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!!