MichelleB1234

Aft of the ship has the Sunset Bar with those aft views.

Holy tuna sandwiches @asquared17 !

Paging @Sweety.

Hang out in Eden during the day and you can catch some aerialist rehearsals.

There also Eden Cafe which was open for lunch for a whole hour and a half today.
Very reminiscent of Cafe 270.
Menu

I had the tuna pita and yes, those are potato chips 😱

It's peaceful and serene.


And those wake views 🤩

 

After the show they had Silent Disco going at the martini bar. It appears this is a big thing and quite popular on Celebrity. I've never seen it this lively on any Royal ships. They also have the fancier  3-channel headphone setups. 

We did go to the show called Crystallize. It was a singer, dancer, aerialist show in the main theater. The lineup to enter the theater started 30 minutes before the show. The dedicated seating for Retreat guests is on the upper level middle balcony area. It was a completely full show and they don't do reservations so be sure to line up to guarantee you get a seat.

Standard Port Everglades sailaway..


 
Nice touch of modern luxury 😂

Boarding day lunch was at Le Grand Bistro. This is a specialty restaurant and normal price is $30 for lunch.


I had this drink called L'Apertif which the menu says Rose, Bonal, Aperol, and Champagne.  It was drinkable but not on the must order again list.

Our server called this brown bread. It was either that or sourdough. I usually prefer to drink my carbs but it was there so I ate it anyways.

I had the Moules-Frites..mussels and fries. This was tasty.

Then I had the Frisee Lardon Salad. It's crispy pork belly (crispy translates to chewy en français), pickled shallots, parmesan and poached egg. It's always a gamble with salads that have fancy names. I'm not into bitter lettuces and they were all bitter. Try to eat healthy and see what happen..won't make that mistake again 😂
My mother ordered a burger and it had the whitest beef I've ever seen. It looked and tasted like a turkey burger but when we asked it was a whole thing where every staff member up to the chef had to come reassure us it was 100% beef.
 
We didn't really care, I just wanted to make sure someone wasn't missing their turkey burger 😂

Going back to what I said about supply issues, my brother ordered a drink and they didn't have one of the ingredients so couldn't make it. Then he tried ordering the sea bass on the menu and they didn't have that either.
At the end of the meal they asked us if we wanted any of the bakery items from the front of the restaurant.

I don't know if the dining package part of our room entitles us to walk up and order any of these at any time for no charge.
We got a box full of course, even though they're just going to go stale before we even look at them again.

Modern ship, so they went all out with outlets everywhere.

This box has the switch for the bedroom.vanity mirror.

And hides more plugs.

The bathroom is spacious. Someone could sleep in the tub. We never use it, so it's up for grabs @OCSC Mike. 

Around the corner from the tub is a huge shower.

There's a handheld sprayer and an overhead ceiling shower. If the ship is rocking I'd be scared to take a shower..at least in the tube showers there's never room to completely fall on the floor.

There are sliding mirrors in the bathroom that you can open up to the bedroom, or close them.

And before someone asks.

I like it better than anything I've used on Royal.

 

The bedroom backs up to the bathroom.

There are sliding doors to separate the bedroom and bathroom from the living room.


The balcony is at the end of the bed so you can lay in bed and enjoy the view.

There are just two chairs and boxes on the balcony..nothing that reclines.

 

The room opens to this, which is pretty stunning.

I do find myself to have modern luxury design tastes which clashes with my interior cabin budget sensibilities. 
The living room seating area reminds me of the renderings I've seen of the Panoramic Suites which we have booked for the inaugural Icon sailing.
There's comfortable dining room seating and underneath the banquet are drawers that give you plenty of storage.

Ignore the beginnings of my mother's stockpile of toiletries to bring home 🙄

Bathroom number 2 is right off the entrance.

Some things to note that I feel heavily factor into our experience onboard:
This is a Thanksgiving sailing so there are tons of families onboard.
This is the first sailing after a transatlantic sailing. There was a Coast Guard inspection that delayed boarding and sail away and also I've found provisioning issues after a transatlantic can be hit or miss. We are seeing interesting items from the European supply and some menu items have been not available.
Suites have a dedicated suite lounge at Terminal 25 (Celebrity's dedicated terminal) at Port Everglades. I guess they aren't used to a crowd in there.and because of the Coast Guard inspection delay it was a bit of a cluster in there. They weren't able to bring snacks off the ship until 11am (normal boarding time) and we didn't make it onboard until almost noon. The earliest arrival time for our sailing was noon, compensating for the Coast Guard inspection, but none of us followed the arrival times obviously.

Peace out land...


