spiralqueen

Thank you so much! And yes, the whole island is stunning, but especially the gardens in Romney Manor! It’s really a cant miss in my opinion. Maybe not every time, but at least once. Just stunning. Oh wow, that is the highest compliment! The new iPhone is just very good at taking pictures in full light and I admit to using a bit of after editing software on my phone so it’s less @twangster like skill and more just good lighting and photoshop express. And yes, your recommendation of Thenford made me feel much better about our choice in him and more excited for the trip ? You will LOVE deck 8! Park Cafe is especially handy throughout the day and I love walking past Trellis bar and grabbing a bottle of water almost every time I pass it. It’s also just a delight to walk through to get to your room. So peaceful. And thank you so much! I’m glad this is helpful for people since I found other liveblog super helpful and I just want to give back ? Lol yes, it was destiny! Though really, the best chocolate experience was at Chocobar Cortez in San Juan this morning. Recap of that to come shortly but omfg omfg! And yes, I too want to try our the bagel station one morning. I’ll prob hit it up tomorrow. I didn’t want to eat breakfast this morning since I had plans to eat in San Juan.

Recap of the rest of the day: Ship neighbors view as seen from our balcony. And view of the dock and Magic after sail away. We ended up much more tuckered out from the St Kitt’s trip than anticipated because I came in from hanging out on the balcony to find both of my parents napping around 5:20. I asked if they still wanted to go to Coastal Kitchen at 6 because they did not look like they had any plans to start getting ready any time soon. They gave noncommittal answers until I finally said that I was fine skipping it today if no one else wanted to go, but we should make up our minds soon since we should tell them in advance so they aren’t holding a table for us. This next saga was quite annoying. I finally got a straight answer at 5:30. I went on the app to cancel the reservation but by that time it was 5:31 and I got an error message that it’s not possible to cancel that way within 30 mins of reservation. I tried looking around for a CK extension to no avail. When I pressed the “dining” key on the phone, it was not a named option. I tried to dial the operator and it rang without answer for 5 mins. I gave yo on that number and tried guest services. This time the phone rang for 4 mins without answer. Since I had now been trying for almost 10 mins to cancel this table, I finally dialed another specialty restaurant (it happened to be Giovanni’s) and pretended I got the wrong number and asked to be transferred to CK. They told me to dial 0 and I said I tried that and no one answered (0 is the operator). I then said I just wanted to let them know we wouldn’t be able to make it tonight. When he found out I was just cancelling and not making a reservation he said he could do that for me. So that was nice to get taken care of but honestly way too much effort. I wish the direct extension was posted somewhere in the app or the room. We eventually decide on grazing at the Wind Jammer for dinner. Quite a step down from Coastal Kitchen, but what are you going to do? Though I did start laughing when I saw this sign walking into the WJ as it made me think of @hayley_bopp‘s comment about noting a them with my desserts. I swear I didn’t plan this!!! So this was my first time in the WJ since boarding. It was quite overwhelming and I didn’t know where to start. I ended up getting some chicken wings and fries and other related comfort foods. The shrimp at the buffet are the same as the ones in Chops and CK, but the cocktail sauce is inferior. My mom’s fixings. I tried 2 different cakes and the ice cream was the best part. I have yet to try a truly phenomenal cake on royal. But again, reminder that I’m highly critical of desserts since I bake. We went back to our room just to discover that it hadn’t been done yet. I think us leaving an hour later really threw off our attendant. To waste time, we went off to read and listen to music in Central Park. I have to say, you can’t beat a cabin in deck 8 on an Oasis class ship in my opinion. Just so convenient! After about 35 mins we figured it was safe to check again. This time he was done and I knew this because of our little pal hanging out on the ceiling. This is another early night because San Juan starts at 7am tomorrow. I have some shops I’d really like to hit up. I’ve adjusted my itinerary since my mom has expressed interest in getting back to the ship for pool sun time ASAP.

