The Cruise Junkie

Have a great cruise everyone!!

Happy Sailing to all those cruising this month!
And to me, finally out of dry dock!  Woohoo!
March 2020
1 - Larry Muster (Explorer)
1-  Guy Gadwa (Liberty)
8 - YOLO (Anthem)
8 - Ogilthorpe (Oasis)
8 - kadmgs (Liberty)
13 - amyrferg75 (Mariner)
14 - dochedges (Radiance of the Seas)
14 - CowboyMedic (Adventure)
14 - WesKinetic (Majesty)
14 - HAK1906 (Symphony)
15 - Lovetocruise2002 (Oasis)
15 - Ogilthorpe (Oasis)
15 - WannaCruise (Anthem)
15 - shaydav19 (Anthem)
21 - mom2mybugs (Rhapsody)
21 - tigergal31 (Brilliance)
21 - Mrs_Collins (Brilliance)
22 - BakedAlaska (Oasis)
22 - cbridge (Oasis)
22 - tmp916 (Anthem)
22 - BrianB (Anthem)
22 - Srp431 (Freedom)
23 - jayde43 (Ovation of the Seas)
26 - Dimension (Brilliance)
28 - F1guynz (Voyager)
29 - coneyraven (Freedom of the Seas)
29 - CaseytheGR (Freedom of the Seas)

Well I will not be joining the Oasis today and will have to wait a week for my three weeks on her.  I have nothing to be disappointed of as I am lucky enough to have this chance to be on a ship this long.  

A nice photo of Ovation and Spectrum together in Sydney harbour yesterday before Spectrum left for her first complementary cruise.
Photo Credit: royalcaribbean_aunz

Day 3: Cozumel
Katarina (our 1 year old) kept us up late last night, so we decided to skip room service breakfast and planned on sleeping in this morning.  Unfortunately, that did not happen.  Around 8:30am, the loudest drilling sound could be heard inside our stateroom and all throughout our hallway.  It woke all of us up and led to very irritable babies today.  Since he was already awake, Steven decided to go for a run.  On his way out, without prompting, the room attendant profusely apologized for the noise stating that she had already called the manager multiple times.  The concierge also apologized and gifted us with Izumi dinner for Steven and me tomorrow.  He offered for the full family, but a date night without the kiddos is too enticing for us to turn down.  
After getting the kid's ready, we had breakfast in the Windjammer.  The ship docked in downtown Cozumel which was new for us, so we decided to get off the ship.  We shopped around for about an hour before heading back.  Maybe it's just the novelty of it, but I definitely preferred downtown Cozumel to where we usually dock.  After Windjammer lunch, we took the kids to the arcade,  played a little shuffleboard, and hit the pool.  The water slide is really slow, but the kids still enjoyed it.  We ordered main dining room to our room, and it was by far our least favorite meal.  Overall, it was dry and lacked flavor.  The rest of the meals from the MDR have been quite good, so this was a little disappointing. 
After dropping the kids off at the nursery and AO, we went to the concierge lounge for a drink and probably the fifth latte of the day.  The bartender in the concierge lounge, Gerome, is incredibly nice and always happy to help.  We hit the casino for a few minutes.  We are incredibly cheap when it comes to the casino and put $10 into the video blackjack machine and were planning on betting $1 until it ran out.  We accidentally bet $5 and won then accidentally bet $10 and won again.  We felt like high rollers cashing out our $25.  We picked up the kids and now that the babies are asleep, so we are going to enjoy a few minutes on the balcony before we call it a night.

