MO & LO on the go!

Explorer just left a couple hours ago for a chartered cruise.  It was some Ohio Buckeye cancer benefit event.  While we were waiting for the disaster that was disembarkation, they were posting the stuff for this ALL over the place.  5 night cruise with only 1 stop....and that is Cococay.  After this cruise it goes back to normal cruising.  Sounds like a lot of the cruise staff doesn't really have to do much during this charter, especially the singers and dancers.  They were just hanging out for the next few days I guess.

We are now just hanging out in Miami until Tuesday morning......early morning!  We went and checked out downtown Miami and the Bayside Market area.  Pretty neat area!  Tomorrow we are going to try and get to South Beach and check that out.  We are doing some vlogging while we are here to showcase what we see here, as a side note.

I plan to have a recap down the road when I can put all my thoughts together.  One thing both of us have commented on a lot was all the "firsts" that we experienced on this cruise, which is odd since this was our 10th cruise together!!!  So again, tomorrow is hopefully South Beach!  

Sure is nice not being in the MN cold yet but it sure is nice to go home after the cruise.  There's just something about ending a cruise and going home.  That last night aboard kinda just puts you in that "go home" mode.  We much prefer to extend the trip BEFORE we board and then go straight to airport from the ship.  Maybe that's just us but just feels like it should be that way.  This is the first time we have not gone straight home and it all just feels "weird".  

Here is just a picture from the pool deck last night.  It was dead there and it was only 9pm!!!  Everyone must have been packing or eating.

Last night we went to Johnny Rockets for the first time ever on a cruise ship!  We got the milkshakes.  I had caramel and Lisa had Oreo.  Apparently they are included on the refreshment and liquor drink packages!!!  This will be dangerous now that we know that!!!  The server even offered us fries for free but we already should not have been eating the milkshakes so we passed...  I would highly recommend getting a milkshake as a treat at night!  SOOOOO good!

On 2/7/2020 at 7:50 AM, Sweety said:

Following. I lived in Minneapolis for 18 months. Your dogs are beautiful. I am a coward, I let my husband take the dogs to the kennel. The sad eyes are too much for me. I was on Explorer this past holiday season. The ship is beautiful. Please tell Sharita in the Windjammer hello.

She was busy so took it like a paparazzo would...from far away.  

On 2/14/2020 at 7:45 PM, Brobbins246 said:

Please post a pic of you guys all formal'ed up.  Hope it loads right side up!

Sorry had to take a picture of the picture but here is formal night!

Well that was an experience!  We made it to the hotel....thank god!  Getting the luggage and going through customs once we got there was a breeze!  The taxi situation to the hotel was another situation!  People everywhere, drivers not following the directions, and people trying to flag down their own taxis!  Finally got our taxi and made it to the downtown holiday inn.  Room not ready so leaving luggage and going to check the area out for awhile!  
 

That was the longest experience getting off the ship EVER!  They doubled the number of customs people (Atleast that’s what we heard) which sped things up!
 

I’ll be sitting down tonight to get caught up  on stuff here....

Finally off the ship and now waiting in the long line to get luggage!  Apparently they added more customs agents in last 30 minutes to get the ship cleared...more to come

2 minutes ago, Srp431 said:

wow, I've never experiences anything like this in all our cruises. Hopefully, you don't have a early flight

We haven’t experienced this ever either!  It is very strange!  Our fight isn’t until Tuesday so we have plenty of time .  We are hanging out in Miami for a couple days once we get off the ship.

Quick update for getting off the ship...customs and border protection have been overwhelmed apparently so they have stopped people getting off the ship since about 8:00-8:30 this morning.  The ship is still filled with people!  It’s 10:00 and they have only gotten to number 5 for tags.  We are number 21!  Long way to go

On 2/7/2020 at 9:50 AM, Sweety said:

Following. I lived in Minneapolis for 18 months. Your dogs are beautiful. I am a coward, I let my husband take the dogs to the kennel. The sad eyes are too much for me. I was on Explorer this past holiday season. The ship is beautiful. Please tell Sharita in the Windjammer hello.

I found her.  She was in the area blocked off before lunch started.  I went in after they opened it and she was gone.  I saw her another time but didn’t have my phone.  I’ll keep trying.

Oh no!  Last nachos on board until January 2021!  
 

and if anyone has the chance for this pizza it’s called “carnivore”....it is delicious!  They only had it a few days of the 9 nights but when they did you would want to grab a piece!  YUM!

