as it's a bit sparse pickings at the moment, and I know people are interested in the kids clubs and mine doesn't cover any of that.
I woke up just before 7 am and got busy answering the health screening questions. Here are some screen shots of them.
We got ourselves moving and I got the cabin tidied up so that Dean could come in and get his job done while we were gone. We put our back to back stickers on but all of the instructions for how back to back works were on the navigator app. We took the documents they had listed in the app instructions and the basics we thought we might need and went down to breakfast at about 8:10 am. I stopped at Shutters to pick up my USB drive, which took seconds, and then we went into breakfast. The menu looked the same to me as pre-Covid. I got the muesli and everyone else got Eggs for the Road in some variation.
I had them printed out up in the cabin though! 
They didn’t need them as they could look us up by cabin number, but it would have been a smoother process if I’d have brought them with us. It was about 9:40 am when we got to the waiting area for the Covid results.
There were no photographers set up yet, so a boarding photograph wasn’t available. There were a surprising number of contractors waiting to clear testing and board the ship. I’m guessing 100 or more?
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I had yet to find anyone that knew, but while we were sitting there a CM from India was right there, and they are usually pretty into cricket, so I stopped him and asked if he knew. That led to us chatting to him for well over half and hour. His name was Das and he was some kind of beverage service manager I think. But, anyway, he was super friendly and just a great guy to talk to. But….he didn’t know about the cricket! Ha ha. Ended up they didn’t show it and Paul had to use the internet to keep up with the score. 
Along with these delicious dirty cherries to put in it. I knew there was something about him I liked. I mean, if you’re going to meet up with a CM you can't get any better than a BEVERAGE person!! 
I had been looking forward to seeing him looking awkward!! I just knew I was going to love that part!
There were dolphins playing in the ship channel while we were checking in which was pretty awesome. 
Paul’s luggage had already arrived but he wasn’t bothered about getting it unpacked in a hurry. I got Paul’s door decorated, which reminded me that I had not taken photographs of our own doors, so that was a bonus reminder! Doors!
They cast off at about 4:10 pm.
We headed down to Crown and Fin with great expectations for a good trivia session.
The boys were desperate for a beer so Maureen graciously said she would go to French Quarter lounge to get one for them. One of the servers in French Quarter helped her bring them back, and crisis was averted. Trivia was hard, as you can see here there was a lot of thought going into these questions! 
By the way, Mum swears that she is closing her eyes to listen to the question, I know it doesn’t look like it here! 
Edited because I'm reading this again and realize I wrote "UK" and, of course, Dublin is in Ireland. 
Seeing as my Dad was from Dublin, it warranted an editorial correction. 
The usual flotilla of tankers and other ships waiting to get into the port of Houston was sitting out in the ship channel as we got further out. Unfortunately, it was way too cold to stand out there tonight and watch them too much. 
I’m really hoping that it will come back at some point. 
They also had an awesome piano player that played both in the lobby and also at the newly added piano in Tritons. 
There was a lot of "huh", "what did you say", "I didn't hear that, say it again" going on. I think it really depends on where your table is as to the volume level. Here’s some quick snaps of Tiana (awful pic but the only one I got) and the Crawfish Crooners. Do you think they put in the advert for singers that they have to have really skinny legs?? All the previous singers have had equally skinny legs going on. 
We did really well and tied for first place, but lost it when we had to guess the hosts height. The host was Robyn, who is really vertically challenged, and we were trying to be nice by saying 5 ft, so we lost that one big time! Mum and Maureen went to bed after trivia but Paul, Scott, and I went to try our hand at 70’s music trivia in Azure. Molly from Saffron Walden was the host.
Scott and I agreed to participate, which was probably a really bad mistake, as we are horrible at it. Plus we had to leave our drinks behind because we had to keep our masks on – double whammy! 
so it was about 12:15 am new time, when we were finally in bed. We had a dinosaur tonight as our bed-buddy. 
I love that restaurant but I've always found the music quite loud in there.
Yay the whole gang is back together now!!! I love that you were off the ship for like, what - 90 minutes? for the b2b. Woohoo!!
Mum totally looks like she was asleep in trivia...must have been really concentrating
I wonder if the music is so loud in Tianas because they are playing at the same volume they were when the dining rooms were full??
