Breakaway to the Caribbean! Day 7

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Trip Report

Day 7 – At sea Mostly sunny, mid 80s

This. This day. This exact morning is the reason you pay extra for a balcony. Warm, no humidity, crystal smooth, deep clear blue ocean. Today is a day to spend on your balcony.

I'm hoping that you can see the "radiance" of the sun in the water. It was absolutely stunningly beautiful on this morning.

And that’s where we start with room service, as usual. Our order was correct this time, but delivered 15 minutes prior to our selected time. They must think that’s what people want.

We sat on the balcony until 10:30, it was so gorgeous. When we decided we needed more than a chocolate croissant for breakfast, we went to the buffet just before they closed it up. I hunted for my blueberry pancakes, but they only had raisin pancakes. Raisin pancakes??? Who does that?

The girls headed downstairs to the Deck 8 lounge chairs. I headed upstairs to Spice H2O. While up there, I saw a family with Disney Cruise Line bags and struck up a conversation. We compared notes between the two cruise lines and what we liked so much about DCL.

At 1:00, Kathryn and Molly had lunch at Wasabi, the sushi bar. The food was great. They loved all the sushi selections that they got. The service, however, was the worst we’ve seen so far in any restaurant. In taking their order, the server was in a rush and told them that they’d ordered enough. Then their order was delivered to a different party and they had to wait for it to be prepared again. The server hit Kathryn on the arm three different times with plates. When their order finally came, it was incomplete. Molly was brought a second glass of water (not a refill, but another glass); and when she didn’t drink it, the server took it and gave it to a different guest. Their lunch took over an hour and a half for the four sushi items they ordered. Thankfully, they felt that the food was well worth the upcharge pricing.

It’s a sea day, which means the casino is open and I haven’t talked about it yet, so let me throw some pictures up here. If you’ve read some of my other cruise reports, you may remember that I like to play roulette and poker. But on this trip, I didn’t play the casino at all. That’s mainly because I’m a really small-time gambler, and the minimum bets throughout the casino were all $10 or more. On other cruise lines, there is usually a table (or two) with lower minimum bets and I just didn’t feel comfortable blowing $100 on 10 spins of the roulette wheel. Also, the casino host had a great deal of difficulty in communicating to me the prize structure of the poker tournament. I couldn’t figure out if it was a one table sit-and-go, or if it was a satellite into a “final table” later in the cruise. And if you wanted a cash poker game, the casino takes a 10% rake from every hand, with no cap. But for those who aren’t as cheap as I am, there was a good variety of games, and even a separate Baccarat room.

Table games:

I'm sharing this one so you can see how the decks are open to the casino. You can see the casino table at the top of the picture. Cigarette smoke does waft through this whole area, to some degree:

The rest of the afternoon was spent outside on deck or in a lounge chair to enjoy the weather. We had decided that we wanted to have dinner at Shanghai’s noodle bar one more time, and that meant getting there as soon as it opened. Their starting time was listed as 5:30, so I got there at 5:20 to get in line; but when I got there, the restaurant was already full. The hostess explained that the line was so long at 5:00, that she opened the restaurant at 5:10. Molly was with me, so they sat us at the last four seats available. (It’s important that Molly was with me because the rule for all of the complimentary restaurants is that they won’t seat you until half of your party is present.) They were completely filled up and I think that affected how quickly the orders were filled. It took a while for our food to come out, and mine actually never did. I think with all of the activity behind the counter, my order slip probably got lost. It was ok, the entrees were plenty big enough to share. It was still a fun and tasty meal.

After dinner, we went to the 7:30 show of the magician, Greg Gleason. He is on a TV show called “Masters of Illusion”. His whole show was “close up magic”: card and coin tricks. Nothing breathtaking, but I did enjoy it a lot. It obviously required a tremendous amount of skill and practice. He did a second show on another day, which was a mind-reading show. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make it to that one.

After the magic show, we went to Headliners to see the Second City sketch show. I liked the improv show earlier in the week, but I wanted to see a scripted show. It was very good after a bit of a rocky start. (There was an improv segment that wasn’t that funny and a “Christian Mingle” sketch that had literally zero laughs.) But after that, it was very funny. They did short 30-second sketches sandwiched around longer bits. There was a “mystery” where one of the audience members was picked to be the detective, and one of the cast members came out and did a long “psychic” sketch, interacting with the crowd. It had a bit of a “Laugh In” feel to it. (And yes, I know how old that makes me sound. Shut up.) I really enjoyed the show a lot.

I finished up the night by check out the blues band in the Fat Cats lounge. On the way there, I had to walk past Maltings and I noticed that there wasn’t nearly as much cigarette smoke as the first couple of times that we tried to sit down there. I probably would have stopped and stayed for a drink there, but I wanted to get into Fat Cats. I caught the last half hour or so of their set. They weren’t the best band ever, but it was fun, and people sang along (which they encouraged). The lounge had a real blues bar feel to it, and I liked the experience. It was a lot of fun. .

This picture is of the outdoor seating for Fat Cats on the Waterfront, but the performance was indoors:

Got out of the lounge around midnight and decided to call it a night.

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