November 2011 - Road Trip--Pearl Cruise part 8

Wednesday, 11-30-11 – Jamaica

           Our tour wasn’t meeting until 9:50am on the pier. So, we had a wonderful lazy morning. I got more sunrise pictures from the balcony. Have I mentioned how much I love early am on the balcony with camera and coffee? We were waiting until folks were beginning to get off the ship, to go to breakfast. This was a dock port, with a very long pier, btw – almost as long as Cozumel. We then headed to what seems to be our hidden gem on the Pearl, our very own, almost private breakfast spot – the Blue Lagoon! There was again, only 1-2 other tables of breakfast eaters when we arrived. Not too long after, they left as well. We chatted with the wait staff. Had a nice breakfast with great service and it was very relaxing. I love this about this trip. Seems as though we have much more relax time, instead of rushing around trying to get everything in. I love this J!!

            We went back to our cabin to prepare the travel bag and await time to head out. We still ended up being ½ hour early for our tour. We bought a bottle of water on the way off the ship and waited in the tented area for the rest of the tour group to arrive. We noticed several little shops on the pier – one had a sign saying ‘Blue Mountain Coffee” and we made a mental note to stop there on the way back to the ship. Our tour was to do some tubing down the White River and then spend some time at the Bamboo Beach Club. Hopefully, we’d have time to go to the nearby mall and see Margaritaville that Mom & I had visited the last time I was here.

            Nice air conditioned mini tour bus, with about 16 others in our group. Our guides were Tracy & Ann Marie. Very nice girls.  It was about a 10 minute ride to the place where our tubing adventure was to begin. We had to sign a release before going down to the river. It was a warm day, but not terribly hot or humid. Ochos (eight) Rios (Rivers) was in St. Ann’s Parish & St. Mary’s parishes we were also visiting today. Tracy said that the bus would be our locker and to leave anything on the bus that we did not want to lose. I piped up that I would be leaving my husband on the bus.  Everyone laughed!  Some girl tubing near Mark lost her glasses around the first bend. Some people just do not listen at all.

            Tubing was AWESOME! It was a little bit of a walk down to the river, but not bad as there were handrails the whole way. About halfway down, we got our giant tubes to roll along with us. I got in my tube before Mark, in case I needed some help. You get to the bottom of the stairs, they put your tube in the water and you are expected to turn around with your back to the tube and ‘drop’ into the tube! Umm.. yeah…right, sounds exactly easy to me. Not! I have bad knees due to arthritis, so they really do not bend like they used to. But, I was able to get my big butt into the tube! Nice. Then it was Mark’s turn and he had almost as much trouble as I did! We both got cheers from the rest of the group, once we were in our tubes! It was about a 45 minute lazy ride down the river. It was an awesome experience that I would love to do again! Several times the river was very shallow and we bottomed out. It was a very good thing that the tube had a plywood bottom in it! Sometimes we drifted too far over by the edges and got stuck amongst some branches there. There were several young men guides with our group and several others taking pictures on the banks as we passed by. The guides we had made sure we all stayed together as a group. At several points, they held us all to wait for everyone and then let us go all at once! How fun!  Sometimes it felt like we were in bumper tubes, and other times we were herded like sheep around curves. A couple of spots, where the river went a little fast, were the most fun parts! It was a great experience and I am really glad that we had the opportunity to do this. Also glad that we pushed ourselves to take this excursion!

            We then had to go back to the bus. Mark had to sign some paper – one person from each party – apparently to prove that we did  indeed get out of the water and back to the bus! There was a little stand of souvenirs, however our $$ was on the bus! Good planning there?! It was a short 10 -15 minute ride to the Bamboo Beach Club – through locked gates. Drinks and food were unlimited, but by service only, by Ann Marie & Tracy – for about 3 hours.  Our group had our own little ‘section’ of the beach. They moved in some plastic beach chairs, almost like Adirondack style chairs. The sand was so loose that the chairs really sunk in when you sat down. My knees were then almost chest high! Figured I was sitting awhile, as getting up would be a little bit of a struggle for me. Mark got up and headed into the water. I didn’t know that’s what he was doing, as I was busy people watching and trying to be comfortable. Pretty soon I realized he was in the water and I was taking some photos. I got some of him in the water, and a few of the waves coming very close to where I was sitting!