St Kitt’s recap continued: We first drove around the city of Basseterre a bit to see some of the important sites. Thenford was great about sharing background information on everything and he seemed to know half the island as he would constantly point people out like “that man walking there is a prominent lawyer on his way to work. His son and daughter are also lawyers and his brother is the Attorney General of the island”’ The jail, also featuring a prisoner (in the dark blue in the shadows) being led out. The home of many prominent law offices. These buildings used to be where the wealthy families on the island lived. Then they moved to Frigate Bay. HQ for the labor unions which were vital to the growth of their economy. War memorial for fallen soldiers who served in the British West Indies troop in the World Wars. We then left the city and made our way over to Romney Manor/Caribelle Batik Lots of little plaques to show what plants were in the garden and their origin. Very interesting and gorgeous. We then saw a batik demonstration which is where they use wax and dye to create patterns on fabric. They had a shop attached with lots of batik made items. Watch tower for old plantation. Next stop was Brimstone Hill Fortress. It had phenomenal views but a killer walk to the top. Out of the question for anyone with mobility issues. On our way down I heard an 8 year old going the other way say to his dad “dad, this is HARD” and I muttered “you said it kid”. It wouldn’t have been as bad as it was if it weren’t for the heat and humidity. But....it was worth it. If you go here with small children, please please PLEASE keep them close as there’s many tall drop offs without railings or ropes and stone at the bottom of the hypothetical fall. I saw this one little boy running around and my second hand anxiety was through the roof for him. After the fortress our next stop was a lookout point where you can see both the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea at the same time. There were lots of vendors here including men with monkeys and a donkey. That part was upsetting watching the casual animal abuse like dudes feeding the monkeys beer or a woman GRABBING the donkey roughly by the face and clinging onto it. I’m shocked it didn’t bite her. But the view was amazing. After this stop it was time for the beach drop offs if you so chose. The first option was a place called Shipwreck bar and the attacked beach. It looked really neat, but we were beat and ready to go back to the ship. Since I was curious about this, the way it worked out was Thenford told the people who wanted to stay what time he would be back for them (3:15) and the rest of us went on to the next stop. The other beach option was Carambola. They were told a 3:30 pick up time. The rest of us went back to the port for shopping time or ship time. Overall it was a great excursion option that offered a lot of bang for your buck. Make sure to rest up though as it’s a bit tiring.

Today we were in St Kitt’s from 8:30a-4:30p and we had booked the Grand Tour of St Kitt’s with Thenford Grey’s touring company. Before getting off the ship, we went to Park Cafe to grab some breakfast. They had a make your own bagel station where the lunch salad station is and some breakfast sandwiches and breakfast burritos. I got an English muffin sandwich which had a fried egg, a slice of Canadian bacon & some cheese on it. It was pretty good. The banana muffin was nowhere and I make a far superior one so it lay abandoned after one bite. After debarking, we saw that we were docked next to the Carnival Magic. (the tiniest little roller on the end of the longest pole to allow them to paint the side of the Magic. She definitely needed more paint than they were able to apply that day) We were supposed to meet the tour at the Welcome center at 9am. We go off around 8:40 to allow time to find the tour group. We didn’t have to worry since it was beyond easy to find them. The yellow building is the Welcome Center we were supposed to find and the woman in the last picture had a sign for Grey’s excursions and checked us off a list of booked people. We then waited as instructed in front of a big mural until it was the start of the tour. We ended up having Thenford himself as our tour guide and he led us behind some buildings to a parking lot that had all the tour busses parked there. The bus we had was small and fit about 20 people in it. Most importantly, it had excellent, adjustable air conditioning. To be continued in another post which will be very picture heavy.

There is occasionally the slightest bit of swaying but I think that is because we are on a moving ship. I haven’t noticed any odd noises or vibrations. And the motion is about an eighth of the motion on Enchantment which is my only adult comparison.

Looool I am a shameless sucker for chocolate! I have also incorporated into our plans in San Juan tomorrow a trip to the Cocobar so I will be even MORE of a predictable stereotype then! ?