Day 2:  We woke up right before 10am just in time to have breakfast delivered.  After breakfast, we went to the 2 for $20 t-shirt sale.  I thought I pretty much had every shirt Royal offers, but to my surprise, I found a few new shirts.  We spent some time in the arcade and grabbed Windjammer for lunch.  I am a Starbucks addict, so I decided to try a latte from the espresso machine in the concierge lounge, and while it was definitely not Starbucks, but it was actually pretty good.  In fact, I went back later for another one.  We had hoped to take the kids to the pool today, but it was still too cool for us to want to swim, so we went to the arcade instead.  The two older kids went to Adventure Ocean, while we did free play in the nursery with the babies.  We had dinner in our suite.  At which time, we realized how much of a drama queen our 7 year old is.  She was eating on the balcony, when our son decided to do the same.  She came back inside complaining that she needed her peace and quite and that she wants to enjoy relaxing to the sound of the waves in solitude. Talk about high maintenance!  We dropped the babies off at the nursery and the kids at Adventure Ocean at 7pm and went to the concierge lounge.  It was a lot less stuffy in there today, and the staff was very friendly as always.  We also went to Next Cruise to inquire about a 7 day on Rhapsody.  We have yet to go to Belize and have been wanting to check that block on our travel list.  There was a pretty good deal on the Oceanview Suite (no balcony), but I was really surprised when he told us the next cruise OBC would only be $100.  Although it is considered in the grand suite or above category for suite perks, it only gets the same next cruise credit of $100 that a balcony gets rather than the $300 that grand suite and above gets.  He said this also applies to the Panoramic Oceanview Suites.  If anyone else has booked either of these categories through next cruise, I would love to hear if you got the balcony/junior suite OBC or the grand suite OBC.  We picked up the kids and went to the Windjammer for snacks.  We have ate way too much and are telling ourselves that tomorrow we are going to eat way less, but I feel like that is probably not going to be the case.

Day 5 - Puerto Rico
Despite the advice that I've heard forever, near and far, aIbout not booking an excursion in PR and just enjoying the fort and Old San Juan, I bucked the system.  Mr. SpeedNoodles wasn't particularly interested in even getting off the ship when we first started planning, UNTIL....
One day while while going through the excursions in the cruise planner for the 100th time I ran across an ATV tour. I know, I know, we did one in St. Maarten.  But this one....this one was a little more special.  Why was it special?  Well, let me tell you.
The ATV tour was at a place called Campo Rico.  At Campo Rico they do ATV tours, zip lining, archery lessons (huh?) and horseback riding. The camp is a small part of a very large ranch that has belonged to one family for at least 3 generations.  And they breed a very special type of horse.  The Paso Fino horse.  The Paso Fino is a very beautiful, sweet-tempered, gaited horse (meaning that they have a very comfortable way of moving - no jarring movements or trotting).  Some consider (including yours truly) consider them the Cadillac of horses. I bought my Paso Fino mare in 2004, when she was 3 years old.  For those who are too lazy to do the math, she will be 29 years old this May, and she's still going strong.  Her dam and maternal grandmother thrived to over 40 years old.  And I had an opportunity to go to "the homeland"!  My mare's maternal great grand dam and grand sire were directly imported from Puerto Rico in the 1970s. (Enough boring horse trivia for ya yet?  Zzzzzzzzz #notcruiserelated).
So, why not go there and ride Paso Finos, you may ask (and I have been asked).  Well, while Mr. SpeedNoodles would have done that with me to make me happy, he doesn't like riding horses (basically he can't turn it off with a key, and that doesn't please him). This seemed like an awesome compromise.  ATVs for him, and horses for me.  Win win.
They'd had a lot of rain that week and it was quite a mudding event.  I'll share some pics with captions below, but there's not a whole lot to say about it, really.  The weather was great (high 70s, overcast so not sweaty hot, and just windy enough to keep away bugs without being annoying).  I got it at a great deal of $104pp - one of those deals that I snagged totally randomly in between Cruise Planner sales and a price that never went below $140 after (I checked. Daily.).
I couldn't really take pics while driving the ATV - the mud in some places was at least a foot deep and stopping meant getting stuck #embarrassing 






Visiting the horse barn:


Mare with foal in the pasture:

They had a small aviary and I made an absolute fool of myself dancing with this gorgeous Salmon Crested Cockatoo.  

We were almost ready to get on the bus when I spotted this adorable Puerto Rican Crested Anole

<b
 
Obligatory pretty pigeon pic from Old San Juan:

After we got back to the ship and washed a metric ton of mud off of us we headed down to Playmakers for some snacks. Holy crap, those nachos are big! We really liked the wings, too.  Oh, and Newcastle on tap is a win.


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Malcom at the Copper and Kettle made a beautiful Chocolate Martini for me:


Various desserts from the Windjammer (none of which we ate - for your entertainment only):

Yes! I just tried to book one but it was sold out on my sailing. Go to your cruise planner for the sailing and the COCO Cay area, you will see them listed there with the price. If they are not available it will be reflected with a red "sold out" notation. First time on Mariner this August, I apologize I can't answer that app question. Look today as for me anyway they are running a "leap sale" you can always re-price if the price goes lower. Enjoy!
* we saw them on our November 2019 sailing they were super bright!!
** You can see them in @Jaymac Radio video, it's a great representation, very nice Jaymac, thanks so much!

