this. So I did record, and luckily it looks like there's footage of this. Yeah, it was, it was so funny.
It was so much fun.
All right, favorite bite of today?
Oh, mine were the chicken samosas at the first restaurant we ate.
Okay.
They were good.
I would say the chicken, uh, curry that we just had here at Cheers. Cheers.
It was very good.
It was so much better than I expected. Like, I know I was probably saying like, oh, pork prices Blah blah blah, but it was good. Yeah, it was very good. Very good stuff. All right, we're heading on the ship. If you enjoyed our videos, don't forget to hit that like and subscribe.
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