        There was at least 3-4 rows of chairs between me and the shore line. The beach chairs were being rushed by the water. It was pretty strong waves. Tracy was serving some food, I had some pasta salad, some kielbasa with a sweet sauce and a rum punch. I took one sip and switched to the non-alcoholic lemonade! Rum punch was pretty strong! Lots of folks were in and out of the water. Some were getting knocked down and getting up and laughing about it. Mark came back and we had some rice (Mark not thrilled about this and it really wasn’t that good) and some BBQ’d chicken served to us. The chicken was really good! It was served with a cornbread fritter.

By this time, I was sitting up on the edge of my chair because I was really uncomfortable. It was time to stand up. I wanted to go into the water. Mark said “Been there / did that!” I must have made a face, as he agreed to go in with me!  He commented that he had a difficult time getting back out of the water, as the waves were strong. Well, we weren’t even in the water yet, when a wave came up and sucked the sand right out from under me! Down I went. Seriously, it was like quicksand! I am not sure if Mark was sitting next to me or trying to help me up, but the next thing I know we  crashed into each other and I was a few feet down the beach from him!  The water had pushed me down the beach. I still couldn’t stand up, because of the sand, so I started crawling on my hands and knees to try to get out of the way of the water. I could see some chairs not too far away that I thought I would use to help me stand up. A couple was sitting there and asked if I was okay.  I said I was more embarrassed than anything! I looked for Mark. He was laying on his stomach, with 3-4 guys around him. He couldn’t get up, either. I thought he was like me, only maybe had the wind knocked out of him. I asked if he was okay and he said no…then he told me my breast was hanging out of my suit. Like really? That was so important at that moment? I tucked back in! Anyway, I got up and made my way over to him, where these guys (one was the lifeguard on the beach) were helping him to get into a double chair they set on the beach. He said his leg hurt and he couldn’t put any weight on it.  So we thought perhaps he just twisted his leg and after resting a few minutes he would be okay. Umm. Yeah, not so much. After about an hour of just sitting there, attempting several times to get up, we decided it was more hurt than we originally thought. He was helped up the little slope to the medical area, where a nurse took a report and got an ice bag for him. She seemed to think he had a pulled muscle, but could be broken.

We had mega help to get Mark back into the tour bus and back to the pier we went. They had called ahead and had a wheelchair from the ship awaiting us when we got out of the bus. They wheeled Mark, with me trudging behind, through customs, back to the ship, through check in there and straight into the medical center on the ship. The water shoes we bought were not comfortable when full of sand. My the time I was able to get mine off, I had a huge blister on my big toe. I know, small beans compared to what Mark was enduring at the moment!

First ever visit to the ships’ medical center.  I filled out the accident report, and filled in the medical form. They took xrays of Mark’s leg. We left vast amounts of sand wherever we went. That was embarrassing! Unfortunately, we were unable to get him rinsed off at the beach, and I didn’t get a good rinse off job, but did get some sand off me. 

The doctor gave Mark a shot for pain and wrapped his knee with an ace bandage. We were there for quite awhile. The doctor said it didn’t appear from the xrays that his leg was broken, and assumed that he had pulled muscle or a tendon. Doctor gave him some muscle relaxers and naproxen for pain. We had a wheelchair escort back to our cabin. Mark hit the bed and just could not get comfortable. We ordered some room service, and I hit the shower. Room service said it would be about 45 min before they could deliver, so I had plenty of time. I had to get rid of this sand! Well, by the time I was out of the shower, Mark yelled that the Dr. called and was on his way up to our cabin. So I opened the door and headed back to the bathroom to get dressed. Come to find out, his leg WAS broken afterall!  He had given Mark some other pain meds and brought a Velcro brace for his leg that was from thigh to ankle. He was told not to put any weight on it and that we could have a wheelchair & escort anytime he wanted to leave the cabin. Great! Terrific, this was just the type of experience we really could have lived without!  Well, not that we had any choice but to relax a LOT now!

Mark got into the shower after the drugs seemed to help a bit. Was good to get rid of all that sand! Amazing amounts of sand were all over! We had a sandwich from room service and just relaxed. Carlos came in and vacuumed up all the residual sand for us. We watched some tv and Mark finally got comfortable and we called it an early night.

