Today we were all at sea – again. We had no real plans for the day other than it was our pre booked ‘free’ extra posh dinner tonight in the Pinnacle restaurant. There were various talks or ‘ask the captain’ sessions we could gone to, but Karen wasn’t keen. Nor was she keen on various quizzes, origami classes or walking 5K around the ship to raise money for victims of the LA fires. Her firm idea was to drink coffee all morning and then all cocktails all afternoon.
So, after yet another eggs benedict breakfast we walked up to the Crow’s Nest where we lingered long enough to have 2 drinks each watching the horizon as the ship continued its long journey to the Bahamas.
Karen is still getting a kick out of just flashing our room key and getting everything for ‘free’. I am not sure if we are getting full value from the ‘Have it all Package for 50% off’ but it does mean we are having far more drinks that if we hadn’t paid for it. At least this way we don’t have to worry about gratuities as they are all covered. Mind you I do think the suggested $19 per person per day to the people who look after your cabin is ridiculous.
We would also have paid separately for the Internet package as it would drive me potty to be offline for days at a time. We have made full use of ‘included’ the on-board credit the package allowed on an excursion we wanted and have the included extra posh meal booked.
This just leaving the ‘included’ 11 ‘premium’ drinks per day to try and get through. With the nice coffee shop drinks, the most we have managed has been 9 in a day. The ‘premium’ drinks include the cheaper cocktails, most beers and the equivalent of house wines which are more than acceptable
There are other different just beverage packages that can be bought – like one that just cover soft drinks. Each night at the bar we see other passengers spending stupid amounts on vintage whiskeys and $100 bottles of wine. Then we overhear people talking about how they have set themselves a $500 limit in the casino each day. A different world.
We have now been away for just over a week. So far since joining the cruise we have spent $59 on a tram tour for when we are in the Bahamas, $20 on the shared taxi in Antigua and $8 on a Christmas ornament. That is, it. Nothing in any shops or cafes when we have been on shore. Every time I have suggested doing so, Karen has said she would rather wait and get it back on the ship as we had already paid for it.
Back in the cabin we sat for a while on the balcony and I started reading a book on my kindle. Inspired by completing his book about himself I started one the first ones James Patterson had written that was as a commercial hit.
Karen was not happy that the captain was steering the ship in such a way that for the time being our balcony did not have full sun so she decided we should grab some lunch and then move to the pool deck area. The Lido market was chaotic as it had been deemed ‘cake day’. It was like people had never seen cake before and the excitement and queues were quite bizarre.
Nevertheless, after grabbing some light lunch, I queued to get Karen some no sugar Neapolitan cake whilst she moved up to the pool deck. We had to have some margaritas to keep us fully hydrated. We sat close to the DJ who was playing what he called Island Rock. I think he was just using one of my own playlists as I approved of most of them.
Even on the pool deck we eventually had to move to another table as the captain selfishly changed direction meaning that we were apparently now in too much dappled shade for Karen’s liking. I took the opportunity to change my drinks order to banana daiquiris to mix it up a bit.
Eventually I was allowed back to sit on balcony whilst Karen started to ‘glam’ up for the evening. Not only for our Pinnacle restart booking but also because it is ‘Orange’ night tonight everywhere on board. There are various parties everywhere and people ‘encouraged’ to wear orange. Karen had saved wearing her orange dress for tonight. I reckon about 50% people wore orange. I was in the other 50% but I did for Karen’s benefit wear the only shirt I had brought with me.
At 7pm, looking even if I say so myself rather resplendent, we went to one of the bars and got a couple of glasses of wine to take to the early performance of tonight’s show which we figured we could see the first half of before going to our dinner reservation. I only hope the second half was better than the first half.
Just before 8pm we were seated in the Pinnacle restaurant and being served by the lovely Violet from Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. The food was as good as we had hoped and been looking forward to all cruise. We both had the Jumbo Meat Crab Cakes followed by the Fillet Mignon (which was superb). I followed this with the Chocolate souffle and Karen had Key Lime pie which she said was Cheesecake Factory standard.
It was gone 10pm by the time we completed the meal. Karen was by now in quite a lot of pain from what we still think is her hip problem and wanted to take more painkillers and so we decided to have another early night. The other factor was that we knew we would be docking early and our tram tour was booked on the island for 8.45am.
The final challenge we had was that we didn’t know what the real time was.
Karen’s phone we think had gone back an hour to US time this evening whereas mine was still on Eastern Caribbean time, which was still the official ship time.
So, trying to set an alarm for the morning was confusing. Overnight would one or either of the phones change time zones again? My presumption was that we would remain on ship time as we hadn’t been told that ship time would change.
But I checked and Bahamas time was definitely back an hour to US time. Surely ship time would be changed to match that? We went to bed very confused after setting the alarm for 6.38am not knowing whether we would be awoken at 5.38am, 6.38am or 7.38am.
