Flossbolna
Sea days are just so relaxing!
- Joined
- Sep 8, 2006
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- 13,838
We did not have to wait long for the tour to start, but we nearly missed the start as our very relaxed tour guide did not deem it necessary to tell us that he was not just walking somewhere, but that he was actually starting the tour… He was not the greatest tour guide… But somehow he grew on me during the tour.
We started in the dining room with adjacent kitchen:
The living room:
And upstairs there were bedrooms and bathrooms:
I absolutely loved the tiles in the last bathroom!
We then walked outside into the lovely garden (which you can rent for weddings and events, they were setting up for one when we were there):
And then in another building on the second floor there was Ernest’s study/writing room:
And a close up of his type writer:
The house still has so many cats living there, this was one of them:
She was our tour guide’s favourite and got quite a few snacks from him during the tour. The cats have all their little houses in the garden and just roam freely around in the whole house.
And this is from the gift shop:
I am pretty sure the cats are not for sale!!
They had a really nice pool:
And this is a very famous cat drinking fountain that came with a story (in the picture featured with our tour guide):
The tour did not take long at all and it was interesting enough. Since it did not cost anything extra, I would recommend it. You can always just leave and tour at your own time.
Walking back towards the ship along the street in which the Hemingway House is, we came to the end of Route 1:
We also saw this impressive Banyan tree:
And the house that was the first head quarters of Pam Am airlines.
By then we were hot and sticky as hell and really wanted to get back onto the ship to cool down again!!
By the time we got there, we were also quite hungry and decided to get food and drinks first and headed up to the pool area to get something from the quick service places there. I failed here miserably with pictures, but I can still tell you that Michael had a hot dog (he claims that the DCL hot dogs are really good) and I had some things from Goofy’s Galley that I showed you in a previous update. I had a tuna wrap (it was like 1/6 of a wrap, they slice them in tiny pieces which is great if you just want a snack), a brie and bacon hot sandwich and a salad. The sandwich was delicious. It was a multi grain bread and they warmed it up for me, so the brie was all melted. Very good!! I also like that they have small bowls of salad, usually a mix of lettuce with something else, one day it was tomatoes, another it was carrots and sweet corn etc. There were big bottles of vinaigrette and ranch dressing and you could just add as much dressing you wanted yourself.
At some point I got a picture of this lovely mural that you can see from the glass elevators that go through the atrium –once they go to the higher decks:
When we got back to the room, we noticed that they had exchanged the handle on the safe. That was great as it showed that our issues were being dealt with. However, otherwise there was not further improvement in the room, the table was still wobbly. And in addition we found a dirty and wet washcloth in the bathroom (we had not used any of the washcloths, so we knew it was not ours). Michael was less than thrilled with the discovery. We also found that the area around the bed was not really very well vacuumed as there was stuff on the floor (white threads, nothing horrible, but still a sign of bad work). I think it was then that we also started to realise how worn the carpet was. I think there is a point when you have issues with a room and they start to bother you that your mind is much more starting to notice other little things that normally would not be an issue. But in combination they become something bigger.
Well, I convinced Michael to head to a trivia session that was going to start in Diversions right then. It was some kind of general trivia. I really like trivia, but thought that I had no chance at all to compete in trivia if it was held on an American cruise ship as I just don’t know much about American personalities, TV etc.
It was an adults only event and held in Diversions. It was done by David, who was the Club Host. I had no idea what this meant, but I found out during the course of the cruise that he was the one kind of responsible for the adult entertainment. He would introduce the adult shows, he was the host of the Match Your Mate Show etc. He was a really funny guy and I think this was one of his first cruises on the Wonder, he came from the Dream. He mentioned many times during the cruise how amazed he was at the different dynamic of a longer cruise as compared to the ones he had been on on the Dream.
He was also totally new to being a Trivia host (or played it very well) and kind of was totally blown away by the weiredness and randomness of the trivia questions. We kind of struggled through. And then there came this question: “Which automobile GIANT bought Land Rover?”. He repeated this question several times and always put the emphasis on GIANT. Well, my initial thought was that the answer would be BMW. But then he kept on with this GIANT – and BMW really is not a giant, it is more of a boutique company if you compare it to the likes of GM, Ford, VW or Toyota. So we picked something else as I was pretty sure that BMW would be the wrong answer. Then at the end when we counted the right answers, we found out that it indeed was BMW – and that we lost by 0.5 point!! So, Michael started accusing me that we lost because I did not get BMW right and I kept arguing back that David had said GIANT and BMW is NO GIANT!! The people on the table next to us were quite amused by our big “fight”.
After trivia it was time to head to the pool where I got another delicious Drink of the Day: Key Lime Margarita:
This was an excellent drink!! Once again quite potent!
First it was rather sunny, but then it became more overcast…
We often hang out at the pool in the later afternoon which worked out quite well as people left the pool early to get ready for dinner and show. Our routine on days when we went to the show was mostly that I would head down to the room to take a shower before the show, then we headed to the show and then Michael would take a shower between show and dinner while I was getting dressed and prettified. Worked well for us and let us make most of the later afternoon.
So, that’s what we did today as well. The show today was a ventriloquist called Lynn Trefzger. Btw, in German we don’t use all those Latin names for many things, for example for medical terms. But also we don’t call that kind of performer ventriloquist, but the literal translation of the German word would be “tummy speaker” as they don’t speak with their mouth, but with their tummy.
I am normally not a fan of ventriloquists as I usually find the puppets they use rather scary. But she was very funny! I already liked it that she started out with a cuddly big bear, not a puppet!
After the show Michael headed to the room for the shower while I went to guest services to enquire about our room situation. Especially about that they said that the hotel manager would get in touch with us, but we had not heard from him yet. They asked whether I would go to the room now as they would then send him to our room. I told them that we would be there to speak to him in 15 minutes (once Michael got out of the shower) and went down to the room. Who was not there? Michael! He came in shortly after. He had chatted with a fellow guest in the hallway! So he had to take a speed shower. And just as he poked his head out of the door of the bathroom announcing that he was ready, it knocked on the door and there way Byron, the hotel manager for deck 2. We had a very good chat with him about our issues. He said that he had tried to speak with us a few times today, but we had been out. And we had not been in the room a lot during the day. He just got on the ship with us in Miami and had transferred from the Fantasy. We got the impression that he really took our issues seriously and could see that the room was not really in the shape that a room on a Disney ship should be. While we were talking you could see him looking around and making mental notes of things. I think it was also on that day that he told us that they had exchanged our wobbly table, but then realised that the new table was wobbly, too. It had turned out that the table was not the issue, but the floor! It was so uneven just where the coffee table would normally be placed that it made the table wobble! We discussed with him that the day after the next one when we were in Cozumel, we would be away form the room for a long time and that they could come in that day to do some repairs. We really felt much better after this visit!
Up Next: Taste of the Caribbean
Work right now is not quite as bad as what you just went through, but pretty close. 
You don't know anything about our cats, but some folks here do. 
so it was probably tougher for me when she gave it up than it was on her. Oh well.
Thanks for the additional info!
