So at the end of my last post we had just finished up at first island on our cruise which was the beautiful island of St. Thomas.

Our next day was spent at sea so I went to check out the “cigar bar” that this ship apparently had. It was a small room that the bartender sold cigars from under the counter. They were all the mass production blends such as the Dominican Romeo y Julieta’s and Cohiba Red Dots, none of which appealed to me so I passed on that and enjoyed another Padron 2000 I picked up the day before.

Our third day brought us to the island of St. Lucia where we took a Pirate ship to a beach, no shopping here so I can’t report on any cigar selection or prices. But the weather was awesome, the water was blue and the rum punch was flowing!

The next island stop was Barbados. We went into the main town but it wasn’t much to see or do, we were gone pretty quickly and I didn’t see any shops that looked to be selling cigars in our short time there. We spent some more time at the beach then walked around the duty free shops in the cruise port. There was one shop that had a decent selection here including their locally made Royal Barbados brand which is a decent mild stick and a variety of Avo’s, Joya de Nicaraguan, Davidoffs and a few La Aurora brands. Prices were still a bit over US Retail here but were actually pretty good. I managed to grab myself a sampler of La Aurora sticks and some Royal Barbados while at this shop. That night I sat outside and enjoyed one of the La Aurora Cameroon’s I picked out.

The island of St. Kitts was up next, we did a scenic tour on train which took us the entire way around the island. The island has an amazing mountain right in the middle that touches the clouds, was very impressive. Then we walked around the shops at the cruiseport again but I didn’t see much in the way of cigars. This port was full of souvenir shop after souvenir shop. Not all that interesting but I did get to see an awesome sunset. Here’s a shot of it from my iPhone, I’ll have more on Flickr soon if anyone is interested in seeing some trip photos.

Our final island, and one of my favorites was St. Maarten (or St. Martin). This is a beautiful clean island with lots of nice shops and long beaches by the blue water. Another place I’d really like to come back and stay for a week or so. Here I found some of the best prices on Cuban cigars but the next day we’d be flying into Florida so I didn’t want to bring them into the US. If you do happen to stop here I do have to caution you that there were a lot of fakes so be careful what you buy! I did grab myself an RyJ Corona to enjoy while we walked around and also managed to buy myself a nice watch! While watching the ship leave port I also enjoyed a Don Lino backed by some awesome scenery.

The next day brought us back to San Juan where we made another dash to the airport and off to Florida. No time to shop around in San Juan unfortunately. While in Florida I got to enjoy a few more sticks and even remembered to take pictures of some. Here I am enjoying a Leon Jimenez Red Label with some more Rum & Coke.

While we were in Florida I made a trip down to visit our friend Jackie over at Bonita Smoke Shop. It’s about 2.5 hours away from where we were so I didn’t get a chance to stay too long. I dropped off my wife to do some shopping and headed over there. Now I have to say Jackie and the crew are a bunch of super awesomely nice people and I will DEFINITELY be going to visit them again next time I’m in Florida. She sat me in her office and we just chatted for a bit then she took me for a grand tour. This place is like cigar lovers heaven. It was room after room of nothing but good cigars. Was great to meet her and to see the shop. If you live or will be anywhere near Bonita Smoke Shop, make sure to pay them a visit! This pic is just a tiny corner of the store, there’s tons more in there.

I managed to grab myself a whole variety of sticks but here’s some of the main ones. I got a few of each of these but to make the picture easier I just lined up one of each.

When I got home that night I lit up one of Jackie’s special house blends called the Time Warp and paired it with 2 interesting brews, the Vieille Provision Saison Dupont and some Lagunitas Undercover Investigation Shut-Down Ale. The cigar was fantastic with tons of flavors and the beers were very tasty too. Thanks for the awesome cigar Jackie, you rock!

Another place I hit up while down there is a restaurant chain called Columbia. This chain started out in the cigar town of Ybor City which is just outside of Tampa. They make some great food and offer up a killer Sangria. They also have some house blend cigars out of their own little factory. I blindly picked up a couple of sticks, more out of curiosity and a bit of a souvenier. Turns out I should have bought more, this was a damn tasty cigar and next time I’m down there I will definitely be grabbing more! I also paired it with some Stone Imperial Russian Stout which was damn good as well!

I smoked a few more cigars that week but doesn’t seem I grabbed many pictures. Some were while we were walking and shopping and sometimes at the beach when I didn’t have my phone. I did manage to snap a pic of this pairing which was another Jaime Garcia Reseva Especial and a tasty brew called the Weyerbacher Blasphemy Ale. Both were darn good!