If you read the original article (http://www.tribune242.com/news/2020/feb/27/royal-caribbeans-pi-land-deals-revealed/), it sounds like Royal is buying up pretty much everything west of the Yoga Retreat (https://goo.gl/maps/o25HT4S8Gf4meN4f7).  They are now trying to get access to the undeveloped government land between the last of the houses and the light house.  When I was in Nassau in June, I thought that it was weird that a lot of the properties looked run down and abandoned.  At the time I just thought it was just hurricane damage but it might have just been that Royal had bought them and were just letting them rot until they could tear them down.

"I'm spending money on camera things, not things I can get at the dollar store but let's go shopping!" ???
Great videos!

Great stuff, Tyler!

Here are some videos I took from my cruise to perfect day. I hope you enjoy both of them!
Here is the zip line video. 
 
 

By learning from these great people I just snagged a great deal!!!
I already did final payment on our May 2020 Western Med cruise but still was checking prices and saw they had dropped.
So I called, all RC could say is no.
I got the best RC C & A rep, his name is Kenu.
I went from a family interior to a GYT Suite (Some people here are a bad influence and YOLO) 
Yes, I paid the difference but since I listen to the wonderful people on this blog ( see above) I booked as soon as it opened so it was at a great price to start with.
The price difference was $700 per stateroom (I know, it was a crazy good price, to me at least)
So now we can try out a suite and see if it's worth they extra cost.
Of course my husband is worried, he thinks once I try a suite I will never want to go back to a OV balcony (our typical room)
Plus again taking the advice from here, I got two staterooms for us four (why we were in two family interior staterooms instead of a OV balcony)
So our daughter and her boyfriend are also in a GYT Suite.
I just had to share, I'm super excited.  I can't wait to see where we land in terms of suites ( totally fine with a JR suite)
Plus we get double C & A points!!

Last night we celebrated my FIL’s birthday with Izumi Hibachi and it was fantastic. Food was great, and Smitha had decorated the table with Happy Birthday confetti and had a cake for us after dinner in the restaurant, which was great. 
 
After dinner was back to the room and watching the Aqua80 show for the third or fourth time. 
 
Today we are in Cozumel. 
 
 

Here goes attempt two at posting this.  I'm not sure what happened, but everything I typed just disappeared.  This will probably be an abridged version of our day since I'm too tired to type it all out again.  Today, started out hectic, but it ended up working out and was a good day.  When we went to check out of the hotel this morning, Steven couldn't find his wallet.  After frantically searching for it for 40 minutes, we realized my wallet was missing too.  At that point, we started questioning if we had left them in the car and if so, did we lock the car.  After an hour of panicking and thinking we were going to miss the cruise since we didn't have IDs, we remembered the secret pocket on our carry-on backpack where our wallets just happened to be hiding.  Crisis averted.  We parked at port and made it onto the ship in no time.  After exploring the ship a bit, we opted to bring Windjammer and Park Cafe to our room for lunch.  We unpacked until muster, and then took the kids to the rock wall and arcade.  We stopped in the concierge lounge for sodas, and while some of the guests seemed nice, there was quite a bit of stuffy people.  One of whom was very rude to the concierge and bartender.  The concierge, Amit, seemed very friendly and attentive.  We had main dining room delivered to our room for dinner, and it was still warm when it arrived.  The kids went to Adventure Ocean and the nursery, while Steven and I went to the Windjammer and the casino.  We stopped at the shops to pick up a ship model, since we hadn't started collecting them yet last time we were on Brilliance.   We had planned on seeing the comedian, but we were tired and decided to pick up the babies and go back to the room.  We had already promised Christian that he could stay late for gaga ball, so we gave him an extra hour in Adventure Ocean.  We are about to place our breakfast order and call it a night.  
Final thoughts: This time on Brilliance is much more enjoyable than last time.  We are really enjoying ourselves and are glad we still have 3 more full days.  Although, we were a little hesitant about 6 of us in a one bedroom grand suite, I'm happy to say, it is working out quite well.  I will post a few pictures of how perfectly the pack and plays fit beside the bed.  Royal uses the travel pack and plays so they are smaller than normal ones.  The balcony is narrow, but that is expected with Radiance class.  We realized how spoiled our kids are when our son complained about how tiny the room and balcony are.  To be fair though, as long as he has arcade and gaga ball, he's happy no matter what room we are in.  As for us, we are just happy to be cruising.

