Stephanie and I both slept in a little today. Our late night “party” in the Explorer’s Lounge had kept us up much too long. But we did have fun!
We had another sunny morning, and the seas were not bad, there was a larger swell, so the ship was rocking some, but not badly. The wind is still from our stern, so it is really nice out on deck.
We headed up to the World Cafe for breakfast at about 9:00 AM. It was not crowded, so it was very peaceful. We decided to try a few different things for breakfast since both of us had a bit of upset stomachs yesterday afternoon. We were thinking it was the fried eggs, they use a lot of oil to fry them in and they are a little greasy. It was about the only thing we both had yesterday, so we going to try something else. It certainly could have been the large lunch we ate yesterday, but we had different things other than the fried calamari. Who knows, but it did have an effect on both of us, whatever it was.
We both had scrambled eggs today, and I opted for the bacon over the sausage, and I had a yogurt to see if it would help.
After breakfast, we went for a casual walk around the decks, trying to find somewhere in the shade since the sun is so bright and hot. It has been 79 degrees for the past couple of days, which is nice, but hot if there is no breeze. We thought we would try and do some laundry today, and hopefully this will be the last laundry of the trip. We only have 6 more days, so we should be able to make it that long without doing laundry again. The issue we have is that although we have plenty of clothes, half of them are of no use to us because they are for much colder weather like we had in Barcelona. We are having to reuse our warm weather clothing on this part of the trip.
We stopped by the laundromat on the way back to the room and found one open washer and two that were just a few minutes from being done. We headed back to the cabin and gathered all of our dirty clothes up, and changed into our exercise clothing. Our plan was to walk laps while the clothes were in the washer. I headed to the laundromat to grab the one open washer to start our dark clothes, while Stephanie gathered up all of the whites back at the room. We started the one load, and then waited for the person(s) to come and remove their clothes from the other two washers, which were now done. Unfortunately, we had to wait about 15 minutes for them to show up, it was two older ladies and they obviously had not paid attention to the time they needed to be back before their washers stopped.
We got the load of whites started, and Stephanie set a timer on her watch for the first load’s remaining time. We headed to Deck 2 to walk laps. On the first lap, we saw Angie and Tony sitting at the stern, which was their daily routine. We visited for a couple of minutes and then continued walking our laps. We were not going to be able to do much more than 5-6 laps because of the short amount of time we had to get back to the washer.
After 6 laps we headed back to Deck 4 to the laundromat and only had to wait a couple of minutes for the first load to finish. By the time we got everything into the dryer, there was not too much time left on the second washer, so we just decided to wait there for it to finish. In the meantime, an older couple came in to do a small load, and we helped them to figure out the washing machine controls and the separate automated soap dispenser operation, which is a bit tricky if you have never done it before.
The second washer finished and we loaded those clothes into a dryer and then removed some of the shirts from the initial dryer load, which had dried enough to remove the wrinkles. We hung those up in the cabin to finish drying and then set another timer to come back for the rest of the drying clothes.
We headed up to the pool bar to try and get Gore, the bartender there, to make me a bloody Caesar with Clamato juice. We passed by the bar earlier today and asked him if he had the Clamato and he told us he had one can. Unfortunately, he was not there so we headed to the World Cafe Bar at the stern to have Milos make it for me. He did not have Clamato, so he had to send one of the bar stewards to the pool bar to get that can. I finally had my Bloody Caesar made, and it was good. Stephanie had a peach Bellini and we relaxed at the bar waiting on our clothes to finish drying.
I was getting ready to order another Bloody Caesar when someone else came to the bar and saw the can of Clamato sitting out. He then requested a Bloody Mary with half Clamato and after that was made, there was not enough for my second Bloody Caesar. Milos requested two more cans of Clamato for the ship’s supply and we waited for them to arrive. Those cans were initially sent to the wrong bar, they went to the Living Room Bar on Deck 1. That bar had to send someone up to Deck 7 with the Clamato cans. I had never worked so hard for a drink!!! When I finally got my second Bloody Caesar, another person came to the bar, saw the Clamato Juice can, and requested a Bloody Caesar for himself. This was all pretty funny, we joked that we needed to cover the cans so no one else would see them. Apparently, there is not much of a supply of Clamato Juice onboard, and it is not generally promoted at the bars. Now we can add Clamato Juice to the poor inventory on this ship, as well as the Seagram’s VO that has run out and the Diet Cokes that never were available.