As for the music in Tiana's I really think it seems louder in some places, but when it was just Scott and I we didn't find it too bad because we were seated right next to each other. It's when there's a larger table and you are trying to shout across at people that it seems really loud. 
That's my goal someday! Nice that you were back on in 90 minutes even with the extra wait time at the beginning.
The decorative pillows were gone as well, so you had to use a pillow off the bed if you wanted to be comfy. 
We had stuff flying away and the photographer had a really hard time getting something that didn’t look like we were completely windswept. Mum wasn’t impressed at all by the whole process, but in the end at least we got a photo of us all together!
We got up to Palo right at 10 am and were seated with Duan again. 
)
They were warm and had marzipan in them. SO GOOD!! I had Eggs Benedict and the Rollatini Melazane. I’d never had the Rollatini before, and it was really good and a (fairly) light option, which can be a good thing at Palo! 
They made them all with special pixie dust – everyone was thrilled to get that done. I did like that they put Ray up in the corner though - cute! 
the boys headed to the cabin to grab the backgammon set and go to Crown and Fin to play. We had asked if we had our own backgammon pieces if they would let us use the tables, as the playing pieces they usually have were not available now. They said that as long as we used our own it was OK. Luckily, we had decided to bring our own backgammon set just in case. The boys are very serious about their backgammon. Mum, Maureen and I took a quick look at Shutters, but the wind blown photographs from deck 10 hadn’t show up yet. It's hard to resist these atrium photos when it's all decorated for Christmas. 
But, there was a new Christmas ornament with the year on it that wasn’t on the last sailing and Mum very kindly bought that for me. 
I'm really glad now that I was able to get that one, as the first one didn’t make it home before it shattered. 
We didn’t see anything else that we couldn’t live without so we came back to the cabins. I wanted to catch up with my trip report, Maureen wanted to relax and reading her book, and Mum was just going to put her feet up and have a rest.
Scott started to watch something on TV and I decided to pop down to Guest Services to see if Bruno was there. He was working on the desk, soI went back and grabbed his chocolates (the second tin that Paul had brought onboard for me ). I also had a card for Deniece who is a guest services manager. We met her a long time ago (I went and checked and it was Jan 2016!! Holy **** that's way longer ago than I remember!!) when she helped us get off the ship in Tortola when Mum had a medical emergency. I had been trying to find her ever since, but she went to other ships and then went to work for Disney Shanghai (or Toyko – I don’t remember now). It was nice to finally manage to get her a card to tell her thank you and how much we appreciated all her help that day. 
Bruno was very happy to get his chocolates and immediately hid them from the rest of guest services. 
We hung out on the verandas for a while. The sunset was starting but they the guys decided they wanted to play more backgammon, and I went to look at the photos in Shutters.
I will also mention that the boys quickly decided to switch from beer to Old Fashioned's at this point and our bar tab managed to sky rocket. 
Scott always gets special treatment from her because he has been to Trinidad for work and the bonded over talking about familiar stomping grounds.
Rapunzel and Belle were at a much more civilized pace. 
and as usual it was excellent. <- 
IYKYN
Side note: A lot of the trivia sessions this cruise were scheduled really late and this was one of the few that we managed to stay up for! The pressure was on with this trivia though 
and we tied for first place with another team (who we are pretty sure also had some Brits.) Thankfully we were able to redeem ourselves by guessing the tiebreaker correctly this time around and we actually managed to win! DCL caps!! 
What can I say, another fabulous sea day!
Mmmm that curry looks yummy!
It would have been very embarrassing to have lost British music trivia. 
Really enjoying your trip report
Now I really want an old fashioned.
The Norwegian Joy was already docked next to us and so we all stood outside being nosey about what was going on as they were already disembarking passengers. There were also several ships down at the International Pier.
This one was just as good as all the others, and Maureen got one as well. Paul and Scott decided to go with a Bud Light this time around in the beer mug as a pre-noon drink. 
While we were sitting there Paul decided to go and see if the spa had any massage appointments, and he was able to book one for 11:45am. He said it was good but there was pressure at the end to try and get him to book another service by offering discounts etc. It's a shame when they spoil your nice relaxed vibe by being pushy - I get why they do it - but those massages are not cheap to begin with! 
