Thursday May 6th, Day 4, Somewhere at SEA
After a very long and full day touring Nassau, worrying about my sick little boy at home and partying the night away, we deserved a sleep-in day!! For some reason my dear, dear husband has his body trained to get up early in the morning....EVEN ON VACATION. I know.....annoying. Anyway, up until this day, we DID have things scheduled for the morning. But not today! It was our at sea day and we had absolutely NO plans. So nice. I doubted that my early riser hubby would take advantage of the leisurely morning, but lo and behold.........
I was up before him and just had to snap a picture for proof! It was 8:30 AM at the time. Yay Jeff!
We had been eating breakfast at the buffet every morning, but had decided that we wanted to try eating in the Dining Room this morning since we had no schedule to follow. Open seating was until 9:30, so we got up, got dressed and headed to the Dining Room to enjoy breakfast. If only we had discovered this little secret earlier! Breakfast in the Dining Room was
FABULOUS!! Attentive waiters, any entree you might desire, no searching for an empty table.....heaven! We sipped our coffee, dilly dallied over our omelettes, and thoroughly enjoyed the view of the open ocean out the nearby windows. Ahh...vacation is so
SWEET!
With nothing to do unless we felt like it, we left breakfast and went down to our stateroom to check out the offering of activities in our Cruise Compass. We highlighted a few things we might like to do, the first being a meet and greet with the Captain and the ship's Hotel Director at 11:00. I love behind the scenes stuff and thought it would be fun to hear about life on board the ship. So....off we went! I took this picture as we left the cabin. This is the kind of day we had planned...one where we needed no watches!!
The Meet and Greet, officially called A View from the Top was being held in the Centrum (main lobby) of the ship. We got there a little early and plopped ourselves down on the steps to wait. Of course, I snapped a picture of the beautiful glass elevators in the Centrum.. I SO would not want to be the person in charge of keeping everything sparkling on this ship!
Not too much time passed before Captain Trond and the Hotel Director (sorry, I don't remember his name) arrived and began introductions. Our Cruise Director, Rico, played emcee and passed the microphone around to the small crowd so the men could field questions. I learned some pretty cool stuff about life on board a cruise ship. Some of the most interesting tidbits.....the majority of Captains aboard cruise ships are Norwegian born; cruise staff work a
CRAZY schedule where they are working 7 days a week for 4-8 months straight before getting 2 months off; Ship Captains have to go to some insane amount of schooling (like 10 years) before getting to be Captains; any food that leaves the galley is not allowed back in the galley so LOTS of food goes to waste; our ship gets into port in Florida at 9 on Friday and leaves again by 4:30 on the same day so all restocking, fueling, cleaning, etc is done in a crazy flurry of activity; no one is steering the ship when the Captain is at a Meet and Greet. Just kidding about the last one...most of the steering is done with computers and GPS so the ship was in no danger while we were picking the Captain's brain. I did get a picture during the question and answer time, sorry it's so dark. Captain Trond is the one with the microphone. Oh, I almost forgot. Captain Trond did tell us that he was a direct descendant of Vikings so we told the boys a Viking was driving our ship!
I really enjoyed the time with the Captain and Hotel Director. They were very interesting and it was cool to hear about some of the behind the scenes working of the ship. It's not a life I would want, for certain, but definitely fascinating.
Being the Movie and Trivia buffs that we are, Jeff and I had our eye on a Movie Quote Trivia game that was going on in one of the bars. We got there a little late so we didn't get an answer sheet, but we enjoyed just playing along for fun. A member of the Cruise Director's staff would act out a quote from a movie and we had to guess the movie. He was so entertaining!
The game ended and we found a nice spot right by the window at a tall table in the lounge. Gin Rummy was the game....beating Jeff the goal! We love to play cards together, but rarely have a quiet moment at home to do so. Go figure! It was really nice to just sit and enjoy each other's company with a friendly ( or not so much at times, as I tend to be uber-competitive) game of Gin Rummy. I don't remember who won, so let's just say I beat the pants off him and go from there!
The allure of the beautiful ocean and warm sun was too much, so we wandered our way out on deck for a walk. Being out on the ocean, miles from land, really is a surreal kind of experience. I wasn't sure if that would make me nervous at all, but it didn't. I really loved the peacefulness of it. I took a few pictures as we wandered around the Promenade Deck, Deck 7.
This first one is of the place where you would go to act out the I'm the King of the World scene from Titanic if you could get out there. Unfortunately, it is a restricted area that is closed to passengers.
But, I took a picture so the boys could see it.
The water is impossibly blue. The pictures don't do it any kind of justice at all. Of course, we were always on the lookout for dolphins or whales, but we never saw one.