It looks pretty small. IMO
 

One thing I forgot to mention that we’ve found interesting is that the AO staff is responsible for monitoring Splashaway Bay. There is not any standing water, so no drowning risk. We just thought it interesting from a profit center point of view that it’s a “pool” but not under lifeguard purview. 
 
We have also noticed more uniformed security than on any other sailing we’ve done. 

So far today has been pretty lazy. Just been loafing around the ship. Breakfast was in the room, then V was off to AO and Abby and I just wandered. Stopped in for trivia in the schooner. Watched some woman who was double-fisting ice creams cones berate a bar manager on the pool deck for making people stand in line at one ice cream machine when there were four on the deck. I can’t understand how you can get that angry on a cruise ship. 
 
Lunch was in Johnny Rockets and the. Some games on the boardwalk before it was up to the escape room. 
 
I live escape rooms, and this one was very fun. We made it with 17 minutes left and got our patches. I would do this one again even and make sure I focused on different puzzles. 
 
We came back to the room and had cold food and melted drinks. Seems silly since we were obviously in the escape room. Oh well, I can ice down my tequila shot. 
 
Talking with Smitha before the escape room and she confirmed that next week she has one ATS, one UPS Deck 14 forward, and two on deck 17. That just seems like too much running. I’d think they would split that up much better. 
 
Tonight is Izumi Hibachi for FIL’s birthday. 
 
And @Lovetocruise2002, not sure whose hands these are on your window. ?
 

As I write this I’m sitting on my balcony watching Aqua80 again. #poorme
I really want to know what shoes they were so I can buy them as water shoes for the beach. 
 
we got off the ship for about an hour today and walked around the port, and then we did my favorite thing to do in Falmouth or Nassau: enjoy the pool on a much more empty ship. My MIL definitely took advantage of the $18 DX today. 
 
Around 3 pm it was back to the room for snacks. Chips and Guacamole from El Loco Fresh, and more tequila!  Smitha definitely read the survey and I get at least one tequila shot in the room every day, plus captain and Diet Coke for Abby, milkshake for Virginia, and then one or two random drinks. Today was a Kraken Colada and a Sexy Ocean. It was nice watching @Matt periscope while taking a shot and eating guacamole. 
 
Dinner in PortSide was pretty good. God Bless actual brewed iced tea!  Between the 4 of us we got pretty much everything except the brisket and turkey leg. We will have to get those for lunch. the chicken wings and burnt ends were good. While not “traditional” burnt ends, they were very good. Sliced turkey and sausage link were dry. Mac and cheese was just ok. BBQ beans were phenomenal. Cornbread was also pretty good. Skip the brookie and get the Banana Dream. It’s amazing. 
 
flavor wise, Portside was very good.  I consider myself a barbecue connoisseur, living in STL and having lived in Memphis for 4 years, and it’s serviceable. As mentioned, some was dry, but flavors were all good. I wish there was a better system for paying and getting your order. It took some time. I think it would be a fine replacement for another restaurant if you have the UDP and are trying to cut down on food coma. They offer takeout, and it or Playmakers are my choice for balcony snacks and food. 
 
I also think Portside and Playmakers are the two best value props if you don’t have a dining package. I am in love with the buffalo chicken crunch rolls at playmakers. And we had the Campfire Cookie in the room tonight. You should get one. 

We only saw Smitha once today  We didn’t need her to get off the ship today since we didn’t have an excursion  She stopped by the room around 5 just to check in on us and told us she probably wouldn’t be seeing us at dinner since we were up on 15 and she had her other families, and that we were planning on eating at an in between time, which we understood.  She also had us down to go to the adult comedy tonight, but we had told her to cancel that so we could watch Aqua80 again as it was rescheduled from Day 2.  

So far the Aqua80 show has been packed every time.
Tomorrow is a sea day as we steam to Cozumel. We will probably try to hit up some trivia and we are doing the escape room in the afternoon. 

