Fans of relaxing cruise vacations to palmy, balmy climes, we're also big on the Big Apple, where the tempo is hot-hot-hot. It's one of our favorite cities, and we're always looking for an excuse to visit. When the Carnival Legend started sailing to the tropics from New York, New York, we wanted to be a part of it.

Like America's largest city, Carnival Cruise Lines (the largest cruise company) has a reputation for being glitzy and gaudy, bold and brash. Springboarding from a pre-cruise stay in NYC, you step aboard the Carnival Legend in midtown Manhattan without missing a beat. Indeed, your Carnival "Fun Ship" is just a white-knuckle taxi ride from the nonstop excitement of "Fun City," New York's self-proclaimed nickname in the late 1960s.

Eight-day Carnival Legend cruises to the Virgin Islands, scheduled weekly from late April through mid October, sandwich three island calls between four full days at sea, an itinerary with great appeal for those who cherish lazy days on the ship. It takes two days just to travel down the East Coast to the Caribbean Sea.

To cover the territory, the 22-knot Carnival Legend, one of the speedier cruise liners afloat, traveled at a faster clip than we had noticed on other voyages. In fact, on one windy afternoon, waves splashing high against the hull forced us to grab handrails and caused the closing of some outside upper-deck areas. (The 4,500-mile roundtrip from New York uses 140,000 tons of fuel.)

We started our New York-Caribbean combo by flying from Chicago to LaGuardia Airport and hopping a taxi directly to Carnival's Hudson River cruise terminal, saving our bite of the Big Apple as a post-cruise dessert. Departing and arriving at this hectic facility is messier than in most other cruise ports, so patience is urged. (To use an apt New York expression, it's a regular Grand Central Station.) But once onboard, we were enthralled with the views of the river traffic and Manhattan skyline, spotting the Empire State Building's spire in the distance. Next-door, right below the balcony of our cabin, were a British Airways Concorde supersonic jet and other planes at the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum, a floating tourist attraction on a former aircraft carrier.

We had our binoculars and cameras ready when the Carnival Legend set sail at 4 p.m., looking for landmarks and making sure not to miss the Statue of Liberty. The green copper lady of New York Harbor, standing on a star-shaped island with clusters of trees, never fails to inspire.

Cruising from New York City has grown dramatically in the past five years as lines have expanded beyond Florida to base ships in other population centers. New York, long a departure point for trans-Atlantic crossings and seasonal cruises to Bermuda and Eastern Canada, now is an established homeport for Caribbean sailings as well, even in winter.

The 2,124-passenger Carnival Legend, one of the fleet's 20 "Fun Ships," is a marvel of shipbuilding technology, a 12-deck showpiece of interior design. Typical of today's mega-ships, she abounds with restaurants and bars--and things to do from early morning to late night. Away from pool games, art auctions, and dinging slot machines, though, we could always find refuge on our balcony, a quiet place to read and nap as the ocean whooshed below, its spray spattering the glass-paneled railing. (Two-thirds of the ship's cabins boast a private balcony.)

Our early June cruise, like most others on this route, sailed full to the gills, with some 2,300 passengers helping fill many staterooms' third and fourth berths. There were plenty of kids, some in strollers, but older couples and young honeymooners were well represented, too. Even with all these people onboard, we still could find peace in public areas, from secluded spots on the sunning decks to a looping, tunnel-like passageway called the Enchanted Forest.

If you're looking for a ship glittering with neon, mirrors, polished granite, twinkly lights, and a massive central atrium with glass elevators, the 2002-built/88,500-gross-register-ton Carnival Legend is your dream come true. A slick piece of "entertainment architecture" from Carnival's near-legendary designer, Joe Farcus, the vessel takes her theme from legends, both real and fictional, from all periods of history.

In the eight-deck atrium lobby you'll find a huge wall decoration depicting the Colossus of Rhodes, a mammoth bronze statue that dominated the harbor in the ancient Greek city of Rhodes; a Jason and the Golden Fleece mural adorns the upscale, extra-cost Golden Fleece Supper Club. Roman mosaics and stylized Greek vases accent the atrium, promenades, and elevator banks.

On Lido Deck, the cafeteria-style Unicorn Cafe, with colored glass and Gothic wooden arches, takes guests back to the days of King Arthur and medieval England, as does the castle-like Club Merlin Casino on Promenade Deck. Next-door to the casino, Dream Team Lounge sports black-&-white murals of legends like Jackie Robinson, Bart Starr, and Wilt Chamberlain, while neighboring Satchmo's Club--straight out of New Orleans--has photos of jazz legend Louis Armstrong and carpeting with a trumpet motif.

A color photo-mural of MGM stars from the golden days of Hollywood grace a wall near the pastry counter at Legends Cafe and Follies, a three-level show lounge that recalls the great movie palaces of yesteryear. Artwork on stairway landings tells the stories of Romulus and Remus, the Three Musketeers, America's own Buffalo Bill Cody, and others.

After two days of exploring the Carnival Legend and feasting on vast expanses of the ocean blue, we were ready to hop off and explore the Caribbean ports-of-call, starting with San Juan, Puerto Rico. Soon after our 3 p.m. arrival, we headed on foot for the nar row cobblestone streets of Old San Juan, just up the hill from the pier.

In this quaint quarter loaded with Spanish colonial charm, tourists drift between boutiques and galleries, stopping to pause on the plazas and take pictures of 16th and 17th century pastel buildings trimmed with wrought-iron balconies. We popped into historic San Juan Cathedral and made it to El Morro, a mighty Spanish fortress overlooking the harbor. On the way back to the ship, we sampled the famous pina coladas at Barrachina's, a courtyard restaurant/bar where it's said the frothy rum drink was invented in 1963.

Because the Carnival Legend stayed in San Juan until midnight, we had time for an after-dinner stroll along the waterfront. The late departure gives party-minded passengers a chance to sample San Juan's sizzling nightlife. Carnival's after-dark shore options include a nightclub show, kayaking through glowing micro-organisms in Bioluminescence Bay, and a rain-forest horseback ride complete with marshmallow roast.

The next morning we woke up amid gorgeous green hills ringing the bay in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, just 40 miles east of Puerto Rico. The liveliest of the U.S. Virgin Islands, St. Thomas is the Eastern Caribbean's busiest cruise port, but the Carnival Legend that day had the docks all to herself.

Shopping is the name of the game in Charlotte Amalie, so we walked into the heart of town and began wandering down the cool alleyways that stretch between the waterfront and Main Street. Brightly painted, stone-&-brick warehouses that once held rum, molasses, and lumber today brim with electronics, jewelry, perfume, liquor, T-shirts, and beachwear. You can also find Caribbean spices, candies, and jams. One shop specializes in decorative steel drums in all sizes.

That afternoon we took a taxi to Morningstar Beach, where we saw two iguanas fight after we paid the driver, then encountered two more slithering through the sand and up a seagrape tree on the beach. The waves were rough along the Atlantic shoreline at this low-rise, West Indian-style Marriott resort. In fact, watersports had been canceled, but we liked the turquoise water and soft sandy bottom. (Many Carnival Legend passengers opted for the tour to Trunk Bay, a famous beach and snorkeler's haven on the laid-back little island of St. John.)

Our last port call (and only stop on foreign soil) began at 7 a.m. on Tortola, the largest and most populated of the British Virgin Islands. Among the first passengers to hit the dock in Road Town, we prowled the sleepy streets, then came back to the pier for a Carnival shore tour that mixed sightseeing and beach time.