Sunday, May 10th
Today was a day at sea where the ship was our home and our destination for the entirety of the day! As Jess and I are not early risers and have no intention of being so while on vacation if we don’t have to, so we were up somewhere around 10:15am. I was up at exactly that time as I was determined to hit the Windjammer and get a look at the day’s breakfast offerings to take back to the room before it closed at 11am. Jess, as usual, was not up for getting breakfast but I figured would be up when I got back, as that’s how our hotel-breakfast experiences usually go. I packed up a little purse with my SeaPass, phone (for pictures as there was no phone capacities on it out here on the water with no internet plan), a book (just in case), and headed out with a note left to Jess about where I had gone in case she didn’t know. But she probably would have worked it out anyway, as where else would I be?
I got some light fare, just a donut, a chocolate croissant, a slice of raspberry sweet loaf, 2 hashbrowns, some orange juice, a coffee (to put hot chocolate in as we brought some packets from home) and some water. As I was walking out with my two plates of food and drinks a woman spotted me and asked where I had found the donuts and I was happy to direct her to the circular table in the center of the second room where they put deserts in the lunch and dinner hours. Always happy to help a fellow pastry enthusiast! Back in the room, Jess was indeed up and dressed and we were ready to eat at our leisure then head out for some shuffleboard!
The deck on 4, however, had just been cleaned, so the shuffleboard court was, sadly, wet and therefore difficult to use. A woman sitting in a bench nearby told us she and someone else had tried to play but the friction on the board was too tough and they gave up. We debated getting a towel to clean the court, but decided that we would just play the game on Hard Mode and push the pucks REALLY hard down the gulley! We weren’t great at it, but we aren’t great at shuffleboard anyway so it was actually probably the same kind of game it would have been even if the court wasn’t wet. As we played we occasionally warned people going down the deck that the far side by the aft door to the interior was closed off, as they were still cleaning down there. We didn’t warn everyone, just people with small children who should know in advance because adults, as we knew and accidentally learned, don’t listen. We tried to warn one man but he, I guess, assumed we were just talking to the people right behind him, a family with small children who asked us how to Schooner’s Bar for a trivia game when we told them the current way was roped off, but he inevitably figured out what we were saying when he made it all the way down the deck then had to turn back around and make the long was back. Serves you right man.
Jess won after about 40 minutes of playing, possibly closer to an hour, but all we knew was it was past 11am and that meant the Windjammer was open for lunch! It was time for pasta, curry, and an attempt to eat something called a vegetarian meatloaf that was just a bunch of mushed vegetables like carrots and broccoli and cauliflower blended and shoved together into something that vaguely resembled a loaf but smelt awfully similar to baby vomit. So, wasn’t our thing. But we tried it and trying new things is good I suppose. Anyway, after having our fill it was time for the FlowRider! We went back to the room to change into our suits, and re-sunscreen up, then up we headed to the 13th floor!
Up there we had to sign a waiver after watching some safety videos and doing some stretches to prove our mobility, just so toe touches and bending and squats and we could do them but wow, we were weirdly out of shape for all those moves. Really felt some strings tugging for some of those aha! After that we stood in line and watched people take their turn and cheered them on as they followed the instructors guidance on poses to do and try. Some of the poses were for the camera for whoever was filming them, and some were more advanced techniques to try for fun, like going hands free, trying to spin, and popping up on your knees the boogie board. There are times when people do surfing on it, but Jess and I came round for the boogie boarding hours, though we did see someone doing some surfing just as we arrived as those hours finished up and that was cool!
Finally Jess was up! She struggled to get herself into the center, veering too far left or right so she kept falling out of the FlowRider boundaries, but she kept at it and she managed to do some stuff as she rode for her three attempts. When I was up I immediately got sunscreen in my eye, which made the process a little harder, but I did well enough on my first attempt that for the next two I got to jump in from the top rather than slide in from the side, which was neat! I did inevitably, of course, wipe out my three times and Jess and I decided instead of getting in line again, as we’d had our fun, to instead do the waterslides, called the Perfect Storm, featuring the blue Typhon and the yellow Cyclone. In line there were these kids, then eventually just one kid, who kept going up acting like they were joining someone in line only to just, ya know, get in line somewhere ahead, but the line was short and no one cared too much so we all just let it pass.
Jess and I rode both slides once, though never together as it never worked out that we weren’t paired with a single rider on either side and we didn’t care enough to ask to slide together, but we did that and it was fun! Typhon was faster, but Cyclone was prettier with lots of colors and lights on the way down! When we’d had our fun with that it was pool time! We got all the way in at the Solarium pool to do some light aerobics, ya know, to make room for dinner! The Windjammer was still open for lunch hours and we naturally had to hit it! When we got out to dry off I got some ice cream for us to eat, then Jess hit the Windjammer while I went down to the room to shower first. I was out by the time Jess returned with the food, mac and cheese, hushpuppies, a ham sandwich, and lo mien. Jess took her shower while I did some writing about the day and ate.