November 2011 - Road Trip--Pearl Cruise part 7

Tuesday, 11-29-11 (Sea Day)

I woke up early – about 5:40am – turned on coffee and awaited the sunrise. I was blessed with an awesome display in the sky! Of course, I photographed this a zillion times, in a zillion different views (that somehow look very similar). This was absolutely the most beautiful sunrise, the absolute reason I woke up early today. I love these leisurely mornings having coffee on the balcony of a cruise ship, being in awe of the beautiful sunrises. If there was nothing else at all to enjoy for the week, but these awesome mornings – then I believe it’s definitely worth the price of admission to cruise! Mark was up and showered while I was on balcony – and I didn’t even realize it, I was so engrossed in the sunrise. I called room service and ordered cranberry juice & OJ for my Caribbean mimosas. I also ordered muffins and fruit. It was time to finish up the wine with the juices, and celebrate the awesome sunrise. 

We caught up on the news of the world on tv, while waiting for room service delivery. Mark got us all signed up for internet service on the notebook in our cabin – love that!  It is much nicer bringing the notebook along to use when we want to, instead of going to the internet café onboard.  It’s very convenient to have wifi in the cabins. Mark checked in with the family on facebook, while I showered. Everyone is still alive and well in cyber space!

We headed out of the room, looking for a trivia session in Bliss.

We met a nice woman from Pittsburgh who joined our team for trivia. We were all a bit dumb during this session. But we had a fun time! We then wandered a bit. Stopped and made reservations for Cagney’s tomorrow night. Thought it would be a nice way to leave Jamaica. We ended up passing through the photo gallery, and stopped to look for our boarding photos. I was wearing a green top, and wanted to see if the green screen made me invisible! We couldn’t find our photo. Mark kept looking.

We noticed that there were very few announcements interrupting your day aboard. This we enjoyed. There was an announcement about a “best of” lunch @ LeBistro from 12 – 1:30. I went back to the reservation counter (right around the corner) and asked when this lunch was. It was today…well, I asked if there was any way that we could get seated at 11:45, as the Latittudes party was at 1pm and we didn’t want to be late for that!  The reservationist called the LeBistro and got it approved for us!  YAY!! This ‘best of lunch’ has menu items from all the specialty restaurants onboard. We can try them all for $15.00 each! Nice!  We had about an hour to kill until the lunch, so we headed on into the casino.

If they offer this for you onboard – do it. It was AWESOME! They let us in first – about 10 minutes of 12. We were seated by the windows and given the menu. I love LeBistro – they just seem to properly know how to ‘kiss your butt’ in that place! Every time on every ship. Anyway, back to the great luncheon! They had a buffet area set up and they had menu choices that were specially ‘made to order’. For the $15. pp you can have both. We ordered the Filet Mignon from the made to order menu, then headed for the buffet for our appetizers. I had French onion soup, cesear salad, a spoon full (literally –served in a spoon) seafood salad type thing, some brushetta type bread and other tastes of things. Our filets were served – awesome melt in your mouth! This was the most excellent meal we had on the ship. I had some French press coffee with my desserts. They had a dessert table set up with very small tastes of several different desserts. I had tiramisu and Crème Brule and some other chocolate mousse – Mark had cheesecake.  This meal was the best. I am sooo glad I heard the announcement, as I missed it in the daily. And I am so happy that they let us in a little early, so we still had time to get to the Latittudes party. It was totally awesome!

On to the Lattitudes Party. We were able to leave lunch just in time to get there – to wait in line to enter! The Spinnaker Lounge was “closed to private party”, so the sign said. It was difficult getting off the elevator, as there was such a crowd in the hallway, waiting in line. It didn’t take long until they opened the doors. They had 2 separate parties, there were so many Lattitudes members on our sailing. It was the standard party. Drinks were being served by the wait staff, as were some appetizers. However, we didn’t try any appetizers, considering we just had the best lunch! They gave away a lot of prizes, drawn by your invitation. Funny how many folks do not know their cabin number when it is called out for winning a prize! She had to resort to trying to pronounce the last name, as well. I thought it was funny. How many days have we been onboard already and you don’t know your cabin number?  LOL  They were down to the last few prizes – 3 bottles of sparkling wine – to 3 winners. I joked with Mark, that we should win that, as I had just finished the bottle we had bought that morning. Wouldn’t you know it. We DID win the 2^nd bottle of wine!  J We were cracking up! It really was too funny!! YAY! And our winning was the ONLY cabin drawn from Deck 9! Most were from Deck 10 & 11.  Guess it was meant to be that we were able to attend the party so we could win more wine! Geesh…thought I was doing great to finish off 1 bottle of wine before the cruise was over! Last year, I left 1 and ½ bottles for the room steward, as I didn’t want to deal with traveling with them.