2 hours ago, Srp431 said:

Love the t-shirt sale, one of my favorite things to on the last sea day. I sometime wish they have cheaper sweatshirts or long sleeve t-shirts for sale as well

That would be nice, especially for us snowbirds!  And apparently EVERYONE else on the ship likes the sale too!  The line took 45 minutes to get through!

Today is the last sea day and last full day of the cruise .  Not a whole lot planned today.  We are taking the diamond and above level entertainment tour (which we have never done before) this morning.  Today is also the tshirt sale day so we are hitting that up!  We plan on some mini golf this afternoon too!  

If there is anything anyone wants to see please let us know and we will try to get it posted.  Only a few more cruises for this ship before dry dock (and it needs it)!

10 hours ago, Brobbins246 said:

Please post a pic of you guys all formal'ed up.  Hope it loads right side up!

I’ll see what I can find and how they turned out!

Just wanted to post a funny story.  We were getting the drinks In the diamond lounge pictured a couple posts up and a couple sat down with us and started chatting.  They asked us “if we cruise often” and we all got a chuckle out of that! She realized what she asked and said “oh wait you are in the diamond lounge so you must”!  

Update on the seas...captain just said 12-15 feet and winds are 25-30+ mph.  Highest we’ve had on a cruise in a long time!

Well we finally got time to walk around the ship and take pictures!

Starting with the diamond lounge

This is an outside seating area for the diamond lounge overlooking the basketball court.  It’s awesome they have a special area outside on this ship!

This is what area above over looks and at this moment there was a Zumba class going on there!

Here are some pool deck pictures.  Notice the one side is closed...out suspicion is because we are doing some rocking today.

The arcade

This is a mesmerizing machine that has moving golf balls and just constantly keeps doing stuff.  So much fun to watch

Of course Johnny Rockets

This is the computer area with an opening in the middle looking down to the library

The community board in the library where you can post any meeting or meetup you are looking for.  Looks like a few people were looking for game players

Here where we are going after lunch!  NEXT CRUISE!  Never miss that on a cruise!

And here are several promenade pictures.  Notice the one area has Valentine decorations!

And lastly the casino

This is the floor entering the casino.  Pretty cool 3D

and a quick shot of the rougher seas

Ok that’s it for now but we will have some more a bit later!  Tonight is formal night (as expected on Valentines Day) and lobster night!  My favorite night of the entire cruise for dinner!!!

We are going to go walk around and film some of the ship now.  See y’all soon!

Quick morning post on this First of two sea days.  We went to the windjammer for breakfast and saw this happened sometime last night!

i looked at it and can’t tell what caused it to shatter.  We have never seen that before on a ship!  Good thing dry dock is coming very soon!

EDIT: so apparently we haven’t been very observant!  The broken window happened a few months ago!  We just noticed it this morning for some reason even though we are here everyday!  Hahaha oooppss!

We finally made it to the happy hour in the diamond lounge!  First alcohol drinks on the ship of the cruise....only took 7 days!

So our day in Curacao is ending.  We are relaxing a bit before shower and getting ready for dinner.  Again, today was hato caves and mambo beach.  The caves were neat but it’s really a once and done thing.  I would say of all the things we did on this cruise we both rate it at the bottom (but we did some really great stuff).  
 

I do not know why it keeps uploading us upside down!!!  I tried reloading the image in several times with no luck so...sorry ...you will have to stand on your head to see it right!

After the caves we continued the island tour and ended at Mambo Beach!

This was very nice.  Small little area for swimming and hanging out.  We all got one of the lounge chairs you see!  Nice little 1.5 hour swim and chill out time!  When we were done here we got a continued tour back to the ship.  
 

Once at the ship we dropped our stuff off and walked to the city.  This was VERY nice!  One of the best ports so far in regards to walking distance stuff!

Of course we checked out the floating bridge and even watched it open and close.  Pretty neat to see

Again I don’t understand why all the pictures of us upload upside down!!!!  UGH!

So during our shopping we tried some blue Curacao liquor and chocolate Curacao liquor.  Chocolate wins HANDS DOWN!  We bought both though because the bottle are cool!  Along with a sampler pack of all of the bottles because they just look cool!  Probably won’t really drink all of it, except for the chocolate!  I forgot to take pictures before the ship took them from us.  I’ll take some either at home or when we are in Miami.  
 

So that’s a quick update for now.  Gotta get in the shower for dinner now!  It’s a Royal Caribbean singers and dancers show tonight and then “love and marriage”.  