The internet has been a bit spotty today and so I couldn’t do some of the smaller updates I wanted to. I was only JUST able to access the blog (though for some reason CC would load. Unfair!) This morning we went for breakfast in the Solarium Bistro around 8 since we knew that we wanted to camp out in the Solarium for the morning. They had a buffet set up that had fruit, pastries, various types of eggs (scrambled, fried, hard boiled, etc), different breakfast meats, breakfast potatoes and circular hash browns. The food was just OK and the hash browns were definitely the best part. They honestly reminded me of fresh McDonald’s hashbrowns. But not as greasy. That is a high compliment. After eating, I went scouting for a padded chair in the shade since I am a translucent Irish woman who sunscreen only does so much for. Since it was so early, I had quite a lot of options, though I was surprised at how many chairs were already reserved. This was taken at 8:30 am The seat I ended up claiming was PERFECT. It was right next to a side table and located under a fake palm tree in front of the hot tub. While I had no intention of using the hot tub, I did get a delightful spray of water to cool me down a little when the wind blew the right way. I was able to hang out here reading and enjoying the weather until noon when the sun found me and I started to cook. I then retreated to our shaded balcony like some sort of vampire. But before I did that, I stopped by Sorrentos to try for myself the new and improved pizza. I have to say, it’s not the best pizza I’ve ever tasted, but it is quite tasty for what it is and it was fresh and hot. I got the BBQ chicken because that was what was ready then and I didn’t feel like waiting for a fresh pie. I ate the pizza there and went up a deck to grab a fresh squeezed juice from Vitality Cafe on my way to the room. This time I got the carrot lemonade. It tasted better than it sounds, but I still liked the apple mint more. It was more complex and interesting flavor wise. PS keep an eye out for one of these machines to see if a place has fresh squeezed OJ. I know Windjammer has it and the MDR, but so do Park and Vitality Cafes. The afternoon was quite boring to cover in a blog but very needed as I alternated between “resting my eyes” and reading. I had not really gotten good rest leading up to this trip and I’ve been operating on a sleep deficit. Protip: make sure to be as well rested as possible before starting vacation because doing nothing in the sun is exhausting. Eventually it was time for dinner in CK! We had yet another server today. This one was very good about recommending things and was very attentive, but she wasn’t very chatty and it felt rushed at times. I’m sure we could have asked for the pace to be slowed down so that is likely on us. For this meal I got the braised beef gnocchi and the Moroccan spiced chicken breast. The braised beef was good and hearty. I had never had gnocchi before though I knew what they are in theory. They were quite nice and I could see myself ordering that in the future. The chicken was extremely moist for a breast and was perfectly cooked. I loved the spice level in the sauce but it was a bit much for my dad and my mom refused to even try it (she always gets mild wings). I also tried a bit of my dad’s strip steak as I was curious how it was. I was glad I didn’t end up getting it as my main course since it was good, but it paled in comparison to last night’s ribeye. For desert, I got the chocolate napoleon. While it was good, I was a bit surprised that it was only chocolate. I think I was expecting different layers besides a moussey fudge on top of a very thin sponge. Which brings us to now. With 2 port days coming up in a row I really wanted to crash early and try to get some proper sleep so I can fully enjoy those ports. Tomorrow we have booked the Thenford Grey Grand Tour of St Kitt’s which is a 3rd party excursion that comes highly recommended. I hope because of this tomorrow’s blog post will be more interesting to read! I leave you with a shot of the made up sofa bed with the curtain across the room drawn. I love the separation it provides and I have taken to announcing that I’m “closing my door” when I go to draw the curtain at night. It’s the little things in life.

It might have been because the table was on almost the other side of the room. Our table night 1 was along the wall where there are padded booth seats on the one side - to the right when you walk in. Night 2 was to the front left, near where the 2 walls of windows met. I think we were actually on the edge of our other waiter’s section since the table next to us had a different server.

Oh and I forgot to mention, my parents are both in LOVE with Coastal Kitchen (as am I) and my mom has already requested I look into the pricing of a Junior Suite for our Jan 2021 cruise on Anthem. You know....the 11 night one. Just seriously considering upgrading from an interior to a junior suite. Like you do. This restaurant will be dangerous for our wallets!