We then went back to Bliss for TV Tune Trivia, part 1– with our bottle of wine, as we didn’t have time to drop it off at the room on the way. We had a blast!! There was a couple who came in a few minutes after we did. She was asking what to do – I told her to get an answer sheet and pencil from the table at the end of the room. She said okay, but I was wondering how this worked. I replied – without missing a beat “you use the pencil to write the answer down on the paper”. The whole room exploded. It was funny, if I do say so. She laughed as well, and said to her husband “maybe we should have brought along a bottle of wine to this – might be easier!” LOL too funny! Anyway, we had a really good time, once they got the audio working correctly. We ended up with 14 of 20 this time. We would have had more, but apparently I did not hear Mark answer a couple of them, as I didn’t write the answers down.  There is a movie theme trivia later on today that we might make it to.

We decided to call it siesta time and headed back to the cabin. Mark went on the balcony, I caught up in this journal. We realized, at some point, that we had totally missed going to the Cruise Critic Meet & Greet! We did notice someone wearing a R button, in line at the Lattitudes Party. They were pretty big buttons – surprised that we didn’t happen to see more of them around!?  From the chatter on our Roll Call, it did not seem as though we would fit in that much with the rest of them. It seemed to us that they were all  very interested in drinking - and our big drinking was our cabin sparkling wine! LOL  Anyway, I ended up reading for awhile and then a snooze.

At 5pm we headed down to the Crystal Atrium for Movie Trivia. Well, realized when we got there and they were playing Wii on the big screen, that the trivia wasn’t’ until 5:30pm. So…we thought to take some photos of the atrium while we waited – and realized the camera needed a new battery. So, back to the room to change the battery and decided we had just enough time to grab an ice cream out on the pool deck. Well, they didn’t serve ice cream there (like on the Dawn) but did at the buffet. We knew where THAT was! So, in we went to the buffet. Washy, Washy, Happy, Happy! Back down to the atrium, and the movie trivia was underway already. Luckily, they were only on #5 now. We figured we could catch up. The way they did this one, was to show the Movie poster ( with title blacked out) on the big screen and you had to write down the name of the movie. We ended up with about ½ correct – better than we thought we’d do! It was fun.

We had planned on seeing the show tonight, but didn’t know if we’d catch the 7:30 or 9:30 show. It was the 4 Seasons show. Deciding to kill some time in the Casino, off we went. On the way, we passed Indigo dining room and stopped to read the menu. Hmmm…we both thought it looked good, so decided we would play for a little while and then grab dinner here. So, we did! Neither of us won much of anything in the casino all week. I think my biggest win was $60.00. Not great, but we enjoy trying! We decided at 7:15 we were getting hungry and off we went to Indigo. Great timing! There was only a 5 minute wait and then we were sat in the same booth that we sat in for our safety drill. How funny. Service was a little slow, but we were in no hurry. We were lucky enough to be treated to a show by the Maitre D’, Harold Plunkett. He had stopped by our table to chat for a minute, when he got a phone call and excused himself. He came back over, and said he would have to return later, as he had to do something with the chef. ? Okay. Well, in a few minutes, he had a Chef parade through the restaurant! Amid tons of cheers and much applause by the diners, the chefs toured the room! That was fun. But wait – it’s not over yet. The show has just begun! Harold began to sing “Day-o! The banana boat song! Awesome! The whole place was singing along! It really was just like in a movie where spontaneous singing spews forth!  LOL How fun that was! Um. Yeah, and Harold never did make it back over to chat!  We had a great meal (as I don’t remember that it was bad) and a show along with it.

After dinner, we had some time to kill before the show at 9:30, so we headed to the room. Carlos had not turned down the room yet, but was on his way in. We sat out on the balcony, enjoying the sounds of the ocean, while he went about his business. Carlos let us know when he was done. That was nice of him. By then, we had decided we had relaxed enough, we really didn’t feel like going back out again. We ended up catching a movie on the TV (don’t remember which one) and called it an early night. We were excited to go to Jamaica in the morning!

