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Allure 9/29 - 7 Night Eastern Caribbean


mk-ultra

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Trip to the cruise terminal was totally painless.  Jumped in an Uber at 10AM.  15 minute no-traffic trip. 26 minutes total from the W Hotel to my seat in the suites seating area.  No special amenities for any loyalty status or cabin category (unlike Miami and Canaveral).  Boo hoo.  ? Fast and painless process though. ?

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Oh thank god.  This sounds stupid as hell, but I left my wide-brimmed hat in my hotel room.  It’s a ratty, beige, cotton and utterly boring boonie hat.  Worn to shit.  It’s also been on my head for every hike and vacation I’ve taken in the last 30+ years.  If that hat could speak, it could tell some fantastic tales.

Called the W.  They sent someone up to my room, found it on the couch where I’d left it, and security will hold it for me (staying with them again next Sunday at the end of this cruise).

Sorry, hat.  You’ve stuck with me.  This shouldn’t have happened.  Sorry you’re at the hotel instead of on the ship with me.

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56 minutes ago, mk-ultra said:

Cabin is great. Ice bucket is filled.  Plate of cookies and a couple of free bottles of dihydrogen monoxide.  Just got charged $98.15 for the complimentary internet access that comes with a suite. No way am I going anywhere near Guest Services on day one.  I’m no masochist. 
 

 

What type of cabin did you get?  I've been curious.

1 hour ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

We are now seriously considering the W for our Dec stay.  Does it have a Concierge Club and did you visit it ?  We usually stay at the Marriott Biscayne Bay but Dan wants to try the W. I have a  brazillion points I need to use so we might as well try it when it won’t cost us anything !

 

41 minutes ago, Traveler said:

I think most of the W's dose not have any lounge in them , it's a W thing but I might be wrong .

+1.  All the W properties that I have looked at do not have a concierge lounge.  That is why I have been picking Intercontinental lately.  Love their club lounge.

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47 minutes ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

What type of cabin did you get?  I've been curious.

L2 (port side, aft facing) Crown Loft Suite.  I'm on deck 17, and my view down is the putt-putt golf course and (if we were underway), the ocean on the port side.  Right now it's putt-putt and fuel tanks.  The last two times I've been in a CLS were both ocean facing on the starboard side.  Decided to try something different.

Don't ever book a CLS. 

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This is my first sailing out of Port Everglades.   The departure is ridiculously pretty. Sorry I didn’t take more pics, but I was busy admiring the view with a silly grin plastered all over my face.  Tons of locals living in the condos near the channel waving and hanging sheets off of balconies with nice tidings.  Time to go back to the cabin and begin the unpackening.

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Oh man. Casino TVs are all tuned to ESPN for (an?) NFL game today.  I just happened to be sitting in a chair facing a TV.   Nice person next to me asked for my opinion on some football-related minutiae. 

I said, “I don’t usually watch soccer.”  Priceless.  I resisted asking him about sportsball. 

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Dinner tonight was in CK.  I had the escargot as an app, and the lamb loin with marquez meatballs as my entree.  I should have taken notes, but also had some nice Chilean reds that are available by the glass.  It was great.

If you're squeamish about escargot, do yourself a favor and just try it.  It's a vehicle for butter and garlic that you have to sop up with bread.  

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Day 2.  Both today and tomorrow are sea days.

As usual, I woke up early. Popped down to Cafe Promenade for coffee and a pastry.  I was surprised to see Guest Services open and 2 people working the desk at 0530.  Nobody was in line, so I took the opportunity to see if I could straighten out my erroneous Voom charge and figure out where my missing shore excursion ticket for Phillipsburg was.

For the Voom charge, they sent an email off to someone in corporate to see if they could remove it.  My shore excursion was cancelled.  No notification, but I do see that the money was refunded to my credit card.  Off to the Excursion desk later today to book something else.

Weather is very nice, but it was windy AF earlier this morning.  We’re doing ~18 knots directly into a 10-15 knot gusty breeze.  I was down on the pool deck and a lady opened one of the now-famous windows to stick her iPad mini (with a cover opened like a book) out to take a pic of the sunrise.  That worked out just about as well as you might imagine.  Some dolphin is probably playing Angry Birds on it now.