I think that’s all I got for our good readers. Hope I didn’t ramble too much and it was an interesting read. I had an awesome time and if anyone has questions about any of the places I visited I can go into more detail for you on what/where things were or whatever else. Things are still crazy at home since I’m still moving boxes and clothes while also working but look for me to finally buckle down and squeeze out a full review for everyone next week (I hope!) lol

Will have more pics of the trip up on Flickr soon, if you want that link just let me know!

The post Why I was MIA – Part 2 appeared first on Cigar Reviews | Beer Pairings | Casas Fumando.

2 Days before I tied the knot I had a great cigar gathering with about 10 friends. Not all of them are big on cigars but there were a few. So I pulled out some mild sticks for the newbies and kept some of the good sticks for those I knew would enjoy them. I happened to grab myself a Cohiba Behike 52 (Which Tony reviewed here) that I had been saving for just this occasion and damn was it ever good. I paired it with a super smooth scotch which I had also been saving, the Macallan Select Oak. I highly recommend both of these! To finish off the night I also enjoyed a Drew Estate Undercrown and a Montecristo No. 2 which are staples in my humidor and still darn good. But hard to compare to the Behike…

The wedding day was mostly a blur and flew by very quickly. I didn’t have time to sneak out for a cigar but I did make sure they were part of the day. I had ordered a bunch of cigars from our friend Paul Maldonado and gave them out to our guests. Each cigar had my wonderful wife’s creative touch as well with a nice ribbon and little label that said “Compliments of the new Mr. and Mrs. T”. The whole day and evening went wonderfully smooth and without any problems at all, a great day for sure!

Now for the fun part, the next morning at 7am we were on our way to the airport! I made sure to pack my travel humidor with a few sticks cause I didn’t want to get stuck without any cigars while I was away. Our first stop was the island of Antigua in the Caribbean. The island itself has some great scenery but apart from the cruiseship port there isn’t many shops that tourists would visit so we stuck to the resort for the most part. Now I’m very glad I brought my own cigars because they were selling Cuban’s for about 4x the retail price, which is even more than they would cost me in Canada!
But you can’t really complain when this is the view you have at your table every morning for breakfast!

So while I was there this is what I had from my Travel humidor. I didn’t pack any Cuban’s because we’d be hitting U.S. soil and I didn’t want to deal with a Customs issue. The first night in Antigua I celebrated with a Jaime Garcia Reserve Especial. I really love this cigar and it comes at such a great price, can’t go wrong with these.

I didn’t have a cigar every night simply because we were having fun doing other things but the resort was very open to letting you smoke pretty much anywhere on the grounds. So I also enjoyed the odd smaller cigar such as a couple Illusione ~mk~ sticks and some little Tatuaje Verocu 5’s that I happened to bring along. The night pictured below consisted of a Don Pepin Garcia Blue Label paired with some Nachos + Cheese and my staple drink for the trip, a Cuba Libre (a.k.a. Rum & Coke). And yes, I had it in a mug because I ran out of glasses in the room! lol

The next cigar I snuck in my travel humidor is one of my recent favorites, the Drew Estate Undercrown. Of course, I have myself some more Rum & Coke here, El Dorado seemed to be the standard of this resort.

That was it for the cigars I snapped pictures of at the resort. The next leg of the trip brought us to San Juan where we would be catching our cruiseship for a tour of the Caribbean. We didn’t have time to shop around San Juan when we got there as we had to head straight to the ship. At this point I was running low on cigars and starting to get worried! lol The first night while we were watching the ship disembark I squeezed in an Illusione ~88~ and I think I only had 1 cigar left now.

The first stop on our tour was the island of St. Thomas which is part of the U.S. Virgin Islands. This was a really nice island with lots of clean shops and friendly people, definitely a place we’d consider going back to for a longer stay. While my new wife went crazy in all the jewelry stores I kept my eyes peeled for cigars. There were a couple duty free shops that I ended up grabbing some cigars at but the prices were kinda high so I only grabbed a few. I picked up a couple Padron 2000’s that were a little over $8 each and some Arturo Fuente Chateau’s that were in the $10 range. Selection wasn’t that great on this island either…

I have a bunch more to tell but it seems this post is already getting pretty long so be on the look out for part 2 coming up later this week! Let us know if you guys enjoy this type of post and we could chat more about our adventures with cigars whenever we have them!

The post Why I was MIA – Part 1 appeared first on Cigar Reviews | Beer Pairings | Casas Fumando.