Labadee was super relaxing as always.  Last night was dinner was in Giovannis, and Star Class Food Coma is starting to set it.  It was tough to get through all of the food.  We had another "well-done" steak sighting with my MIL.  Can't take them anywhere.  
The carpaccio and the mozzarella di buffalo tasted quite good.  Dinner tonight took almost 2 hours, so there was a lot of waiting in between courses.  I also really wanted lemon sorbet, and they didn't have any.  

 


 

 
After dinner we went back up to Adventure Ocean to get Virginia and head to the Ice Show.  Smitha met us with our seats, drinks, and popcorn.  We were sitting in the first row on the side, which was uncomfortably close, but was with a purpose.  Smitha brought Virginia a tiara, and for those that have not seen the Frozen in Time show before, it's the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales on ice.  During "The Ugly Duckling", Virginia was one of the girls in the swan on the ice, and she absolutely loved it.  She kept saying she was so nervous, but she did great.  Genie moment made!

 
Today is Falmouth, so we will probably just walk around in port for a bit then come back on the ship and hit the pool.  Tonight, dinner is in Portside BBQ so I can't wait.  

As long as they are serving tequila, it's all good!

Day 4 - St. Maarten
Our first port day has arrived  Neither of us have ever been to St. Maarten, or anywhere in the actual Caribbean.  We had a quick breakfast in the Windjammer, Mr. SpeedNoodles grabbed a coffee, and soon the ship was cleared for people to begin their day!
We had a full-island ATV tour booked with Splash in the Sun Tours (3rd party), a tour that was recommended by Sharon and Jamie over at the "Sharon At Sea" YouTube channel.  Having never been there, we thought it would be a great way to see a large portion of the island.
We were supposed to meet the tour guides at 9:00 outside the main port gates, but the ship wasn't cleared until 9:15.  I'd emailed the tour the night before to warn them. When we got there we were greeted by Taz.  He told us that the rest of the group had already left, but we'd be going off with him.  Hey!!! Private tour! Sounded good to us!
Mr Speednoodles has driven all sorts of off-road vehicles, but I've never driven anything more than a golf cart while working at the zoo.  So when Taz explained how the machines worked, he pretty much just said to me "It's you I'm worried about."  Fair enough, Taz.

Backpack strapped onto the front of the machine, helmet in place on top of the head, we headed out - right onto the streets of Philipsburg.  And I do mean right out onto the streets.  Cars EVERYWHERE.  Full-speed traffic, roundabouts, you name it.  We went high into the hills, through tiny neighborhoods, on busy streets - everywhere.  Our first stop was Maho Beach.
We parked the ATVs and were told we'd have 20 minutes on the beach.  We headed out to the beach, found a little sliver of wall to sit on, and Mr SpeedNoodles jumped in the water.  And was nearly pulled into the ocean from the strong undertow.  He came back up to  inform me that I would not be getting into the water there.  Some may find this overprotective, but I was once nearly drown in a wave pool in the Wisconsin Dells, so I pretty much trust his judgement #itwasntpretty.  Two small planes came in while we were there, and both times I was too slow to catch any photographs.  Meh, I can always go onto YouTube and watch others videos if I want.  20 minutes went fast, and we headed back to board our ATVs to move on. 



We then eventually ended up at a nice, quiet place on a cliff overlooking a very pretty, quietish cove.  Taz again said we had 20 minutes.  We walked down what I can only describe as the stairs to hell - they were wildly dangerous.  We survived though, and it was quite pretty down there, despite the few nude sunbathers who I'm sure were wondering what the hell we were doing there.  The waves were again really strong - too strong for either of us to venture in too deep.  We were still on the Atlantic side of the island.


We wandered our way into the French side of the island and made a stop at a large, open air craft-type market. I wish I could tell you where we were, but I had no idea of what direction we were headed at any particular time, and Taz had a fairly strong accent, so even when he told us we didn't really understand.
We headed out to Friars' Bay, and had another 20 minutes to dip our toes in the water.  The water was much calmer.  As is typical me, I was overly obsessed with the wildlife, and spent the entire time watching a clan of pelicans on a rock who would take off, circle in the air, and then dive straight down into the water after fish.  That was my highlight of the beach.  The beach was nice too #butpelicans.