Time to get ready for dinner. It's been almost 4 hours since we last ate 😱

For me i can't imagine leaving my money as inheritance when it could be logically or selfishly spent on more cruises for ME.....
Maybe i could leave a small inheritance with stipulations on cruising and say forget planting a tree at a park, instead buy me a bench on each ship in Central Park, table in Coastal kitchen or a bar stool in Schooner bar with name engraved in memory of......whose fondest memories were sailing the seas til the end.

We have spent the afternoon/early evening plane spotting. Port Everglades is fantastic for that. You can see planes coming into Ft. Lauderdale and Miami from this vantage point.

Made it onboard...I have the drink package this cruise. It's been a looong time since I've had it. Usually I just stick to my D+ drinks and casino drinks and that gets me through just fine.
But here's to happy sails

..and happy Black Friday sales that I get to avoid. I will be just hanging out and catching some views.

https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/2023/11/01/royal-caribbean-will-make-specialty-restaurants-reservable-pre-cruise-if-you-have-dining
 
I just never understood why if you bought a dining package like we always get the 3 night dining package that you were at a disadvantage to booking restaurants. This is an awesome change that is way long overdue. It's always a pain to do it on the ship when you first board and if you forget then you might be locked out of times and dates. Can't wait till this is implemented to all ships. 

There's a reason California is so popular for people to visit/live in - the weather (especially in SoCal) is ideal year round! You'll see differing sea creatures with passing seasons, and there's still hurricane season in the Pacific that could affect things in the fall, but overall it's nice any time. Navigator is a wonderful ship too, you won't regret being on there! 

Once back across the river we left the cable car and started exploring the Malecón 2000.  Our first area would be a botanical garden open to the public.







After leaving the Malecón and exploring some city streets on foot we visited the Cocoa Museum.

I didn't take any pictures inside the museum.  It's a nice museum that goes over the history of cocoa in Ecuador.  It is multiple stories with stairs between floors.  Each floor offered something related to the history of cocoa and the financial impact to the city such as the banking system that evolved from it. A chocolate store nearby smelled really great but I resisted the temptation, for now.
Around Guayaquil you will find a number of murals and wall art such as this one that captured my essence as a photographer.

This discoteque was closed by day but features several prominent people from the history of Guayaquil. 

This one is a tribute to the shipbuilding history of the region going back several centuries.

We continue walking around the city streets of Guayaquil with Corina explaining quite a bit of valuable history and information. 
The Church of San Francisco.


Shortly after a car picked us up and drove us back to the hotel.
I'm really glad I booked this tour and the one on one interaction offered by a private tour.

I booked the optional Chocolate Museum and Cable Car tour.  Given it was a private tour I was able to pick the time.
My tour guide would be Corina and she was waiting for me in the hotel lobby when I went down 10 minutes early.
We start with a short walk to the Cable Car station.

Corina explained that many cars are empty due to the high cost of the gondola service compared to other options like city busses.  At $1.40 round trip it may not sound like much but for a typical blue collar worker the $0.60 that the bus charges is easier on the budget even though the bus takes a lot longer especially in traffic.

I found it quite enjoyable, much more so than I think I would in a bus.

A cemetery we pass is watched over by a statue of Jesus Christ on the hill behind it. 


Corina explained a lot about Guayaquil and I enjoyed the full attention and interaction that a private tour offered.  She talked alot about the city, it's beginnings in the 1500s and things like the first modern hospital we passed along the way. 

Soon enough we approached the Guayaquil river.

We passed the Malecón 2000.  She explained that would be included in the sightseeing tour later offered by Silversea and we would also explore parts of it after the cable car ride.

The tallest building in Guayaquil called The Screw.

Once across the river in Duran we didn't venture far from the cable car base as it isn't the best area for tourists.  There was a bathroom available at the cable car station for those that need one. 

We got back on and made the return trip across the river all the while Corina talked about more than I could ever recount in this post.  It was all very informative.

Hotel Oro Verde two night stay is included. 

Waiting to take off from Panama on the way to Guayaquil, seeing the mountains of Panama makes me wonder why the French were set on making the Panama Canal a sea level waterway. 

 

They literally would have had to move mountains.  
 

Smooth flight to Panama.  
It was cloudy coming in but we crossed over from the Atlantic side to the Pacific and did a big loop around.
Flying in to Panama gave me a whole new perspective compared to cruising here.
On the Caribbean side:

Somewhere over the middle of Panama:

We did a big looping flight path to join the pattern of aircraft arriving.  That brought us around on the Pacific side so I could see the Panama Canal and the Bridge of the Americas.

Ships at anchor waiting their turn.



New locks on left, original locks on the right.  Culebra Cut in the distance.


Panama City on the right is pretty close to the locks on the Pacific side.



The Pacific coastal waters are more shallow and you could see the effect of the tide going out.