Day 2 (cont): For lunch I decided to go with the roast beef sandwich from Park Cafe. I was curious what it was like on an Oasis class ship since I had tried it on Enchantment and was less than impressed. There it was a dry, tough, flavorless leather sandwich. Here it was a tender, flavorful, juicy delight of a sandwich. The other sandwich does not even deserve to be called the same thing. I also decided to eat out on the balcony since I had decided that today was Balcony Day The vast majority of my afternoon was spent reading and dozing out on the lounger on our balcony. It was a perfect, lazy way to spend the day. And it came with the bonus discovery that some of the bars were starting to get strawberry mix back in stock. Not all of them, but Trellis had them and I was a happy camper. Fast forward to dinner time. Coastal Kitchen again. We found out as we were being seated that the host was the one who went ahead and made the reservations for the rest of the week. I don’t know if he got clearance from his boss to allow JSs to book for the full week or what changed, but I know that we all agreed that he will be getting a nice tip from us at the end of the cruise. His actions have made a huge positive difference in this sailing for us. It was especially comforting to know that the reservations were not accidental and were actually meant for us. Our server tonight was not quite as good as Andrew last night and while the host thought he was doing us a favor by sitting us near a window, I think we may request to be put back in Andrew’s section for the rest of the nights. I went with the lobster salad and the rib eye. Our waiter also brought out a surprise order of the pappardelle for the table to share which I tried out. The lobster was quite good and the vanilla dressing was interesting and a better compliment than I was expecting. The rib eye was just. Amazing. Possibly one of the steaks I have ever had and we go to well regarded steakhouses every year for restaurant week so this isn’t being compared to an Outback steak or something. It blew the Chops filet out of the water. Incredibly, melt in your mouth and slightly falling apart tender while bursting with flavor. And in case you can’t tell, there were 2 slices of meat on the plate. I basically ignored the sides so that I could focus on fitting as much of that steak in me as possible. The ratatouille was actually quite good and I’m not normally a huge veggie person. The pasta wasn’t BAD, but it wasn’t great. I had things on my plate that were great so after one bite to try it, it sat pretty ignored. For desert I got the chocolate bar. It was like a moussey Milky Way bar. Quite nice. We then went back to the room to get changed out of formal gear so we could see the Ocean Aria. I somehow lost track of time since I had in mind that the show was 9pm instead of 8:30. Suddenly my mom mentions that we should probably head out as they say to be there 15 mins before show start. That’s when I realized my mistake and we booked it down to the Boardwalk. We made it to the theater about 5 mins before it opened up to everyone and found that it was PACKED. But never fear! The Key seating is here! We showed our newly stickered sea pass cards to the woman fiercely guarding 3 prime rows and she ushered us in with a smile. This was a fun a short-ish show. , though it caused me a ton of anxiety for them. I know they are professionals but everything looks so dangerous!! After the show was over, my dad excused himself to go back to the room and my mom and I went down to the casino to try our luck. I’m not 100% sure if my mom even made it over to a machine since she discovered a Phillies game on at the casino bar and that they had plenty of the strawberry mix. Clearly utopia. I went to one of the roulette tables that had a free space and did quite well for myself. I’m not exactly a high roller, but I went in with $60 and walked away with $137 in the space of about 30-50 mins so I consider that worth it. My mom’s birthday hit 3 times in quick succession so that really helped me rack up some chips quite quickly. I cashed out as soon as I saw the dealer was about to change and that it coincided with my mom checking in on my status. Then it was time to turn in for the night! No clue what tomorrow brings, but probably more Solarium than today.

@JohnK6404 @SpeedNoodles Well I spoke too quickly about the lack of key stickers. They must have gotten a shipment in somehow because when we came back to our room after lunch and there was a little envelope waiting for us on the bed. and I was very puzzled at first because it seemed empty. But looking closer inside revealed..... KEY STICKERS! Very happy to not have to wear this wristband all week.

Omfg I just stumbled across this in the Royal app when I was going to see what was for dinner at Coastal Kitchen tonight. I didn’t realize it, but somehow reservations were made for us for the rest of the week at our ideal time of 6pm except for the night we have reservations at Giovanni’s. I have no idea how this happened but I am THRILLED about this as it takes away a stressor and guarantees excellent food for the trip. ( @Lovetocruise2002) 6D158295-7F86-4DF2-9A93-72B98437ECAF.MOV