November 2011 - Road Trip--Pearl Cruise part 6

Monday, 11-28-11

Leisurely morning, spent in the cabin and on the balcony. I watched the sunrise and took photos of course!

Showered, dressed, relaxed with coffee on the balcony some more. My most favorite part of cruising… coffee, balcony, camera. We waited for the announcements of the first tenders being loaded to go to the private island. Then we headed out to Blue Lagoon for breakfast. There was only 2 other tables filled in there. Service was awesome! We really were skeptical, as we hated the Blue Lagoon in the Dawn. Food great, service great – we are liking this spot! We had a relaxing breakfast, while hundreds of other passengers were waiting in lines to go to Private Island. This was SOOO much better! After breakfast, we headed back to our cabin to prepare to go to island.

 We had a ‘catamaran tour’ at 11:20 (thought it was for 8:30…but that’s not what our tickets said)  We made it to the island about 10:15, too early for tour, so we wandered a little bit. We had a brief rain shower, actually lasted about 10 minutes and then it was over. The ride over in the tender was very rocky! Very wavy!!

We docked on the back side of the island – new to us. Saw the construction stuff all over and they were working today, too. Our new camera decided to crap out on us! SO, we spent a few minutes trying to get it to work. We didn’t bring our good camera with us – of course, we left it back on the ship thinking this was all we needed for today. Therefore, not many photos today, Darn it. Not happy about this with our new camera that we got so we could have it to take water pictures.

We checked in at the tour booth and were told to wait over in the covered picnic seating area.  Then we were herded to the other side of the island (short walk we were told – about 15 minutes) I have difficulty with arthritis and this was a very long walk for me. Had I been better informed, I would not have done this tour. Our ‘catamaran’ ended up being a small tour boat. Not a sail boat, as I had assumed. Yeah, I was not that thrilled at all with this excursion.  The tour was nice and the guide and captain friendly and informative. The guide fished out some star fish and a crab and brought them onboard for us to pass around. That was interesting. The tour was nice and interesting – just not what we had expected from the description.

After the tour – about an hour – we headed back to other side of island. Thought it was time to grab something to eat from the buffet area. We had a nice lunch, (burgers, salads, fruits and pizza) then we relaxed while watching the limbo contest and listened to the band “Soul”. The picnic area was shaded and nice to just sit and chill. Decided we didn’t really want to swim today and we were ready to head back to the ship, about 2pm. They had chilled, damp washcloths at the dock to wash off the sand before boarding the tenders. That was a nice touch!

Back onboard, Mark went to the cabin while I escaped to the Spa. I assumed – correctly – that it wouldn’t be that busy this afternoon, while everyone was still at the island. Ahhh.. very nice way to spend over an hour. I loved every minute and wished that I had the opportunity to do this at home at least once a week, which would be heavenly. I took a shower and got dressed while at the spa and headed back to the room. I ordered coffee and a fruit plate from room service and caught up on my journal, while Mark read his book on the balcony.  Mark then got restless and went out for a walk about the ship. Knock on door – afternoon snack from CAS – sweet treats today. How nice! There was also ‘mail’ from the cruise consultant with our Silver + party invite and VIP tender tickets and a “Gold status’ Laundry pass. Huh? Go figure, somebody must have made a mistake, as I am only Silver and Mark is Bronze still. We had no intention of doing laundry and didn’t think we’d have need for the tender tickets, either. But, we love the idea of being spoiled, so thanks! Mark back on balcony w/ book and I’m caught up with this journal for now. Think I’ll take a short snooze.  

Later, after resting, we went to ‘Name that tune” w/ Tatiana on the piano whilch was outside LeBIstro. I think we got 4 of 15 correct! Ha ha But, we were not alone! There were a couple of younger girls sitting next to us, who did just as badly. We shared several “HUH?” looks with each other during the game. We enjoyed it anyway!  We then headed around the corner to the casino to kill some time. Then on we went to the buffet, for a quick supper. It was very nice doing to the buffet. Self service, get what you want, when you want…and we really always found something to eat. It was very nice to be so relaxed and didn’t feel the need to be ‘waited upon’ most of the time….or to make each meal an ‘event’. This night, I had a big salad, some coconut rice and pork cordon blue, with some carrots and broccoli. Dessert was mini muffins (2 were skewered on a toothpick) and some chocolate covered fruit skewers. YUMMY!