While all of this was happening, the timer on Stephanie’s watch for the dryers had expired, so she had to go down and get the clothes out of the dryer while I was waiting on my second drink.
Once the laundry and the morning cocktails were done, it was about time for lunch. We had decided to eat at the pool grill today, and we both got burgers, a few fries, and a few onion rings. By far, this is the best pool grill on any ship we have eaten at. The burgers are cooked to order, and they are really good. We both had beer with our lunches today, the first beers of the trip.
We met a coupe at the long table we were sitting at for lunch, and realized they were a couple we had talked to a few days ago at the Living Room Bar on Deck 1 that were from Wyoming. We had not talked long the first time, and so we did not really remember them, but they had remembered us. We had a good conversation with them before they needed to leave.
We headed back to the cabin to put on sunscreen and our bathing suits and headed back to the main pool area to sit out in the sun. There was a pleasant breeze, and some clouds to break up the hot sun. Stephanie took a long nap, and I may have dozed off a couple of times. I know I woke myself up snoring one time and decided I needed to stay awake so I would not embarrass myself with the snoring in public.
We stayed out at the pool until about 5:30 PM, and then headed back to the cabin to get showers. Tonight we have reservations in Manfredi’s and we plan on going about 6:30 PM to the Living Room bar for a pre dinner glass of wine. We went out on the balcony first and saw that there were quite a few clouds around us and we could see some rain showers in the distance that the ship was heading towards. There were periods where the sunshine was beaming through the clouds and the rain showers and it was quite pretty. We stayed out on the balcony as the ship passed through the rain showers. It was not going to be a good sunset, there were far too many clouds right on the horizon, but the skies were beautiful with the sun periodically streaming through them along with the rain.
We got showered and dressed for dinner and got down to the Living Room Bar on Deck 1 at about 6:40 PM. It was pretty crowded, there was live music being played in the Atrium, it was the piano player being accompanied by the violinist, and was nice to listen to. We had our one glass of wine and decided to go to to dinner about 7:10 PM. We were not sure how our “open” reservation was supposed to work since we did not have a specific time for dinner. We had to wait for a table to be set up and it was worth the wait, we were seated at a table for two right next to a window. It was very quiet in the corner of one section of the restaurant and we were glad we were going to have a great location for dinner tonight after the last couple of noisy seating’s in the main restaurant.
Our waiter was Josephine, and she was great. She was fun and energetic, and did a great job. We had fried calamari for appetizers, and I had the Pasta e Fagioli soup. It was a little bit of a repeat from our last dining experience here, but it was good enough to have again.
For the main course, Stephanie had a mushroom risotto, with a side of creamed spinach, and I once again had the Florentine Rib Eye steak, We split an order of the pasta special, ravioli stuffed with lamb, in a lemony cream sauce. It was good, but the lamb was a little heavy for a filling. We had the Coppola Zinfandel once again with our meal, it is a really good wine.
We were full, but we still ordered dessert, We split a serving if chocolate gelato, and I had my Limoncello.
We really enjoyed our dinner tonight, but it was quite filling. We finally got up from our table and headed to the entrance to go to the Living Room bar to get an after dinner drink. As we were walking out, we ran into Angie and Tony, they were also just leaving Manfredi’s. We had not seen them in the restaurant, they were in the back section and we were in the front.
The four of us got a table near the bar and had a round of drinks and enjoyed some conversation in a more quiet setting.
We all decided it was time to go up to the Explorer’s Lounge and visit with Gojko, the bartender there. Shane and Julian were already there with a few other people who always come there late at night. We had a lot of fun again at the bar and stayed until closing at midnight. We gain an hour of time back tonight, so it was not as late as yesterday when we headed back to the cabin if we took into account the time change.
It had been a good day. We have one more sea day tomorrow before we arrive at St. Martin.