This morning consisted of eventually emerging from the room around 8:15ish to make our way down to the Promenade since I wanted an iced chai latte and to stop by guest services to deposit the money for my mom’s Mother’s Day gift I gave her (money for OBC for a massage that she had been talking about for weeks). Yesterday the line was absolutely mad so I just didn’t even bother and ended up giving her the card with cash in it and a verbal explanation that I would swing by guest services to deposit it for her. I wouldn’t have minded standing in line for it on Day 1, but I couldn’t come up with an excuse as to why I needed to stand in line THEN that didn’t arise suspicion. So today on Day 2 I stopped by at 8:30 and there was no one in line which is my favorite kind of wait. Even with no one in line they had a crew member there to triage which is great. They didn’t give me any trouble about wanting to deposit cash in someone else’s account. Just confirmed about 5 times that it is what I meant to do. With that done, I went next door for the latte. It was a bit disappointing and it had far too much milk and not enough chai. Having the refreshment package meant that I didn’t have to finish it or feel guilty about not having done so. I was about to get ready to go to Starbucks and pay for one of theirs when I remembered that my mom had a 9:30 massage and that the Vitality Cafe has lots of interesting juices and smoothies. I ended up getting the apple mint juice which had fresh green apple, mint leaves, and I think ginger all puréed into a juice super quickly. It was DELICIOUS and super refreshing. I’m pretty sure I will be hitting up that cafe almost daily because it seems to have a lot of great options that are included in the refreshment package. I forgot to take a picture of my juice but it was green and gross looking but tasted amazing. On the way back to the room to grab my bag and devices, I noticed that Central Park has these hand washing stations scattered throughout. This particular one is outside of Park Cafe. Having packed a backpack with all my various things that I wanted for hanging out in the Solarium, I went up towards there. I wanted to be on deck 16 so I could be closer to the bar and able to quickly grab more water as I needed it. View of the pool as of 10am. I’m sure it will get busier. Which brings us to now. I’m camped out on the second floor of the solarium in these nice padded chairs underneath an overhang to protect me from the evil, burny sun. I get to enjoy the gorgeous weather without the inevitable sunburn that follows me spending any sizable amount of time in the sun. The seats I’m in reading on my kindle: and their proximity to the bar (which is hopping!)

I think I saw either here or on CC that they ran out of Key stickers which seems rather easy to fix but what do I know lol

The key bracelet is a paper, non-removable bracelet similar to what you would see at a concert or amusement park. I’ll be quite curious to see how faded and wrinkled it is by the end of the trip! Picture taken right now: Also thank you! I swear I read the cruise compass last night, but maybe I should have done that when I was more awake since I barely remember anything in there and have no idea what the day will bring. And I’m looking forward to it! ?

I have no idea why those other 2 pictures are showing up at the bottom of the prior post even though I tried to delete them, but since it is 2am I will decree that they have won the battle and they deserve to stay there. ???