Mum and Maureen both got something from Daisy’s and Scott and I got a shawarma. Paul joined us from his massage and we ate fairly quickly to get away from the noise and the heat before heading down to the AC of our cabins. I grabbed an ice cream on the way back, but forgot to get a photo of all the food this time around. Scott and I toyed with the idea of going and seeing a movie, but the timing wasn’t great. Here are the movies they were showing on our cruise.
As that ended we went out onto the veranda because the Norwegian Joy was having a real party down on the dock to welcome their guests back. 
There were a bunch of crew that were dancing and cheering for all the guests coming back. It looked like a lot of fun!
Entertainment factor 10 out of 10!! 
We sat outside and watched for a long time but the guys got bored and eventually went down to play backgammon. 
They did have a trivia session at 10:45 pm, but we had no desire to stay up that late to play it. A glass of prosecco was tonight’s beverage of choice. 
She said she had made it really small so we could order other things as well. It was Lamb biryani and it was delicious - of course. I also really loved the bowls it was served in – I hadn’t seen them anywhere on the ship before that I could remember. 
Butternut squash soup and the herb crusted pork chop but I basically tasted them because I was so full at this point. 
It was a perfect temperature outside and breezy.
We were back in our cabins by 10 pm and this guy was waiting for us.
He looks much sweeter without them. 
Wooo hooo, you won trivia! Congrats!!!
Then at 5 am it sounded like the engines shut off as everything got really quiet, so I thought we had docked and I drifted back to sleep. I was really surprised to see that we were just docking when we actually got up. I guess they were just going really slowly. Our cabin this time around was so quiet – it was really nice! It looked like it was a beautiful day and we popped outside to take a look as they were finishing docking at about 8 am.
but they had cancelled it about a week before us leaving because we were the only guests that had booked. It was a bit disappointing, but it’s an all-inclusive and so I couldn’t blame them really. We still planned to get off the ship, but just walk around a bit and get a margarita. Paul had never been to Mexico so we had to make sure we got off to at least say he had and you can’t go to Mexico without having a margarita. One more coastline picture before we headed off to breakfast.
We went down to deck one forward to get off, they had two gangways open this morning. There was only one other family in front of us trying to get off the ship, but apparently they didn’t know that they couldn't take their unvaccinated children off the ship without a Disney excursion, and they were blocking both security lanes while they haggled with the security people. 
Cynical me says that they knew but they were just trying to get away with something. I found it hard to believe that they would have no clue about any of it. 
But…that’s cynical me and I'm sure that they had just never read anything on the DCL website before they got on the cruise. The crew eventually asked them to step aside so that we could get off and we took a leisurely stroll down the pier. 
This was our third time here and the port is still difficult to navigate. They have made it so that you have to go through the shops to get anywhere. You had to walk through the duty free shop from here to get into the shopping area which was a bit confusing as there was nothing to say it was the exit. 
We could really feel the breeze here and it was a great place to camp out for a bit. 
Palm leaves…..on top of a ???????? Oh yeah, palm tree…riiiiiighhht. 
There was this nice looking beachy area as you walked back that looked like it was associated with one of the restaurants, but I couldn’t figure out which one. As you can see it's completely empty. 
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My staple drink….again.
Paul. Was. Here. 
Today it was really bad and I had a hard time getting my hair rinsed out without feeling like I was going to be poached!! Once I got finished I found Dean outside and he had maintenance come and look at it. It didn’t take them long to fix it. I should have said something sooner rather than suffer through it - Britishness strikes again. I don’t even have a photo of our score but it was abysmal. We all said we should have had Paul's wife, Belinda, as our phone a friend. So, with the awful trivia session over we made our way to dinner in Tiana’s with the Mardi Gras menu.
and we lost to them in the “guess my age” tie breaker. Match Your Mate started at 10:45 and while it’s funny when there’s a crowd, with so few people it didn’t really float our boat tonight. We were back in our cabin and settling in by 11 pm and were greeted by a pirate monkey tonight. 
The ship had a really nice gentle rock again tonight…ahh...perfect sleeping awaits! 
