An exciting day aboard. Our first sea day.
On an off-hand note, wife and I came out a rainbow behind the ship this morning at breakfast. I’ve made it the featured pic of this post.
Normally wife gets up early and walks about seven
miles in the morning. But, a long month prior to the cruise at a temp job assignment with different stresses, put her in need of several hours of napping instead of walking. Also, chilly weather, (highs in the low 60s), choppy seas (8+ foot swells) and stiff breezes gave her even more encouragement to skip exercise that day.
After breakfast, I sat in the Great Outdoors portion of the ship, a covered outdoor café behind the buffet, and enjoyed the 60 degree (F) ocean breeze while I worked on yesterday’s blog post. Wife headed back to the room right after breakfast, got about an hour of light dozing in. That was fine. Our cabin steward was starting at the far forward end of the hallway. Looked like we were probably the last room or so on his list.
I remember sailing on the Jewel in her inaugural month 10 years ago. Back then, we had a senior and assistant room steward. They both stopped in and introduced themselves. Now, we rarely see our steward, and usually have to hunt them down to introduce ourselves and get their names. Out of all the changes in the cruise industry, the downsizing of the housekeeping staff is probably the one issue I most dislike. The attention to detail is still good, but the promptness suffers sometimes, as we’ll see here.
After first nap, she headed out for light reading before our Cruise Critic group meet and greet. I found her sitting in a window seat along deck 7 above Magnum’s bar. From there, we could look down and see Le Bistro where our M&G was to be held. After a bit I noticed the group services coordinator hovering outside the restaurant with clipboard in hand.
I glanced at my watch and saw that we were under 15 minutes before the event time. I nudged my wife and said we should go down, so he wouldn’t be lonely, or shut the meeting down because no one was showing. I also knew there was a tray of cookies and a fresh pot of real brewed (non-coffee-gnome) coffee down there.
We picked up our tablets and headphone/ear buds and headed down. After name tags, another couple drifted in. Introductions were made. We asked each other’s Cruise Critic usernames. “TroyPhoto” I said as a look of alarm came over my face as I said the “photo” part. I felt on my shoulder. No strap. I looked at the table where we had placed our tablets.
“Oh, crap! I left my camera up in that window seat! Excuse me…” I said and ran back up the grand staircase. Not there. Don’t panic. Which window was it? Nope not in any of them.
Crap!
Back down to Le Bistro. Our Ship’s host, Jenmark was still there, clipboard in hand. I explained my dilemma, and gave him the make and model of the gear. He used his ship portable phone and called customer service. A camera matching mine had just been turned in.
I sprinted back up the stairs, and made the quick trek to the front. The walk to the desk was going to happen faster than the wait in line. I was about six people back. But, the line went smooth. The nice young lady who helped me asked me to describe the camera. I rattled off make, model, lens type… about the only thing I skipped were the serial numbers – which, contrary to popular opinion, I don’t have memorized.
She disappeared into the manager’s office, and came back with the camera, and a form. I filled out the form, thanked her profusely and headed back to the meet and greet.
Wife had already made friends with some folks. A few minutes after I returned and grabbed a cookie, the officers arrived, spread out and did their introductions.
Sin, the cruise director, who, as he says “was made in Mexico,” had us trained well from the variety show the night before. When he said “Hola!” we all responded back loudly “HOLA!”
Following the meet and greet, wife and I headed up to O’Sheehans for lunch. I had the fish n chips, she had the chicken potpie. The crust topper on her potpie was thick and flaky. My fish n chips was standard fair, in a decent sized portion. That’s one thing I’m happy with about NCL; they keep the portion size reasonable on their meals.
American restaurants tend to make dinner for two portions to give the clients left-overs for lunch the next day. On the ship, we don’t need that. No microwaves onboard (at least that we can use) to warm up left overs. That’s what the buffet is for.
Wife headed back down for a post lunch nap… but the room steward hadn’t made it to our room yet. He must have been on lunch, since we didn’t see his cart in the hall. She elected to read for a while up on deck, and check back in hopes that the room would be refreshed and she could nap without the nagging and impending knock, followed by “Housekeeping” as the door opened.
She checked back about 1:30… not yet. More reading…
I had left my camera in the room (so I wouldn’t loose it on deck again), and headed up to deck seven to grab a lounge chair. The sun was warming the starboard side, so folks were out playing shuffleboard, or lounging in the sun to drive away the chill of the still rough chilly ocean breeze. Any spray from the ship plowing through the choppy seas was quickly baked off.
I’m not a fan of direct sunlight, so I went to port, which was shady. It was also wet. I found a dry-ish deck chair and settled in to listen to some Alan Parsons Project (the instrumental works) as I gazed out at the waves. That’s my favorite activity. After a while, I’d read a bit from the current book on my tablet (currently, a history of Santa Monica, California). I wanted to stay out of the room, and let wife get her nap in. So I sat, and watched the waves, read some more, then watched more waves.
Finally, about 4:30, I headed down to change for dinner. Wife was still sleeping. I tried to be quiet, but she had awoken with the door latch turning.
“He didn’t get done with the room til 3:30,” she said as she sat up. “then, after I was laying down, he had to bring two more beach towels.” She didn’t look happy.
“Technically, we are in a cabin that sleeps four,” I shrugged it off. “He probably has to make sure there is one towel for every bed. Never mind that the murphy bunk is folded up, and the trundle bed is stowed under ours.”
She didn’t look happy, even with my pithy explanation, so, being a good husband, I let it drop.
Entertainment
We headed to dinner in Tsar’s – food was good as usual. Wife is slowly working her way through the pasta dishes, while I’m getting the various meat and taters dishes with the fancy names.
After dessert and coffee (hopefully, no coffee-gnomes involved with that cup), we headed to Magnums to watch Fabrizio tickle the ivories and sing lounge favorites. He’s got a good range, and broad song list. Our stay was just long enough to sip a soft drink before heading off to Bands On The Run musical show. Good as always.
Following that, we roamed bar city on 6 and 7. Fabrizio was singing Sinatra and Bublé classics. Which meant every chair in the vicinity was full. Wife wanted to check out Tally and Teri up in Fizz lounge. We stopped for a song, but moved on. They were in a Country hour, and I’m not a fan of country, so she only made me sit through one song. Tally and Teri have a strong “electronic” vibe. Steel guitar sound, with almost a techno feel from the little bit I heard. Made for even stranger Country music than I’m used to. Something about the typical twang of that genre getting twangier. But, I’ll leave that for the country music aficionados.
Instead, we headed off to the Crystal Atrium, and got a couple more soft drinks. Between the choppy seas, and both of us overdoing the Unlimited (alcoholic) Beverages the night before, we decided to stick to soft drinks for the night. Hopefully, we’ll eventually drink enough of the hard stuff to make up for gratuities that we had to pre-pay as part of the Unlimited Beverage promo. But – we figure that if not, we’re at least breaking even on what an unlimited soda card would have cost each of us by adding in what we would have paid for along with the soda.
After watching the cruise ship photographers for a while, and getting stern
glances from the wife every time I critiqued how they were posing groups, we decided to turn in for the evening.
The steward hadn’t made it to our end of the hallway to provide turn down service. I’ll get along for a day without my little mint-chocolate candy. Maybe he’ll leave a double dose tonight (if we stay out of the room long enough for the turn down service.)
Yep. We went to bed early.