Today has been a bit of a (good) whirlwind so forgive me if this recap is a bit scattered. I guess like the Sound of Music says, let’s start at the very beginning. It’s a very good place to start. We checked out from our hotel around 9:45 because I assumed that it would take a bit to get an Uber and I wanted to be on our way to the port by 10. Turns out our hotel checkin wasn’t the only smooth thing. Lots of Uber drivers were hanging around the area and it 2 minutes for our XL to get there. It cost us $10 plus tip to get the 3 of us from our 17th Street hotel to the port drop off. If you have lots of luggage I HIGHLY recommend using the XL feature on Uber. There’s no way our stuff would have fit into a sedan. We were at the port by 9:51 and sitting in the suites waiting area by 10:03. I’m pretty sure most of that time was spent walking from the drop off area, through the debarking stragglers, and to the check in area. Since people were wondering, at Port Everglades they have the Key grouped with suites for security as well as check in. I didn’t get a picture of the security set up, but basically it looked like there was one short line for suites/pinnacles & Key and a long winding line for everyone else. Once through security, we went over to the check in area. We told the employee directing people that we had both a suite and The Key so whichever line was shorter. It happened that the Key was shorter and we were literally checked in and through to the next step before my dad even realized what the guy with the iPad was for. I’d say a minute is being conservative. Very fast and streamlined. Next on to the waiting area! We made our way over to the suite waiting area as it looked much nicer than the Key area. The Key area was the same seats most people had, just in an area fairly close to the doors to get on the ship. Suite waiting area. We will have to be careful not to get too used to this! They said they hoped to start boarding around 10:30. It took a bit longer than that, but not overly so. I believe they started calling groupings at 10:45ish. The order that I was able to hear was Star Class (back to back didn’t get an announcement. They just got escorted off and then back on first), then Suites, then Key. I assume the order after that was by loyalty level. I was very happy that I knew from message boards to go to the Amber Theater for bag drop off bc there really wasn’t any signage until you got INTO the theater. Also I was happy that we were able to board with suites and juuuuust best the huge rush of Key people to drop off bags. We were the second ones at bag drop off and when we turned to leave the theater there was a rather long line forming. At this point it was around 11. I think we wandered up to Central Park to explore and be close to Chops for when it opened for lunch. This was meant to be 11:30. I went to order a virgin strawberry daiquiri from the Trellis bar and break in my refreshment package but I was told that they didn’t have any strawberry pure mix so my backup drink of strawberry lemonade was also out. Disappointed, I just grabbed a bottle of water and figured I’d grab one at another bar. This would turn out to be more difficult than anticipated. But let’s put a pin in that and get back to lunch! Over we all went to Chops around 11:20 since I had heard of people being let in as early as that for lunch. Well turns out there was an unannounced change in opening time. It went from 11:30 to noon and as we were just about to go off and do something else while waiting, I noticed a line building up behind us. I decided then that I was going to hang out in line because if we had left to return at noon there was no way we would have been able to get in before it was full. Also it was a gorgeous day and what difference does it make to kill time there versus elsewhere? They opened promptly at noon and we were quickly shown to a table after giving the host our room number so he could confirm we had the Key. That’s when we found out from our sever that the delay was due to a surprise health inspection. Understandable and unavoidable. Menu is the same one that has been going around of the more limited options. I went with the shrimp cocktail, filet & chocolate cake. The shrimp were very well cooked but rather small. I’m not sure if that’s how it is on Allure or if it was due to the health inspection. The filet was very tender and the peppercorn sauce had a nice kick and depth to it. My dad really enjoyed the red wine sauce he chose for his filet. I wasn’t as impressed, but I tend to prefer kick with my meat. The chocolate cake was passable but not great. Warning: I like to bake so I tend to be very critical of desserts. You will likely see me saying that many desserts are mediocre. Does this stop me from eating them? Of course not. ? Oh and since we were delayed in getting started at Chops, right after we ordered I excused myself to make a quick trip up to Coastal Kitchen to arrange for dinner reservations. At least on this sailing they are not allowing Junior Suites to make reservations for the week all at once. Though they aren’t making you wait until the day of. I was able to get a 6pm reservation for tonight and then was able to schedule dinner for the next day when we showed up for our existing reservation before we were seated. So not the end of the world. But back to lunch. Coastal Kitchen was quite quick to arrange and by the time I went back down to Chops the appetizers had not even arrived. I’d say overall lunch there took about an hour and a half. It was nice and relaxing but quite a lot of food for lunch. We knew the rooms were ready at this point and since we were very close to it, we headed over that way. Overall I’m very pleased with our room. It’s larger than the hotel room we had stayed in last night and there’s tons of storage. The balcony is also amazing since it’s one of the hump rooms so it’s rather deep. the balcony has 2 