We stopped for lunch at an out-of-the-way place (again, I didn't get the name of it - it was on the French side, I may have to dig through Sharon's videos to get it).  There was nobody there except the owners, who I assume, possibly incorrectly, were husband and wife.  There was no menu.  He just read off what proteins he thought she had back in the kitchen.  I picked the snapper and Mr SpeedNoodles picked ribs.  What showed up was nothing short of fantastic.  I'm not sure I had better food anywhere in Miami or on the ship. 
 


After lunch, we rode off to Orient Beach (no photography allowed).  We walked around a little bit, but the water was far too full of sea grass to bother going in.  We were getting pretty tired from riding, and from the 8 kilos of sand in our water shoes, so we didn't spend the entire 20 minutes there.
We had to skip going to the highest point on the island, where you can look at both the Dutch and French side at once, due to roads being closed off for Mardis Gras.  It happens, we were fine with it.
With that, we boogied on back to the ATV shop (nearly running over a little herd of little goats half on the road/half on the hill in a little residential neighborhood).  From what we can tell there are zero traffic laws anywhere on the island.  Anything can be driven on the roads, and whatever speed, while looking at any sort of device you like, and everyone's ok with it.
We got back to the ship in plenty of time, showered up and spent some time (read: probably too long) at the Copper & Kettle Pub with Malcom mixing up a variety of special concoctions for us.
We had dinner at Hooked, and then were just too exhausted to wait up until our 1977 reservations at 10:45 (who the hell made those? Oh yeah, me.)
Tomorrow.....Puerto Rico!!

(Typical dude, won't release his death grip on the fracking remote!!)
 
 

Day 3 - Another Sea Day!!! (also, OMG - Dullest. Blog. Ever.)
I love sea days.  The are so relaxing.  I woke up before the DH, caught a quick breakfast at El Loco Fresh, and hit the Solarium to enjoy a quiet soak in one of the hot tubs.  Unfortunately the Solarium was already full of people.  I did find an unoccupied hot tub on the port side of the main pool, though, so I enjoyed that for a little while. After about an hour the sun finally woke up Mr SpeedNoodles, so I followed him into the WindJammer for his breakfast.  We typically avoid the Jammer, but we were pleased with the variety of breakfast offerings, and more impressed that we were able to find a place to sit. For the first time it was calm enough (although the ship was still rocking and it seemed almost as windy) for the staff to open up deck 16 and the water slides.  I took one turn down the racing one (DH doesn't like heights) but I just left it at that.  
We then just wandered around aimlessly for a while, then headed back to our stateroom to read on our balcony in peace and quiet, until lunch rolled around.  I swear that we're mostly killing time between meals #unlimiteddiningpackagewoes

We had lunch at Jamie's - our first time there.  I'm not a big lover of Italian food, but #diningpackage. We had a very friendly waiter, Victor, who brought us more food than we ordered, and refilled every drink, without us requesting it.  I hadn't planned on eating OR drinking that much, but it is what it is.  It was good.  It may have been great, but not having a great love of Italian food, I'm not much of a judge. We had the Crispy Squid, the truffle ball things (I can't remember the name of them - I personally thought they were bland). DH had the eggplant parmesean, I had the Caeser Salad. Victor overheard us talking about the Truffle Tagliatelle and insisted on bringing it to us, despite our desperate pleas to not do so.








At 1:30 we met in the MDR for our All Access Tour.  This was totally worth the money. It was fascinating to see the various parts of this massive ship that is usually out of view.  We went first to the galley, then to the Engine Control Room.  We saw the provisions coolers/freezers, and then the laundry, before we headed up to the Bridge. There were a few areas where we had to present our SeaPass card to enter and leave - they keep VERY close tabs on anyone who's out of a public area!  Our guide was a very nice woman from Shore Excursions - unfortunately I cannot remember her name.  She was from Russia, and there were a few things that she either couldn't find the English words for, and/or I couldn't understand her, but overall the communication was very good.  Unlike some bloggers (and I love you guys (guy?) for doing so) I have no memory for facts and wouldn't be able to really relay any of the various things they told us about the areas.  Sorry ?
Galley





Engine Control Room



Provisions (cooler/freezer)


Laundry






Ecolab is a company that started in St Paul, MN in the 1920s.  It was fun seeing, what we consider to be a home-town company name, way out at sea.

