March 15 - at Sea

It's amazing how we hit a new level of "relaxed" on our day at sea. We traveled from Mexico to Jamaica
this day and there was absolutely nothing that we had to do. It was a lot of sitting in the sun, reading, sleeping, eating... you get the picture.

Because much of our day was spent in a state of unconsciousness, I'll take this time to give you a tour of the boat...

Our cabin wasn't much to speak of. It was very compact, but not uncomfortable. Our "maid" - is that what you call her? - was unbelievable. She - literally - tidied our room about 4 times a day. We felt so spoiled. Seriously, I wish we could have brought her home with us. Three kids can make a big mess.

The dining room "Ristorante Smerelda" was very nice. Even better was the service. Our meals were usually about 5-6 courses. We'd begin with an appetizer, then a salad, a soup, a pasta dish (apparently, this is the Italian way), followed by our entree and then dessert. It was no big thing to spend two hours enjoying your meal.


There were many smaller events in the Gran Bar Saliento. The dance floor was the main feature as people enjoyed the continuous acts from the little stage. CaraLee and I embarassed ourselves on several occasions, dancing with the "pros". That over 70 crowd can really get their groove on!


The Urbino Theatre was our evening haunt. Every night there was a show of some kind, some of a grander scale than others. This picture doesn't do justice to the decadence of the theatre. On our day at sea, they had a singer "Edmundo Rahme" belt it out for a couple of hours. We were less enthralled with that show than the late evening show. At 11:15pm, they did the Newlywed not-so-Newlywed Game. The crowd was on the verge of soaking their pants with each question and answer. The star couple was Charlie and his wife from Long Island. They'd been married for over 51 years and knew EVERYTHING about each other. The questions got quite personal, but they didn't flinch at all. Charlie (pronounced CHAH-lee) was quite the piece of work.

The deck was pretty impressive as well. There were three pools, 6 hot tubs, a pickle ball court, at basketball court, a running track and a bocce court. Our favourite deck amenity were the sun chairs, though.

One of the more impressive features of the ship was the 10 storey atrium with a piano bar at the bottome. The picture probably won't do it justice (have I said that before?) but it was pretty spectacular. (picture to come... technical difficulties)