full sized loungers as well as 2 normal chairs and a table. The loungers have room to fully recline. The room had information about how to connect to the internet (no codes), and more information about Key benefits on Allure. We bummed around the room for a bit until it was muster time. We were muster station E1. Our door said we would be in the Royal Promenade somewhere. I was worried we wouldn’t be able to figure out where exactly. I was worried for naught. I think we went up to the Solarium to watch sail away at this point but everything is blending together because sleepyyyy. I know at some point we also stopped by the Boardwalk because I saw these really cool art installations showing the different stages of making the horses for the merry go round. At some point we also swung by guest services to get our sea pass cards punch for our lanyard and to see about either getting stickers or wristbands for The Key since they weren’t in our staterooms and I knew from past posts that we would run into issues using the reserved seats at shows perk if we didn’t have that. The guy trying to triage the guest services line to weed out the easy things for them was able to hole punch for us but was very confused by our Key question. I thanked him and said we would wait for someone at guest services to help. It was then that my mom saw someone give someone else Key wristbands so we were able to flag him down and tell him that’s what we were also looking for. He seemed surprised that they were not in our room but gave us 3 once he saw by looking up our room number that that’s the number we had purchased. Since we had an 8pm show, I went with 6pm dinner reservations to be on the safe side. At 6pm we went to Coastal Kitchen and the host saw us through the glass and immediately buzzed us in. We were quickly seated and our server was great. He checked in very often and had excellent recommendations before we even asked. The menu for Day 1 was very different from past Day 1 menus I had seen from other live blogs. classics side. For future posts I’ll only post the rotating menu portion to avoid duplication. I got the crab cake and roasted chicken and Andrew suggested an order of the cheese tortellini for the table to split which sounded like a splendid idea. The crab cake was pretty good. The aioli was great and had a nice kick to it. It didn’t have quite enough crab vs filler for it to be a truly great crab cake, but I’m also spoiled by the crab cakes I get whenever I visit my friend who lives in a town on the Maryland coast. The chicken was very moist but there was SO. MUCH. CHICKEN. The head waiter actually stopped by at some point to make sure everything was ok with my dinner because I barely made a dent in it. He looked much less worried once I explained that I had had lunch at Chops and there’s only so much food I can fit. The tortellini recommendation was great because I don’t think I could have a full serving of it as it was a bit heavy with the cheese but it was very tasty. I forgot to get a picture of the dessert menu, but here it is from the app. I got the chocolate & olive oil cake. I somehow missed the & and was surprised when it was a layered bar. My mom got the panna cotta which I grabbed a picture of because it was so pretty. The chocolate portion was excellent but incredibly rich and I could only eat about a third of this because it was just SO MUCH chocolate. The olive oil cake under it was rather tough and coarse. Since I’ve never had olive oil cake I’m not sure if that is just what the crumb is like for that kind of cake or if it was over baked. Our 8pm show was Mamma Mia and we used the reserved seating perk. The seats in the theater were the first 3 rows in the slightly elevated section behind the sound booth. These are my ideal seats as I am the kind of person who likes lower mezzanine seats for broadway shows so I was a happy camper. View: I had fun also watching the conductor on a little screen in the sound booth. I still have no idea where they tucked those musicians away at. Under the stage? If anyone has taken the behind the scenes tour who knows, I’d love to find out as it baffled me the whole show. The show was very good and well done. I’ve seen it on broadway many years ago (prob sometime in 2008 or 2009) and I would say it was similar to the talent level of a traveling broadway show. Which is to say very talented, but not winning a Tony. The time seemed to sail by and I’m very happy we got in to the time we did as the other times were 9:30 or something like 2 or 2:30. We turned in after the show as it’s been a long day of doing many things and nothing all at once. Here’s some miscellaneous pictures I also took but am too tired to seamlessly work into this entry: Umbrellas near Central Park & boardwalk (& prob elsewhere) Sad settled on mango and tropical virgin daiquiris. Still no strawberry though I asked at every turn, ever hopeful. There’s some sort of strawberry mix shortage which I hope is fixed by tomorrow. It became a running joke through the day. If I saw a strawberry on something like my mom’s panna cotta we’d make a comment like “do you think I could have a bar tender turn that into a daiquiri???” The Royal app has awesome push notification reminders when things you have added to your calendar are 15 mins away. confirmation that virgin frozen drinks are $7 each. Fruit platter we got which I believe is from the Key. I noticed the rainbow bubbles during the day in Central Park and thought they were cool then. But they are MUCH more impressive at night. 52946388-4336-420B-BDD7-70DD58894E6D.MOV Bonus video I captured of when my mom was trying to sneak the cash envelope out of my dad’s pocket while he was half napping. Then he woke. Ok it’s now 1:44a and that means BED! I think I’ll try to do more frequent but smaller updates as this was quite a lot to do all at once and it was hard to remember what happened when. Life is so hard!!!! ?

