A Great Day Aboard

One of the reasons for haste while shopping was that I had a 4:30PM appointment at the golf simulator on the ship. It was my first time using one, and I stunk up the joint. Not *all* of it was my fault – no one told me that putting was useless on such a machine because it fails to register the motion, so I racked up a zillion strokes on the greens at Pebble Beach – but, yeah, mostly I sucked. 

It was fun though :)

Then it was back to the stateroom to shower and change for dinner. On our first cruise dinner required dress attire, a restriction that had been relaxed in the years since. We abhorred that change, even as we ourselves attended at least once in shorts, because part of the fun of the cruise was acting like you were fancier than your measly station in life. 

On the second day from port (Day Five by this tale’s reckoning) diners were encouraged to dress their best, and so I put on my shirt and tie and the kids and Lisa tidied up as well. Some of the kids whined that we would look out of place, and sure enough, some people still showed up in shorts, but oh well - I’m glad we dressed up. 

Dinner was marvelous. As always dinner was a four course affair. I wish I had a copy of the menu, but I know I had some marvelous roast duck, and a soufflé for desert that was so decadent, so wonderful, so undeniably heavenly that I do not hesitate to say that eating it may be the most pleasurable thing I have ever done, and by itself a justification for enduring forty years on this Earth. 

That said, not everyone could hang with the “fancy” food. LuLu by this night had already opted out and ordered off the kids menu. Grace kept trying but often couldn’t pull the trigger and actually *eat* the food – I ate half her escargot, and the rest went untouched. At least she tried. 

During dinner professional photographers came by to record the moment, and Tony and Jupa, our servers, made the kids origami animals. 

Afterwards it was back to the club for Smiley (the kid wanted to spend every spare waking moment there) and YaYa, despite her long standing wish to see Hades host the show that night, had some pressing engagement at The Edge and backed out. Lu went to The Edge too, but eventually returned to the room to read and chill. 

Only Junie remained with us to see “Villians!”, hosted, as I mentioned by Hades from Hercules. It tells the tale of Hades as he struggles to prove to the Fates that he’s just as evil as ever. 

Afterwards we took her to have her autograph book signed by Princess Tiana, and she got the chance to dance with Goofy in the atrium!

With a big day ahead the next day, I think we were all in the staterooms and asleep by midnight.

Uncool Miller, Uncool

I just found out that Miller laid off my Uncle Kenny after 49 years of employment. That action denied him his goal of making it to the half century mark with the company he joined as a teen. #dislike

I Guess She Was Tired LOL

A Day in the Bahamas

If you haven’t been on a cruise before, let me just remind you that the food and non-alcoholic drinks are free. Free breakfast, free lunch, free late night pizza, free room service, free calories at your beck and call at all times. Provided you remain active and burn off some of your excess, it’s a grand thing. 

We started Day Five with the breakfast buffet at Cabanas on Deck 11 – out our stateroom, left, left again to the elevator, up to eleven and left a final time. It’s quite the spread, highlighted (for the kids) by Mickey Mouse Belgian waffles with whipped cream and strawberries. Yum. 

Soon tho, it was time to go ashore at Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, a sight that had appeared in our porthole as soon as we awoke. 

(We had an inside stateroom at the aft of the ship, but the ‘porthole’ was linked to a camera that transmitted to the screen whatever was actually outside at a given moment.)

We disembarked through security, being extra sure to take along our citizenship papers for the authorities. [ Although we had blown a lot of time and some money on the effort, not once were they asked to be seen in the Bahamas. ]

We’d paid for a glass bottom boat tour excursion, much as we had eight years before. Lisa remembered it as dull, but I had fond recollections and wanted to give it a go. Unlike last time, when an energetic Bahaman native gave the tour and fed the fishes oatmeal, this one was run by a heavily tattooed Hispanic American who tossed a few slices of bread overboard. 

Not quite the same ambiance. 

We started the trip on the main deck, where the highlight was some free fruit punch, but I soon meandered upstairs with the kids to the ‘viewing deck’, and I’m glad I did. In the open air the trip was much more exciting. Just as a tour of the harbor the trip was worth the cost. We saw military vessels, legitimate shipwrecks, houses owned by Oprah Winfrey and J.K. Rowling, and lots of gorgeous sights. Over the rails the kids saw schools of fish, a stingray, and more. 

Lauren drove me crazy. She’s a bundle of energy and sometimes common sense leaves her, and more than once I thought she’d hop right over the rail and into the water. I was very grateful when Lisa came upstairs and gave me an extra set of eyes to watch her. 

[In the picture where Junie is standing by the pole, note the woman in the gray dress kneeling with her back to the camera. Along with two other Asian women in her party, she insisted on leaning so far over the railing that their dresses rode up, showing the world their panties. While normally I’m in favor of such things, I thought it inappropriate given the time and place.]

The actual glass bottom portion of the trip was a bust. We were escorted down to the viewing room but didn’t see much more than we had over the rails, and certainly less than when we snorkeled later in the cruise. 

Keep in mind this wasn’t a Disney excursion, but a private party. The men’s room was broken, as was the toilet in the ladies room. The latter didn't stop people from doing what nature demanded, and by the time the lady in front of me had a chance to use it it was disgusting. Instead, she held her young daughter over the sink to urinate (or so she told me). I don’t blame her. When it was my turn, I peed in the sink too, rather than overflow the nasty multi-person mess that was the toilet. Yech. 

After the viewing and the restroom fiasco, the tour guide ran a trivia contest where the kids each won a Bahamas keychain. 

If the excursion sounds awful, it wasn’t. It wasn’t the best, but I enjoyed it more than the one in 2006. The kids seemed more enthused by the sights and the sea than I had hoped, and the views were breathtaking. It was worth the (comparatively) small amount we paid for the tickets. 

Much of the day lay ahead . . .

Zoboomafoo :(

Zoboomafoo,the lemur from the PBS show, has died. RIP.