Spinnaker lounge was the place for our evening entertainment tonight. The Newlywed / not so Newlywed show was going on. That was a blast tonight. Great couples and Julie is a terrific cruise director. I am almost positive that I have enjoyed her as a CD on a prior Dawn sailing, but not positive. She certainly seemed familiar to me. Anyway, we had a few chuckles at the show this evening! Decided to go back to casino for awhile and stopped at the Stardust Theater on the way to catch a few minutes of That’s Entertainment.  Few minutes was enough of that for us and we were off to casino for about an hour.

Off to the cabin for the night and discovered a towel animal! Carlos was our cabin steward and he was awesome! Always smiled and said hello whenever we would pass in the hallway. He seemed to have some kind of radar to know when we were out of the cabin, as it was always straightened up when we returned! A couple of times – later in the cruise – he would stop by while we were still there and he just ‘worked around us’ quite nicely. The ship rocked us to sleep this night, without delay.

November 2011 - Road Trip--Pearl Cruise part 5

Sunday, 11-27-11

            Well, we were up early – for vacation – by 6am and had a slow, lazy, putzy morning. Showered, dressed, computed, packed up and re-packed. We went down to breakfast and brought back some muffins to the room for later on in the morning. And now…we wait. This is the most maddening time of cruising to me. Waiting on the morning of the cruise. Waiting till time to check out of the hotel, waiting till time for the shuttle to pick us up, waiting to get into the ports, waiting in various lines to get on the ship, waiting to have the safety drill – to finally, finally be on a cruise vacation. After all that waiting, I’m usually ready for a nap! Ha ha ha! This is actually the MOST anti-climatic part of the whole day, just waiting. I had waiting. The shuttle will be here at 11am to take us to the pier. It is 8:45 am as I write this in the journal. We have already done all of the above. <sigh> Beautiful sunny day here in Miami and breezy.  Our hotel is on the airport flight path, sometimes the planes are REALLY low and LOUD. Guess we’ll watch some old comedy re-runs on tv..oh wait…here’s some Pawn Stars.. Guess we’ll watch this. C’mon time – speed it up!

            We closed up the room and headed downstairs to check out, re-load the car and wait for the shuttle. We sat in the lobby on opposite sides of the Christmas tree. I took some photos of our car – close up of the license plate – to prove it was there when we left it there. You know, just in case something would happen to it while we were gone for a week.

Finally, finally time moved. Our shuttle driver showed up!  We were the only passengers this time. It was only about 15 – 20 minutes to the Port of Miami (POM). It didn’t take very long to get there and get unloaded.

We went to tip the porter who put our bags from the van onto a rack, and he was gone! Huh. How unusual. Anyway, we went inside and found the CAS line – right next to the handicapped line…(which may have been an omen).  It only took about 15 min to get through the line, with key card in hand. Upstairs to wait some more. They gave us a small card with the #11 on it. Okay. We wait. Then, they ended up calling us by ‘room’, not number. There was about a 30 minute wait. We were picked up from hotel at 11:05 am, and sitting in Summer Palace about 1pm eating lunch. Not too bad! Nice welcome on board from staff – they were lining the outside deck about every few feet, saying “welcome on board!” as we passed them. Nice touch! Better than nothing and almost like the year they would hand out drinks as you boarded, only no drinks this time. It was a really nice touch!

We made our way to Summer Palace (same place as Venetian on the Dawn). I had cesaer salad and sirloin steak. I took a photo of my salad and Mark gave me major grief about it. Well, guess that’s the last of the food photos on this trip. Mark had chicken noodle soup and club sandwich. I noticed this man in a wheelchair – eating alone – sitting next to the window, right over Mark’s left shoulder.(Omen..see the wheelchair?) That’s why I noticed him, he was in my direct line of vision whenever I looked at Mark. Another sign? We both ordered the strawberry shortcake on the menu. Only, what we got was not what we thought we were getting! It was a white layer cake, with strawberry sauce in it. It was still very good – just not exactly what we thought we were getting!  My steak was excellent and cooked medium well, perfectly! As we were finishing up eating, the announcement came that our rooms were ready. The restaurant was mostly empty when we arrived, and only a little bit fuller when we left.

