Breakaway to the Caribbean! Day 4

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Trip Report

Day 4 – San Juan Mostly sunny, mid 80s

Room service randomness continues. We asked for delivery between 8:30 and 9, but is delivered at 8:15. We ask for the same time every day. Sometimes it comes at 8:30, sometimes at 8, sometimes in between, sometimes they call to tell us it’s early, sometimes not. Today instead of our requested 4 chocolate croissants, we get 2 chocolate and 2 plain croissants. (And no butter or jelly for the plain ones.) Sometimes we get one pot of coffee, sometimes two. Totally random.

We weren’t docking in San Juan until the afternoon, so we just enjoyed some time on our balcony. After a while, I headed out to Spice H20, which was not crowded this time, probably due to it being still fairly early. This is usually an adult-only area, but I saw a family come in with 3 kids, so maybe the adult-only hours start a little later in the day. I stuck my feet in the water and then met up with the girls on Deck 8. The Waterfront became out regular hang-out spot when there wasn’t someplace else that we specifically want to go to. I read a bit, enjoyed the water view. I may or may not have dozed for a few minutes.

After telling the girls about the Uptown Grill, they decided they wanted to try it, so that’s where we headed for lunch. They really liked the salad option. I had the Cowboy Burger again, but this time asked for some chili on my waffle fries. Wow, was that chili spicy!

Approaching San Juan:

Our excursion in San Juan had a meeting time of 3:10 in the Breakaway Theater. We figured with so many people wanting to leave the ship, we should get there a little early. So we got to the theater at 3:05, to find that our tour had already been sent to the gangway. Now, with a few thousand people getting off the ship in a half hour span, you can imagine that it’s pretty crowded, so we couldn’t exactly hustle to catch up with our group, but we did make it to the pier. But there were no signs for our excursion, no one with any information, no one to lead us to our tour bus. The NCL staff on the pier just told us to walk to the street and “look for the guys with the blue shirts”. Well, it seemed like everybody had a blue shirt. The NCL staff had blue shirts, many of the tour leaders had blue shirts, some of the people just trying to get you into a cab had blue shirts. It was a mass of people and almost nobody knew what to do. Finally, we did find an NCL staff member from the Shore Excursions department who was holding a sign that said “Ask me where your tour is” (or something very similar to that) and he pointed us to a line to stand in.

Thankfully, that guy got us to the right line and our excursion actually turned out to be very nice. It was a bus tour of the city, starting with a short stop at the legislative Capitol building, then about an hour at Fort San Cristobal. I really enjoyed exploring the fort and the tunnels and getting up to the roof with some great views of the city.

The Capitol:

The fort:

Then we drove into the new part of San Juan and stopped at a public park right by the open water. Finally, as he drove us back into Old San Juan, he gave us the option of being dropped off in the town to explore or of going back to the ship. Kath and I got out and wandered a bit. We took pictures, wandered around the square a little and then walked about 10 minutes back to the ship. Because of extremely heavy traffic, we got back to our stateroom almost a half hour before Molly and Dale, who stayed in the van.

We were pretty hungry by that time, so everybody got ready and we headed to Savor for dinner and thankfully had no wait at 7:30. For the second night in a row, our server didn’t ask us for a drink order when he first brought our menus. In fact, on this night, the server came back to the table with bread and still didn’t ask for a drink order. I had to call him back to the table and say that Kathryn wanted a glass of wine. I’m not sure if that’s what the servers are trained to do, but it’s very different from what we’ve experienced on other cruise lines.

It was a specifically American cuisine on the menu for the Fourth of July. We all ordered the crab cake appetizer and it was excellent. Lots of crab, not a ton of breading and it had a really good flavor. We all liked it a lot. Kathryn also got the fish soup (it was like a bouillabaisse) which was also really good and the Landaise salad. The salad had duck meat, lettuce pine nuts and dressing. She loved it.

Our server had a rough night. He just didn’t really know the menu for the night. Dale ordered the baked salmon from the main menu. The server then asked her if she wanted it grilled or poached, because those are the options on the “Classic Entrees” portion of the menu. We had to point out the baked option on the first page of the menu to him. Then Molly ordered the Cajun Chicken Macaroni and Cheese. But when our meals came out, he brought Molly two plates: one kids’ mac and cheese, and one chicken fingers. We had to send it back and point out the Cajun Chicken entrée on the regular menu.

Once everyone had the right food, it was very good. Kathryn got the steak au poivre. It came medium instead of rare, but the sauce was great. I got baby back ribs with mashed potatoes, which was excellent. (Kath’s steak was served with onion rings, but I stole them.) The salmon turned out to be excellent and Molly’s Cajun Chicken on mac and cheese was also really good.

We weren’t crazy about the dessert options, so we weren’t sure if we going to order anything, but the server decided we should at least try them, so he brought one of everything. Kathryn got the cherry cobbler with chocolate ice cream, which was terrific. But everything else was pretty disappointing. The American trifle was all whipped cream with 2 pieces of fruit and one small piece of cake at the bottom. The brownie with marshmallow tasted like it came out of a plastic wrapper, and Molly really disliked the consistency. The ice cream sandwich was ok, but the cookies were so small that you couldn’t really eat it as a sandwich. Last, and absolutely least, the orange pudding was disgusting. It was chalky, with a terrible fake taste to it.

We finished dinner at 9:30 (very slow service again). We went up to Shakers to give the piano guy another shot. He’s not terrible, but to me, he’s just ok. He doesn’t really have much vocal range or expression. We sat for his whole set, but he ended before the schedule said he was going to stop. I went upstairs to get an ice cream, since I didn’t really like the desserts at dinner, and then called it a night around 11:30.

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