Cruise: Day 2

Day 2, Sunday, September 28: At Sea

Tony woke up around 7, and it woke me up. The first thing I did was peek outside, and I gasped when I saw the sky. "It's gorgeous!" I yelped. (I had tried checking the weather forecasts before we left, but didn't have much luck finding anything concrete--so I had no idea what to expect for weather As it turns out, every single day on the ship was just a gorgeous as this.) I grabbed the camera to take a couple pictures (something I ended up doing every morning).

This was facing straight out (we were on the starboard side, if anyone's curious).



And this was facing forward.



Since I was awake, and since room service wasn't going to arrive for another hour and a half, I decided to go work out. The fitness center is on Deck 11, toward the front of the ship, and I managed to get a treadmill facing straight out, with a fantastic view of the wide open ocean.

I finished my workout and returned to the room only moments before our breakfast arrived. I carried it out on the balcony, and surveyed what they brought us. Tony ordered scrambled eggs with hash browns, sausage and bacon, I ordered scrambled eggs and Special K, and a fruit plate for us to share. But this is what we got.



They added all the sides to my simple order of scrambled eggs, plus that whole plate of bread/pastries. And they did this every single day. Just one example of how spoiled we were on this cruise.

After breakfast, we attended the Port and Shopping Show, a seminar about the shopping opportunities in St. Maarten and San Juan. It was very informative and helpful for rookies like us who have no clue about what it's like to shop in port. Not that we planned to go crazy spending money, but it was nice to hear some "insider tips." We purchased a coupon book that would score us a bunch of freebies in both ports, and we considered the seminar time well-spent.

Afterwards, we rushed to do what we'd been dying to do--lay out on deck in the sun. Of course, there were tons of people there already, so it took us a while to find chairs. We ended up on Deck 12--the deck above all the pools--but that was OK, since we mainly wanted to just lay out anyway. It was incredibly windy up there, but that also worked to our advantage, since it kept us cool.



We laid out for a couple hours, then dragged ourselves away so we could change and go to lunch at the Windjammer before it closed at 3. (We later found out we could have just thrown on cover-ups and gone to lunch that way instead of changing, but oh well.) We got to lunch around 2:30, and it was still really crowded, which surprised us. After lunch, we went back to our room to change again, intending to lay out some more before dinner. But then we realized the sun was on our balcony, and we figured, why go out on deck when we could sun ourselves in the privacy of our own balcony? So that's what we did for another hour or so.

We both showered and got ready for dinner, the first formal night (the Captain's Gala Dinner). As we entered the dining room, I remembered to get a picture. Gorgeous, isn't it?



Tony was smart enough to think of getting a picture of both of us, so we got a waiter to take this one.



We also got our waiter, Davut, to take a picture of our whole table. On the left are Steve and Freyja, and on the right are Kyle and Amy (we caught Kyle as he was starting to blink, which is why he looks half-asleep).



For dinner, I ordered roast duck. I've never had it before, and I figured, "Hey--why not now?" And then I took a picture.



After dinner, there was an opportunity to meet the captain, so we figured we'd go for it. It was all so formal. When we got there, an attendant asked us our family name and where we were from. So when it was our turn, he said to the captain, "This is the [our last name] family from [our home state]." We shook the captain's hand, had a formal picture taken, and then another attendant thanked us for coming as we left. We were amused by the dignity of it all.

We returned to our room to change out of our formal wear, and I was delighted to find a towel animal, adorned with my sunglasses. We hadn't gotten one the night before, and I had been ever-so-slightly disappointed. But I guess the first night is just too hectic for the stateroom attendants to bother. Anyway, my childlike excitement is documented in the following photos. (Don't worry--we didn't take this many pictures of every towel animal.)





After we changed, we headed to the evening show--"Ever After," a re-telling of several famous fairy tales, using modern music. (For example, part of Snow White's story was told using that song that goes "If you wanna know if he loves you so, it's in his kiss.") It was pretty cute.

When we went back to the room, I decided to take a picture of the minibar. I've never had a minibar in my room before. I couldn't get over how silly a minibar seems on a cruise ship. I mean, there's food everywhere, and 24-hour, FREE room service... why would you fork over $3 for a bag of gummy bears?



For some reason, I wasn't felling well, so I laid on the bed and drifted off to sleep, while Tony watched TV. Our TV was a nice flat-screen, and nearly every other channel was a Royal Caribbean channel--they had channels that told you about the ports of call, their own reality show channel--everything you could ever want to know about the company. But one of our favorite channels was one that showed a satellite map and told you the ship's location (in longitude and latitude), the ship's speed, the wind speed, etc. It was fun to flip to that channel every now and then and see where we were, how fast we were going, how deep the ocean was at the spot, how far we'd gone so far, how far we had to go until the next port, etc. I didn't think to take a picture of it until the last day, so you'll notice that in this picture, we're almost back to Miami. But anyway, you get the idea.



After I fell asleep, Tony ordered room service. I'm pretty sure he talked to me about it and I answered him, but I don't really remember. (That happens a lot--he has entire conversations with me that I have no memory of. Apparently, I am very coherent in my sleep.) I woke up around midnight, and we literally had a midnight snack--some awesome chili dip with not nearly enough chips. And then we both went to bed, for real this time.

To be continued...

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Hmm, this was a rather short entry. Just for fun, I looked through my pics, and counted how many I have for each day--just to get an idea for how much condensing I'll have to do as I write future entries. The day we were in St. Maarten, I took 68 pics, and in San Juan, I took 95. (I know--crazy, huh?) So, either I'm going to have to do each of those days in 2 parts (which I don't really want to do, since this saga is already going to take up so many entries), or seriously reduce the number of pictures I show you. I think I'll go for "seriously reduce." So what I'm trying to say, I guess, is... expect a little more of a delay before the Day 3 entry appears...

Also, one other note... I changed my blog settings to only show the latest 5 entries on the front page (instead of 10), since I know all these entries are going to be very picture-heavy. Just an FYI. I'm really leaving now...