The last of the food photos - did you notice Mark's expression above? That is the "are you really going to take pictures of all the food all week?" look. LOL

Off we went to find our cabin 9608. It was a very nice balcony room. No surprises, however, I think the bathroom was a little smaller than the ones on the Dawn? Maybe not, but it had been a few years since we had a regular balcony. I think the last cabins on the Dawn we had were Mini-suites, and those bathrooms were a little gibber – due to the tub being in there.  Everything else seemed to be about the same and as expected. Navigation on the Pearl was very easy, as it was so similar to the Dawn.

We dropped our bags and decided to head to the SPA to buy our spa pass for the week and get our tour of the spa. Holley (from Australia, I think) gave us the tour. Very nice. She was very informative and friendly.  There was no lap pool in the Pearl Spa, too bad, as we really enjoyed that on the Dawn. We signed up for our weekly pass - $119.00 pp, no couples discount anymore.

We had noticed the Bills game on the big screen in the lobby as we were wandering around.

 We then wandered around a bit and searched out our meeting spot for the safety drill. Our spot was in the Indigo Restaurant. Outside this restaurant, around the corner, was a little bar/lounge that had the Bills game on the TVs. So, we sat and watched the game while waiting for the drill.

  

We went in for our safety drill. Painless. We sat in a booth on the left hand side of the restaurant. And this happened to be the exact place we were seated later in the week when we ate dinner here (the first time!) How funny is that? After the drill, we went back to lounge (above) to watch the rest of the game. There were several other couples there watching as well. There were maybe 10 of us all together. The Bills lost to the Jets, however it was a good game and close at the end. Nice quiet little nook, within a ship with thousands of people on it. It was nice!

Back to our cabin we went, to see if there was any sign of our luggage. Nicely surprising, all of our bags were awaiting in the hallway for us. I decided to get all my stuff unpacked and put away. Then Mark did his stuff. We still had plenty of room left over. Then we just wanted to relax a bit. I relaxed with the sparkling wine & strawberries that I had ordered before leaving home. This is one of the little perks of having the suite last year on EPIC that I decided would continue to be my ‘sail away treat’! Love this! Ahhhhh… NOW, I am on vacation! We watched a movie (or part of a movie, we thought –but found out later in the week it was the whole movie!) called Monte Carlo. Dumb romantic comedy w/ not quite teenagers – perfectly mindless! We also snoozed a bit….hey, we ARE on vacation! Also had a nice plate of cookies, as a welcome aboard from CAS.

Headed up to the buffet for a light supper. Just didn’t feel like being in a crowded dining room – even if it WAS lobster night. Mark doesn’t like lobster anyway and we thought the buffet would be less crowded on lobster night. We were correct. Not that crowded at all at the buffet. Nice choices of food – I had pasta made to order & salad – and my favorite – Chilled Melon SOUP!! Not sure what Mark had besides Pizza, of course! Nice selections of dessert things, however we mainly had an ice cream or sherbet choice.  Never did find those cookies the rest of the week. All they had was the flavored breads instead. We would have preferred cookies!  There were no milk dispensers; however there was always a crew member to help you with drinks. All you had to do was ask for skim milk, and they poured from the little pitchers there. I thought they were only for putting in your coffee or tea. Guess I was surprised!

Wandering around the ship some more after dinner, we ended up outside. It was very windy out. After dinner, we went to Spinnakers for “sing it if you know it” game. It was a blast! There were 2 people that dominated the game. One was a gal that was there by herself. She commented that her husband was sleeping already and she was ready to party. Thinking she had been partying all right!

It was fun to watch, and would have been okay to participate in, however we were both being too lazy. The band would start to play a song, and as soon as you (or someone on your ‘team’) knows what song it is, you are to jump up and run down to the floor and sing into one of the microphones on the floor. Umm.. yeah… not so much. But WAS fun to watch others doing this!  Some songs had a definite “Caribbean flavor” to them, from the band, making it difficult to tell what the song was. Mark & I seemed to know most of them, anyway. It was a fun time!

            We ended our night in the casino. It was small and not a whole lot of slots. I thought that the Dawn might have had more slot machines, but they were probably very close in size. Not many new machines or ones that we were unfamiliar with. It was okay. Mark went off to bed about 10pm and I said I’d be there soon. I stayed another half an hour then joined him in the cabin. We perused the daily for tomorrow and then called it a night.

Extra photos of our cabin - that refuse to stay where they belonged! Sorry about that!!