Breakaway to the Caribbean! Day 2

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Trip Report

Day 2 – At Sea Low 80s, partly sunny, brief showers

One of the reasons we love to have a balcony is to have breakfast out there, and so we ordered room service, which arrived around 8:30. We had chocolate croissants and coffee and the girls both thought the coffee was better than average.

After a lazy start, we made our way to the pool on Deck 15 around 10. We sat for a little while, but the music was so loud and so terrible that I only stayed until lunch. All the music was terrible pop or techno. By 10:30, the pool was very crowded, with little room to swim and no room at all to sit around the edge. The hot tubs at the edge of the pool area were also filled the entire time we were there.

At 11:30, I went to Uptown Grill on Deck 16 and got a Cowboy Burger for lunch (basically a bacon cheeseburger with BBQ sauce). I really liked the Uptown Grill for several reasons. It served good burgers, but also made tossed salads to order. There was seating that was away from the loud pool areas and didn’t get too much traffic. And they bring your order out to your table. Overall, I thought it was a really good lunch option. (They also serve breakfast, but I never tried it.)

After lunch, I went back to the room to grab my book and then Molly and I found some comfy chairs outside on Deck 8. This area is called The Waterfront. There are several restaurants and clubs on Deck 8 that offer seating inside or outdoors. In addition to the restaurant seating, there are lots of padded benches and chairs that make great spots to relax (there were always lots of people sleeping here!) or to read. Which is what I did for quite a while. It’s a great quiet spot, with none of the loud music of the pool area.

(Side note: When I went back to the room at 1:00 to get my book, the room had still not been made up. This is unusual in our cruising experience.)

We wanted to try Shanghai noodle bar for dinner that night. This was a very good experience. A crew member told us to get there as soon as the restaurant opened at 5:30, so that’s what we did; and it was a good thing that we did because the whole restaurant filled immediately. I had fried dumplings, which tasted fine; but they seemed like they came out of a box, to be honest. I had a combo fried rice and a shrimp and chicken noodle bowl. Both were very good -- and big. I really enjoyed the whole experience. The only thing that wasn’t good was that it’s located right next to the casino and so the smoke drifts through the whole area. Fortunately, as the food is served, the smoke becomes less noticeable.

After dinner, we went to the stand-by line for the early Second City improv show. It’s possible to reserve a spot for the show, but we hadn’t done that. But we were still able to get seats, and we all really enjoyed the show. I also liked the Headliners club. There were several real “laugh out loud” moments, and everybody agreed that we would try to catch another show. Very fun.

It was still early, so we decided to catch the guitarist/singer in Maltings. Maltings is a whiskey bar on Deck 8 along the Waterfront. The guitarist played indoors and we found a spot and really enjoyed his music. However, Maltings is right next to the cigar bar and right outside the door is the Waterfront’s smoking section. So every time the door opened to the outside or to the cigar bar, the whole lounge was filled with smoke. We did stay for about 40 minutes, but after a while we’d had enough of the smoke. Time to move on!

But we were still in the mood for some music, so we ended up in Shakers, where there was live piano music. He was fine, but his song selection wasn’t doing it for us and his singing was just meh. Nothing else on the evening schedule really caught our eye, so we headed back to the room.

We got the room just before 10:00, and the beds weren’t made yet. We had to call housekeeping to have our room steward come and pull down the bunk and make the sofa bed. He did come fairly quickly and made up the room, but Molly requested an extra pillow and it took him another half hour to return with it.

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