Ok trying to keep up to date here!  So much going on with port stops!

Today was Aruba and we did the Aruba Trikes!  We got this Idea from this forum!  That was fun and nothing like anything we’ve done before (never driven in a foreign country)!
 

After the trikes we did a little shopping and walking around
but after being in the sun and riding around for several hours we were exhausted and just headed back to the ship.  Of course we went to the “mouth jammer”!  I haven’t posted food pictures but thought I’d post my nachos!  This ship has them for every meal!!!

We just hung out the rest of the day and enjoyed the weather and views from the ship!  Tonight it is going to be -16 with a -35 or more windchill at home so this feels extra awesome!

Just a couple shots from the ship of the island.  Top one was from our seat in the windjammer and the bottom from one of the upper decks.

We went to the dining room tonight, as usual.  Just wanted to comment that it was more than half empty since all aboard was not until 830 (our dinner is 530) so it was very peaceful and quiet.  We actually got to talk with our staff since they weren’t running around trying to keep up.  That was nice!

Tomorrow will be Curacao!  We have a laid back tour of the cave and then mambo beach to chill!  It our earliest all aboard of the cruise (430) so we will be back early!

So far between Bonaire and Aruba our favorite is Bonaire so we will see what Curacao brings tomorrow!

4 minutes ago, Brobbins246 said:

How was the water temp for snorkeling?  I'll be snorkeling there next April, which I assume will be a little warmer than February, but I'm a wimp about anything cooler than luke warm bath water.  Want to be mentally prepared.  

I think its about 80 some degrees!  I jumped right in and had no shock at all.....NOTHING like jumping in the water in Minnesota  !  You will LOVE the water!  Enjoy!  The snorkeling is outstanding (if that's what you're doing)!

Real quick post about the casino.  For those that are part of the Crown and Anchor we all know the free pulls in the casino on their special machine where you really don't win anything other than maybe a T-shirt if you're lucky........

Well they apparently changed the program recently and now you get "cash" to spend on any machine you want!  Since we are diamond level we apparently get $6.  I do not know the other level amounts, sorry.  Well we picked a machine and Lisa sat down to go first.  She ended up winning 58 cents!!!  Then it was my turn.  I sat down and hit the button.  BAM!!!!!  $51!!!!!!  I hit the cash out button and we ran to the cashier to collect!!!  Love this new program!!!  Way better than the 3 free spins on their crappy machine!  The cashier said she has seen someone win as much as $200 off the free spins!  I have a picture of me flashing the cash but not available to post here.  Ill try to get it on here for fun  

Bedtime soon since we have a long day in Aruba tomorrow!  We are in port from 830am to 830pm!  We are doing the trikes so that should be a lot of fun!  

Until tomorrow everyone!  Thanks for following!

Never got to the pictures of the ship since my phone died...oh well there’s still 4.5 more days for that!

So instead I’ll cover today....Bonaire!  

We docked about 9am and were cleared by about 930.  We first had to go to the theater for the start of our excursion.

We did the Bonaire land and sea excursion through Royal Caribbean.  Great experience with small group size!  We had less than 12 people for the entire day!!!  We first went on the “sea” portion so we took a little ride to the sail boat.

Once we were all on the sail boat we went for a ride to our snorkel spot.

The snorkeling was awesome and the water was very clear!  Bonaire is a great place for snorkel and scuba!

After the “sea” time was over we went to a lunch spot where we all were provided with a burger and fries.  Not bad...  

After lunch we then took the “land” portion of the excursion which was a drive around the island in this big Mercedes Benz off road vehicle!  It was open air in the back with a cover for shade.  We drove around and got information on the island and saw LOTS of the island!  We stopped a few times for pictures where I got this..

This was on the slightly more expensive of the excursions but we LOVED the small group size where we could enjoy ourselves!  We hate the snorkeling where everyone is kicking each other in the head because it’s sooooo cramped with people! It was an ALL DAY adventure so not much time to walk around once we were done.

On a “never seen that before” note....as we were walking on the ship standing on the bridge from the pier to the ship where security scans your sea pass card the lady in front of us dropped her card in the water.  You can see those cards WAYYYYYY down if anyone was interested to know!  

gotta get ready for dinner quick...that’s it for now but have more to cover about yesterday still (including the casino winnings )

So today is another sea day.  We are going to go check the ship out now that I feel better!  It's overcast today so hardly any sun  

We will get some pictures of the ship today to share