Ate at Windjammer.  Being an early bird has its merits.  One of which is not having to elbow my way to the trough through a crowd.

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1 hour ago, mk-ultra said:

Weather is very nice, but it was windy AF earlier this morning.  We’re doing ~18 knots directly into a 10-15 knot gusty breeze.  I was down on the pool deck and a lady opened one of the now-famous windows to stick her iPad mini (with a cover opened like a book) out to take a pic of the sunrise.  That worked out just about as well as you might imagine.  Some dolphin is probably playing Angry Birds on it now.

Nah, the dolphins know that Tiny Aquarium is where it's at. ?

 

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Just had a Kummelweck sandwich from the Park Cafe for lunch.  I will be having one per day.  Maybe two if nobody is watching.

My big goal today is to remember that I need to be at the spa at 3PM for 75 minutes of massage and 20 minutes of being aggressively up-sold magical detox woo.

It’s one of our two formal nights.  I'll put on my blazer and play dress up over dinner before taking my dashing countenance to the casino to shore up RCI's stock.

[NERD WARNING: NERDY STUFF AHEAD]

I'm already slowing down to "cruise speed."  No need to be anywhere or do anything.  Like, Imma just sit here with a book all day and drink fruity things.

I totally hit the jackpot selecting one of the books for this cruise.  I would have sworn I'd read every Iain M. Banks Culture novel.  Somehow, I'd missed Excession.  I've been incredibly restrained in saving that book for this cruise instead of immediately consuming it in a nerd binge when I got it.  I feel like I found a $100 bill in an old jacket.  W00t!

Iain passed away in 2013, and the Sci-Fi literary world lost an icon.  Humor.  Prose.  Fantastic characters.  All wrapped-up in an astounding universe.  Cheers, Iain.  ?

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Day 3: A good way through our second of 3 sea days today.  Dinner last night was (again) at CK.  You’ll see a lot of that from me if I bother to even comment on it.  I’ve only got one specialty restaurant booked for Thursday night (150 CP).

Dinner at CK for me was cream of artichoke soup, with wild mushrooms, arugula and croutons.  Very, very good.  Every soup I’ve had on an RCI ship has ranged from good to excellent; leaning towards excellent.  For an entree I had the veal tenderloin, with pea purée and fava beans.  This is the first time I’ve really been disappointed in CK.  Tough, overcooked meat (I’m used to that on a ship for the most part), but it had clearly been sitting covered on a speed rack for a long time.  Pea purée was crusted over, beans were undercooked and damn near crunchy.  Swing and a miss.

Mostly just meandered around the ship today, reading my book, interspersed with bar visits.  Weather turned rainy last night, cleared up overnight, and it’s been a steady overcast today with an occasional light sprinkle and really variable winds.  Nice break on the temps though.

CK again tonight.  Phillipsburg tomorrow.  Confirmed at the Excursion Desk that my planned Pinel Island excursion has indeed been cancelled.  Booked a 3-stop culinary tour as a replacement.  I’ve been to Phillispburg a couple of times before, and have already done the 360 island tours.  Something different this time!  And food.

Swells this afternoon have that kind of perfect periodicity to them that causes the main pool to go nuts and turn into a (closed, self-emptying) wave ride.

Super relaxing sea day.  ?

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Into CK at 7:45AM.  1 order of eggs Benedict later and I was out by 8:20.  Bennies were textbook & tasty.

The view of Great Bay from the ship is much improved now that the sun isn’t blasting into the camera.  9:45AM show time on the dock for the 10AM start of the Royal Fun Family Food Tour. Operator is Flavors of St. Martin Food Tours.  Looks like they get a lot of love on TripAdvisor:

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g147347-d8721899-Reviews-Flavors_of_St_Martin_Food_Tours-Philipsburg_Sint_Maarten_St_Martin_St_Maarten.html

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So, a miracle occurred.  Our food tour was supposed to start at 10AM.  By 9:50, everyone was accounted for and we started early instead of standing around baking in the sun waiting for stragglers.  Good job, shipmates!  Off to an excellent start.