As @JohnK6404 mentioned, I am on board Allure right now and today was embarkation day/leaving. I honestly forget that I am on a sailing and moving ship sometimes. If they haven’t turned on stabilizers because of the issues then I genuinely can’t tell. When I was on Enchantment in November, you never forgot you were on a ship because it was very easy to feel the motion of the water. But so far so good on it being smooth sailings so far. I’ll make sure to mention it in my live blog if it suddenly starts feeling very rough.

Wellllllll turns out we were a bit more “laze” than anticipated and we all sort of passed out sometime around 2:30 or 3 and suddenly it was 6:30 and no one was really in the mood for dinner dinner. Lunch was so filling that we were still working that off and since the only thing that happened between was a trip to Walgreens and sleeping....dinner seemed absurd. My dad went off to grab his wine at Total Wine and ended up grabbing some of those grab & go meals from Publix next door. Suddenly the tiny microwave in our room didn’t seem so useless. The chicken parm was fairly decent....at least for something that you nuke in the microwave. While I’m slightly bummed that we didn’t get to check out La Bamba, I can’t complain too much since we are about to face an onslaught of food in about T-minus 12 hours. Also, we all honestly needed that recovery time from traveling on such a lack of sleep. It was rough.

Day -1 continued: so the plane door issue was fixed as stated above and we ended up leaving closer to 7:30am than 6:05a though we made up some time in the air. Overall our flight landed about an hour later than the original time. I’m continuing my theme of looking on the positive side and liked that it got us into Ft Lauderdale at a more reasonable time to check with the hotel (Holiday Inn Express on 17th Street) on if a room is possibly ready. At this point it was 11am instead of 10 and while our room wasn’t available yet, we were able to bring our bags back to a secured room to store them until it was. It wasn’t the most glamorous storage room, but it did the job. The front desk told us to check back around noon or one so we set off in search of food. My mom saw on google maps that there was a deli across the street that caught her eye which we eventually tracked down. It’s called NY Marina Deli and everything we got was so delicious. Very generous portions and my dad was obsessed with the potato salad that came with his sandwich. I got the bacon and cheese omelet which had probably the best ratio of eggs to filling I’ve ever had in an omelet. Packed, but not overwhelmed, with cheese and bacon in every bite and I’m not ashamed to say that taking a picture never even occurred to me because I was too busy inhaling it. I did snag a menu of theirs on the way out so I could take pictures of that though! I heartily recommend them for breakfast or lunch if you are in the area. They are tucked away behind the Panera in that shopping center. After our self assembled brunch there, we popped back to the hotel to see if the room was free since it was about 12:15. No such luck, but they told us to give them about 45 mins. Not a problem as we also had been wanting to make a Walgreens run a couple of doors down so that’s a perfect way to spend the time. By the time we finished wandering around there finding last minute items to buy, our room was ready! This was about 1pm which is two hours earlier than their stated check-in time. I was very happy that they allowed people to check in as their rooms were available since none of us got a reasonable amount of sleep last night. I’m personally running on somewhere between 1-2.5 hours of sleep. It’s all a bit hazy. I think our plans for the rest of the day are to laze about and recuperate so that we will be well rested and raring to go tomm for our sailing. I’m also pushing for dinner at La Bamba since it’s basically a RCB tradition at this point. I’ll update later on what we decide to do for food but I will leave you now with some pictures of our hotel room. This was taken about 2 minutes after entering the room. As you can see, some of us simply flopped on the bed immediately.

So as we near an hour sitting on the tarmac in our flight down to FLL while they try to fix some door issue, my parents both turned to me and said “I guess this is why you fly down the day before”. YES. YES IT IS! I’m very thankful right now that we have a nonstop flight pretty early in the day so we don’t have the stress of missing a connecting flight or anything. So I’m taking this delay in stride and just watching A Simple Favor for free through the Southwest app. CRUISE IS SO SOON!! Edit: Yaaaaay supposedly they fixed the door and we will be taking off any minute now. Just over an hour delay. Not too bad all things considered. The whole plane applauded the mechanic who fixed our door. He’s my favorite person of the day.

Ohhhh I have almost that exact itinerary (minus Bridgetown) in Jan 2021. I hope you'll consider live-blogging this one as well!

That's the assumption I have been going with. Just wanted to make sure it wasn't another timed part of the tour ("ok we leave in an hour")

Maybe you can answer this question for me because my family is currently debating it. I have read that you can choose to be dropped off at this beach or by some shopping near the port. If you go with the beach drop off, are you responsible for getting yourself back to port?

Nope, if you turn down the burner, it will allow the air in the balloon to cool and for the balloon to descend. Science of hot air balloons