I'm pretty sure that after we enjoyed the sea air, we went to the Windjammer Buffet for some lunch. I can't at all remember what we ate, but I'm sure it was delicious. I can almost guarantee that Jeff tried some kind of fruit soup and I ate some fresh pineapple. Other than that, I've got nothin'. Sorry.
By 1:30 we were changed into our pool gear, armed with books and sunscreen and on our way to the pool deck. We had some serious 'laying-around-doing-nothing' to do! As we exited onto the deck, some serious whooping and hollering caught our attention. The Men's Sexy Legs competition was in full swing and, like a train wreck, we just couldn't look away. Now, the contestants for this contest were far from sexy and most of them were well into their senior adult years! I'm sure they had lovely lives and respectable jobs out there in the real world, but not today! They were vamping it up for the crowd. SO FUNNY! To spare the innocent, I will just post the picture of the Cruise Director's staff member who had the pleasure of emcee-ing the event. I think her face tells the story!
Following the slight detour, we continued on our mission to find two pool chairs with our names on them. We found our table mates, G & T, already well into their laying -around-doing-nothing and pulled up two lounge chairs to join them. Jeff ordered a round of drinks for everyone and we had a great time soaking in the sun and laughing and sharing stories of our real lives and our cruise adventures. We took turns taking dips in the pool, napping, reading, etc. At one point we asked them to take a picture of us together and we did the same for them. Poor G really had no idea that it probably wasn't a good idea to hand Jeff his camera and leave him unsupervised. While he waited for G & T to get into the perfect photo spot, he took candid pictures of EVERYONE on the pool deck. LOL! Thank goodness for digital photography and the delete button! Here's the picture they took of Jeff and I.
And here's one Jeff took of me completely enjoying the moment!
By about 4:30, the drinks were gone and the bucket-o-beer was empty. After one last dip in the pool, we gathered up our stuff and headed inside to shower and get ready for the Farewell show we were planning to see before dinner. I think we both grabbed a little nap in the cool, dark cabin before showering and getting dressed for the night. We also put cash in our tip envelopes so we could tip the wait staff and leave one for the cabin steward. It is customary to do so on the last night of the cruise. The show was at 7 and by 6:30 we were ready and outside enjoying this....
We made a quick dash up to the buffet area to grab a snack, possibly a soft serve ice cream cone, before the show.
Promptly at 7:00, the music came up in the Sound of Music theater and we were enjoying the Monarch of the Seas singers and dancers in one last performance. It was here that it began to hit me that we would be getting off the ship the next day. So sad....but no time for that now.
We still had a final dinner to enjoy!
Once again our FABULOUS waiter Francisco amazed us with his table tricks.
And posed with us for a picture! ( He's not short, just crouching.)
Dinner was delicious as usual and I'm sure at some point J pulled the Cruise Compass from her bra to let us know the evening's schedule. We all planned to meet for the late night comedy show for one last hurrah! On the way, G took a few pics of Jeff and I. He was too politely southern to mess with our camera!
Sadly, it was time to head to our cabin to quickly pack our suitcases. We needed to leave them outside our door before midnight so they could be off loaded the next morning. This met us on our arrival.
I thought it was a bat, Jeff said a bird. But now I believe it might be a Manta Ray. Any guesses? No matter, it was cute!
Sad picture of our bags waiting to be picked up.
I realized as we were leaving that I didn't have too many pictures of the cabin, so I took this one on our way out.
All the work was done, so we met up with our friends for the comedy show. I remember thinking he wasn't all that funny, but I enjoyed the time with our new friends. We exchanged emails and facebook info so we could keep in touch. One of the most enjoyable parts of the cruise for me was meeting new people and making new friends.
It was late, tomorrow was disembark day, and we were tired. But not quite ready to head to bed and say goodbye to the day. So what did we do?? I'll give you a hint...we lit up the night!
Next update very soon......no, really! I promise!
It sounds like his Grammy took really good care of him.
We kind of felt ourselves shift in our seats to the left....kind of subtle, but a definite movement. The rain must have been part of a weather system that had made the seas a little choppy. No problem though...it was just that one time. I was a little concerned about bedtime though....I'd be sure to take my medicine before turning in!
Since it was our last night on the ship, we wanted to go outside and watch the water one more time, so out to the deck we went. That's when we saw something so cool, I just had to get a little video. As we were on the bow of the ship, just enjoying the breeze and the quiet of being out at sea, we saw flashes off in the distance. The weather system that had brought us the rain had obviously moved away and was producing lightning in the distance. Out on the ocean, the night is very dark, so the far-away lightning put on quite a light show. There were several other passengers who pulled up deck chairs to watch. This video is not great and not nearly as dramatic as the actual event, but take a look. I took two short videos and both have one or two good flashes so you can get an idea. 