After our showers it was time for another outfit change to go see the ice skating show, called Cool Art, Hot Ice! It was on my list of MUST DO’S for the cruise and even though there were a few showings across a couple days, I thought it best to get it done as soon as we could, in case other fun stuff came up on the other days that we hadn’t thought about! We were a little tired after all we’d already done, but we got up and ready anyway and headed to the Studio B theater! Lots of seats available when we got there, though they filled up quick, but we had a great view of the rink! The show was lovely! The couple that did some couple’s skating were the most talented and coordinated, but everyone did great! There were two falls, but the man and the woman who fell just got right back up and kept going to cheers from the crowd! That’s the way to do it! Just keep going! No other choice!
After the show it was total madness out in the art gallery that the theater lets out into as well as by the elevators! Jess and I ended up going up a few floors before we attempted to catch one because it was such a line down where we were! At one of the stops we ended up at before we found a floor we could catch an elevator on this woman got out of an elevator a man before us had just squeezed onto, whining and wailing about people not acknowledging the elevator is full and that those people are so stupid and wah wah wah like Jess and I, two strangers, care about her problems. Go whine to someone you know, or better yet, get over it? A show just got out, a big one, and lots of people don’t wanna wait for an elevator. The ride is less than 3 minutes, even if it stops at every floor, chill? So we had a laugh about her as we finally caught an elevator on 9 to get to 13 where we were going for some rock climbing! As we were getting hooked up the guy asked us if we had done any rock climbing before and we both made the same joke of “Not well, but yes!” and the guy looked so tired and said “Just a yes is fine” like yeah that’s fair aha.
Jess took course 1, I took course 2, and we did pretty good! I got to the 1st bell on 2 while Jess got to the 1st on 1, then we switched and I got to the 2nd bell on 1 while she got to the 1st on 2. All of those words and numbers mean something, but don’t worry to much about it. The point is I did pretty darn good and Jess did good too but not as good as ME, which is all that you really need to know. With our hands shaking and arms sore but in high spirits, it was time for more food as it was dinner time at the Windjammer! Once again, people lined up for the first buffet, like clowns, but we skipped all that and poked in and out where we pleased, getting more mac and cheese, some tiki masala, a cream puff, a chocolate cappuccino cake slice, and of course some water. We decided to bring the food back to the room to relax but when we got back I remembered I’d wanted to get that map of George Town, Grand Cayman that was supposed to be available at the Promenade at 6pm, so off I went for that and some tea for Jess, cause she forgot to get some at the Windjammer.
I got the map, but I couldn’t find where the hot water was in the cafe, because I am stupid, so I just went back to the Windjammer for the tea and some more water then returned to the room to eat and check out the map. Grand Caymon wasn’t a particularly important stop for Jess and I, so we weren’t really making big plans to do anything but explore a little bit and maybe find a beach nearby to chill at after getting a little wifi if we could. The Cruise Compass was delivered around this time after Jess called about it again so we added that information to our planning. With that sorted we took a look at the TV to see what it offered and found a channel called “Movies Now and Then” which we both thought a funny name, but we also found a livestream of the front deck of the ship so we put that on as well as Pollyworld in the DVD player and ate and rested before our 8:15pm dinner slot!
It was Dress Your Best Night and we had our two Swan Lake dresses ready to go for the evening! Dressed our best, we headed up to 4 to get to 3, as we knew now we had to do, and checked out everyone’s clothes. Mostly the women were dressed quite nice, with a few exceptions, but the men were tragic! It was honestly so embarrassing seeing so many woman dressed to the 9’s while the man beside them was dressed the same as their children, just pants and maybe a polo top. Like really? You couldn’t wear something nice for ONE dinner? And your girl put in that much effort for you to wear that? So lame. We did, however, see that the people in front of us in line had walkie-talkies with them to communicate with other members of their party who were elsewhere on the ship and Jess and I were quite delighted by that! A fun idea for people who know there’s no other way to communicate on cruise ships!
For dinner, Jess had the Caesar salad, the lamb masala, and an apple cobbler, while I had the butternut squash soup, the pea mint risotto, and chocolate cappuccino cake, which was essentially just a larger slice of the cake we had in the Windjammer earlier. The butternut squash was a little on the weird side with a lot of seeds in it, but the food was still all very good and we were very full as we headed out to get some ginger and lemon green tea from the cafe on 5. Back at the room we had the tea and did a little more relaxing before heading back up to the Promenade for the 70’s Disco Party!
The whole Promenade was stuffed with people for the big dance party where dancers lip synched up on a performance bridge and we all danced and sang along! Lots of fun, even if some people in the crowd were just kinda... standing there? Looking confused? Like, if this isn’t your vibe you can go, you don’t have to be here. We’re all tryna have fun and you’re kinda killing the vibe folks. But they did NOT kill the vibe and we had a blast dancing and singing and making merry! The whole thing lasted about and hour and then, at last, we returned to our room for the last time for the day to put on Pollyworld again and go to sleep.
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