Thursday, November 14, 2019

Cruise Day 2 - At Sea

This was an all day at sea day. We got up and went to the dining hall for breakfast. Three of us ordered french toast and I’ve never seen such fat toast. Instead of a one-inch slice, it was maybe 4 inches thick. Just one BIG FAT piece of French toast. It was a bit rich and greasy and it didn’t stay in Beth’s tummy. After breakfast, she lost it. :( That is no fun on a vacation. But even I was feeling tummy woes throughout the day.


There is some blur in the day since we were on the ship the whole time but I’ll try to get all the good stuff. We spent a lot of time in the library. It is a nice area with books and tables for games. It is perfect for chatting and playing. We played 5 crowns. (I won!) and some Monopoly Deal. (I never won. Jonny killed us though.)



We took a break mid morning and went to eat at Jiji’s Asian cafe. It reminded me of HuHot back at home. You check boxes for what you’d like and they wok it for you. Very tasty but maybe not the happiest on my tummy. I seem to suffer from too much food. (Definitely a first world problem) The boys went and got burgers after (again!) but I just got gelato. (Hazelnut and Raspberry.)

I felt like I needed to work off some of the food so we headed over to play poly-pong again. (Actually I remember playing some in the morning because it started to get hot and we went to get sunscreen on. Oh yes —that led to the title of 'ultimate scum.' Tyler had ended as loser of poly-pong, so he was 'ultimate scum' but Beth lost in 5 crowns and gained the title. She kept it most of the day and we teased her and said things like, “Scum, you clear the cards.” or “Scum, you can’t read questions in the Monologue Jar.” It's possible we weren’t very nice. The Monologue Jar is great. Tyler did a great job making it bigger and better and spiral bound. We always have thoughtful conversations when it comes out. One question with differing opinions was *Would you rather kill one child or 3 adults? Yikes! Or *Would you rather explore a new planet or cure a deadly disease. Can you believe those boys chose explore a new plant?? I hope they catch a deadly disease there. ;)

Okay, back to poly-pong. It was too hot to play outside but it was really busy inside the club house. Jonny was playing with someone and we were waiting when a crew person announced a ping-pong tournament. That wasn’t for me and Beth so we left the guys (who signed up) and we went looking for a previously mentioned pod. The pods were all taken. Go figure. The ship was bursting, but we finally found a shaded area and we pulled over two lounge chairs into the shade. We were a tiny bit in the way but I didn’t think it was a problem. We were by this nice older lady. She was kind and joked that the large object giving us shade was probably also giving off radiation. I actually don’t know what it was. It is part of the ship and looks like a huge metal hot air balloon. But it gave great shade. And we were in a wind tunnel area so it was constantly breezy. I loved it!



Beth and I read and snoozed for quite a while. Amazingly the boys found us, which is quite a feat since we didn’t tell them where we were going. While we dozed, they WON the ping-pong competition. It was only 8 people, but they both won their side of the bracket and faced each other at the end. Jonny beat Tyler and won a medal and I’m so proud of them both!

The boys let us rest a bit more and Bethany tried the water slide with the tube since it was right there next to us. In the evening it was 'elegant night' so we needed to dress up a bit. I wasn’t hungry, so we played some more games in the library until it was time to eat.

We wanted Walter again but there was some big event (Captain's dinner) going on and because we came later there were no requests. We changed into our nice attire and went up to get our reserved table, but something went wrong. They took us out but someone was already there. So they had us go back. They tried again, but couldn’t find the right table number, so we just stood there stupidly while they tried again. Third time they led us around the room, but still no table. Fourth time is the charm. They took us all the way across the dining room and put as at a 6-top. Things were really messed up. Later, they led 6 people to our table and realized it was full. Someone probably got an earful later for all the mixups. Dinner was okay. The prime rib was not that great. However, the hazelnut chocolate dessert was heavenly.


During dinner they have a little show. The Maitre D comes on the mike and says “Show time” in this awful hissing voice and he does it multiple times. It goes right into your brain. Then all the waiters get up and put on fancy ruffled shirts and dance. They encourage the guests to get up and dance as well. We went over and danced the macarena and the funky chicken. Fun. I'll have pictures of 'Show time' later. They did it almost every night.

Let's take a moment to admire us in our fancy duds.






We told Jonny to get a good hold on Bethany. She preferred no-hands-in-wandering-places-for-pictures-thank-you.


After dinner we headed over to the hot tub and brought the Monologue Jar.


It was great to chat and hang out. The Hulse’s are some of the best people I know. There were a few more lightning storms but still mostly flashes. I'm not really a hot tub fan but those evenings that we soaked were heavenly.


Oh, funny story. At dinner, I saw the lady who had been sitting by us in the lounge chairs earlier in the day, so I told Jonny we should invite her over since she was sitting by herself. He went over but since he didn’t know her, he ended up phrasing it oddly. He said, “Were you the lady sitting by our wives?” He said as soon as he said it, he realized it sounded like an accusation. She wanted nothing to do with him and denied everything. Oops. Maybe I had the wrong lady, but I don’t think I did. We sure didn’t mean to scare her. We just thought she might like some company.

Let's not forget our towel animal of the day. Each day we came back to find our rooms clean and a cute little animal waiting for us. I'll call him Yoga Bunny.


There weren't as many pictures today since we were hanging out on the boat, but just you wait for tomorrow when we reach Jamaica...

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