Our driver would be Serge (funny and informative guy), and our tour guide would be Ankie — a self-professed 55 year old hippie who sold her bar in the Netherlands 11 years ago and moved to Dutch St. Maarten.  Even more funny and informative than Serge.  Both were great.

Our first stop this morning was the Amsterdam Cheese Store.  Cool.  I do cheese.  We turned left out of the port, drove like 100 yards, and pulled into the parking lot of the Amsterdam Cheese & Liquor Store after an arduous 30 second trek.  Hrm.  Eyebrow goes up.  I’m game though.

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Inside, the 15 of us were ushered to a corner of the store with a display table made from a Dutch merchant’s bike, where TJ (with the assistance of a volunteer passenger) would be taking us on a little Dutch Gouda tour.

We started off with with introductions, a glass of champagne, and passed around some toothpick cheeses as TJ described them to us.  First was a young cow’s milk Gouda (~6mo) followed by young sheep’s milk Gouda, a pesto Gouda, and finished with a ~2 year aged Gouda).  All were tasty.  The pesto Gouda also got an eyebrow raise from me, but it was a nice surprise with a balanced amount of basil to it.  It was dark green, which 6 year old me loved.

The 2nd half of this 30 minute stop would be the passenger-assisted preparation of a pasta dish using 3 of the cheeses we’d tried.  TJ brought out a couple of casserole dishes with cooked bow tie pasta in them.  That was seasoned with a little Italian seasoning, black pepper, and then each of the cheeses was laid out in a stripe across the top so we could taste the pasta with each individually.

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Into the oven the casseroles went.  While they were getting all melty, TJ gave us a little more background on the cheeses we had tasted.  The casseroles came back 10 minutes later (someone has a combi oven back there), had fresh cherry tomatoes added on top, and we each got about a 1/2 cup serving of each.  Not gonna lie.  It was good.  After that we got a few minutes to look around the shop (oddly enough, great selection of Dutch cheeses, treats, and booze).  Then back to air-conditioned bus bliss.

Our next stop, Zafiro Beach Bar & Restaurant, was also on the Dutch side of the island, about 20 minutes distant and maybe 200’ off of the south side of the runway at Princess Julianna Airport.  To get to and from it, we’d cross the famous stretch of Maho “Beach” that people adore getting a sandblast facial from jets on.  Having been tempted to visit this spot myself, I can now tell you I am thrilled to have seen it from a bus on the way/from a good meal.  It was packed.  The “beach” portion is a tiny slip of a thing, while the rest of the shoreline is made up of the artificial locking blocks folks use to protect harbors from pounding waves and invading Germans.  The rest is just less-invasion-proofing boulders.

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This would be our main meal on the tour.  Creole chicken with plantains and a rum punch.  The pic doesn’t make it look very pretty, but it was excellent.

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Nice view of the beach from the restaurant.

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And, for those who may regret not getting the direct jet BJ along the Maho Beach fence, the restaurant has an observation deck nearby where you can watch airplanes approach and land without mussing up your hair or being blown out to sea.

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Next stop: The aptly named Carousel for a gelato making demonstration (by the owner), a tasting of said made gelato, then two scoops of whatever you wanted from the regular counter outside of the “lab.”  Then, well, get on the damn carousel at Carousel, you cad.

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Escorted off the property by an iguana.

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10 minute ride back to the port with a little more narrated history.  Tour ran like clockwork.  Out of the coach at exactly 2PM.

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I can see why this tour is 5-starred to death on TripAdvisor.  Fun & tasty with a nice side dish of history.

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Day 5: Just docked in San Juan at 6:45AM.  Weather is great.  79F and a teensy bit hazy.  Predicted high today of 90F with 0% precip.  Not much to photograph yet.  View looking northwest from the dock.

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It’s a short day here (all-aboard at 1PM).  I’m doing the Old and New San Juan tour operated by United Tour Guides that meets on the dock at 8:45AM. 

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