Giant washing machine for sheets/towels:

I-95:
:
Bridge



I'm pretty sure we literally did almost nothing of note until dinner, which was, again, at Jamie's.  This time we devoured a meat plank - DH had the lamb and I had the bolognase.  I was still full from lunch, and thought everything was good, but pretty much nothinged it.

We went to bed early so we could be ready for our excursion in St Maarten the next day!

 
 

Day 2 - at Sea
Neither of these are going to be super exciting reports.  On Sunday we spent the day exploring the ship, drinking and eating.  Mr SpeedNoodles became more and more enamored with the Oasis Class ship.
This is our first cruise as Platinum members, so we were invited to our first Top Tier Event. It was held in the AquaTheatre, and champagne and mimosas (and some non-alcoholic something or other #whocares were provided.  While I don't think they said (or I didn't catch) how many new or Gold Members were on board, here's the rest of the breakdown:
Platinum 424
Emerald 185
Diamond 325
Diamond Plus 100
Pinnacle 14
One of the things that I love about Royal Caribbean ships is the artwork that is EVERYWHERE.  So far this is my favorite piece.  I took a photo of the entire thing, but then photos of individual elements that I thought were worth remembering. (Newsflash, they are wild animals):








It was still a very windy day, and the upper deck was, again, closed off.  People on the Feb 22 Symphony Facebook page continued to lament over the movement of the ship (i.e I thought we'd feel no movement on a ship of this size .... this is the roughest sailing we've ever had).  We were unfazed.  While Mr. SpeedNoodles uses an EmeTerm band (electronic anti-nausea band), I have zero issues with nausea on a moving ship. While I"m not a big fan of wind itself (so annoying), I don't mind the movement of the ship. 
In Sept 2004 we were on Jewel of the Seas on a 10-night round-trip, Boston to Quebec saling, and we were caught in both a Noreaster and the tail end of Hurricane Ivan.  Over about 24 hours we had consistent swells of 30-35 feet.  Everything was closed down with the exception of the casino bars. We had to skip our stop at Sydney, Nova Scotia.  This was prior to drink package, and they offered free champagne and mimosas to anyone who wasn't stuck, nauseated, in their cabins and could make it down there.  I was having no issues, and Mr. SpeedNoodles had taken a sufficient amount of Dramamine (Pre-Emeterm) that we joined in.  With, quite literally, 4 other people.  It was still rocking enough that we had to hang onto our drinks and they only took enough out of the cabinets to make the drinks, and then put it all away.  That night I had a difficult time sleeping due to the rocking of the ship.  I'd look out our balcony, and the sea would rise up to meet us with each back and forth.  It looked like the ship was going to tip into the sea.  We survived, and ended up spending two days in Quebec City (instead of one), and that was totally worth it.
But I completely digress from this cruise.  Lunch was at Hooked.  We ordered (likely too many) oyster shooters, oysters, and lobster rolls.  We approved of each course.  Our favorite may have been the Coconut Creme Pie, though - tasty and not overly sweet).



We had dinner reservations at 150 Central Park at 6:15 with the plan to see Hiro in the AquaTheatre at 8:30.   For the 2nd night in a row, Hiro was cancelled.  We had dinner at 150 Central Park.  We had a scallop appetizer ( Smallest scallops ever - about the size found in the Trader Joe's frozen triple seafood blend - some of you know what I'm talking about).  I had the Lobster Thermidor (really good) and Mr. SpeedNoodles had the short ribs (he said it was good, but not as good as in Wonderland).


 
In lieu of Hiro we decided to go to the Love & Marriage Show (always a favorite of ours, since we were "contestants" on stage in 2004 on Jewel and will never forget being recognized ALL OVER THE SHIP for the remainder of the cruise, due to ONE stupid question #askmeaboutitonagroupcruise).


A little friend awaited us upon our arrival back to our stateroom:

 

One day until we board!  We left about two hours ago and are happily snacking on Starbucks and Chick-fil-a.  GPS says we have another 9 hours to go, but with four kids and traffic, I'm guessing it will be closer to 11 hours.  It seems we are going to have to rethink what we are wearing tomorrow since we packed shorts and swimsuits.  The high in Tampa tomorrow is 59 and the low is 42.