Well, it was inevitable, we had to come face to face with reality that this is the last day of our cruise and of our trip. Tomorrow will be a painful travel day, full of waiting and probably some travel stress.
I woke up about 6:15 AM, but went back to sleep for another 30 minutes before I was ready to get up and get going. I did my usual coffee run on Deck 1, but today, I mixed it up with a raspberry croissant.
I had hardly done any blog writing yesterday for yesterday’s post, so it took me a while to get it done while I sipped on my coffee. The Atrium around the coffee bar was quite crowded today, I was not really sure why other than we had a time change last night, and maybe people were just up earlier because of that.
At around 7:45 AM, I was done writing and headed back to the room. Stephanie was up, and we got ready to go and get some breakfast from the World Cafe. After breakfast, we just wandered around in the shade looking out at the calm water. Today was the calmest the seas had been for the entire cruise, almost flat calm. After about an hour, we thought the room should be ready, so we headed back to the cabin to do a little packing. Our cabin steward Irene was still cleaning the room, so we walked around for about15 more minutes to give her time to finish.
When we got back to the cabin, it was ready, so we started the dreadful task of packing. We first packed all of the cold weather clothes we had brought for our time in Barcelona. We had not used any of those items since we had left Barcelona, wishing we had packed more for the warmer weather we were having crossing the Atlantic. Thank goodness for the free laundromat on the ship.
We filled both suitcases with all of the clothes that we were not going to need for the rest of today, tonight for dinner, and for our travel day tomorrow. We will be leaving temperatures in the upper 70’s in Ft Lauderdale and arriving in temperatures in the high 30’s to low 40’s when we get home. It will be hard to wear clothes for that large of a swing in temperature, so we will need to have some layers to put on once we arrive at the Columbia Airport.
We got everything we did not need packed into our suitcases, and will complete packing one of our suitcase this evening after dinner. We will get it as close to the 50 lb. limit as we can using our luggage scale and hope that we will not exceed that weight on the second bag that we will keep in the room and pack with our last remaining items in the morning. We will have to take that one off with us in the morning. We don’t have a carry on suitcase to use for that purpose, but it would be difficult anyway, my toiletries bag needs to go in the checked luggage due to items packed in it that exceed the 3.4 oz liquid limit volumes, or are considered “sharp”, like our corkscrew.
With the majority of the packing completed, we headed up to the World Cafe bar to see Milos, and thank him for his service with a monetary token of our appreciation. Stephanie had a Peach Bellini, but there was no more Clamato on the entire ship for me to have a Bloody Caesar, so I opted for Vodka and cranberry. Now, apparently we are responsible for consuming all of the Seagram’s VO AND Clamato Juice on the entire ship. We wondered what we needed to drink next to hit the jackpot for making them run out of something else. Wait, maybe we could use the Diet Coke that they never had any of as the third jackpot winner, a trifecta!!
We did not stay long, it was almost 1:00 PM and we needed to eat lunch. Nothing in the World Cafe looked all that great, so we headed to the Pool Grill and had one of their great cheeseburgers, with onion rings and fries. Once again, we ate too much there, but it was so good.
After lunch we tried to find somewhere to sit in the partial shade, but most of the shaded tables were already taken, so we just went to the Pool Bar and had a beer. Gore, the bartender there, makes fresh juice slushies everyday, and the flavors vary. We tasted one for today that was Apple/Strawberry, and it was pretty good.
We headed back to the cabin to rest a bit, we were tired form staying out too late last night. We spent some time on the balcony watching the island of Cuba go by. There are a lot of large yachts taking this same route, but heading south, and it was our first time seeing that many mega-yachts underway. We are taking the Old Bahama Chanel Route back to Ft. Lauderdale, and it is not the normal route to/from the Caribbean Islands for the newer cruise ships sailing out of Miami and Ft. Lauderdale. It is a little longer route, but it is much more protected form the winds and waves
Tonight, we are going to a farewell dinner at 6:00 PM with all of the people we have been hanging out with over the past several days. There may be as many as 8-10 people, and we are going to The Restaurant, the sit down dining room. Everyone wanted dinner to be early to give us enough time to pack afterwards to meet the 10:00 PM deadline to have bags out in the hallway for collection.
We were ready for dinner by 5:45 PM and headed down to the Living Room Bar on Deck 1. For the second night in a row, it was really crowded. We got a couple of seats at the bar after a couple left and waited for the rest of the dinner party to arrive. In a bit, Angie and Tony arrived, as well as several other’s that were eating with us tonight. We were not sure how many in total would be going to dinner until Angie told us. Somehow, the group had grown to 13 people, and we were not sure who all was coming.
At 6:00 PM, we headed into The Restaurant, and were seated at the far end, nearest to the stern of the ship. There is a large round table there that is apparently used for the Captain’s party if there is a Captain’s Dinner. It was very large and was easily able to handle our dinner party size. The only issue was that it was so large, conversation across the table was very difficult. We all kidded that it was like being at “The” round table, as in King Richard’s Round Table.
There were several waiters assigned to the table, and the Assistant Wine Steward, Andrey, was there to take our wine orders and serve the wine. We had seen everyone who came to dinner before, mostly in the Explorer’s Lounge, but had not really spent time with all of them. It was kind of a ripple effect of invitees inviting others to come from what we thought was the original guest list. There was some consternation about one additional guest who had been invited and had not officially been added to the final count, and where that person would sit if she actually attended since the table was not set up for another person. She did not show up, so that did not become an issue.
Dinner was good, albeit loud at times since we had to talk across such a large table. We were seated next to Angie and Tony, so most of the time it was a close conversation between the four of us.
I had the Minestrone Soup for an appetizer and Stephanie had a brie baked in a flaky phyllo crust. I had the lamb shank for the main course, and Stephanie had a pasta dish. We had the Italian wine from Sangiovese that we had drank the other night. Of course, Stephanie had the New York Cheesecake with strawberry topping for dessert, and I had what was called a Fancy Brownie on the menu.
Everything was good, and for a large party, the service was great. We took a few group photos, and then Stephanie and I excused ourselves, we wanted to get back and finish packing so that we could get our one suitcase out by the 10:00 PM deadline, and still have enough time to meet for a drink or two in the Explorer’s Lounge afterward, without staying up too late.
We had to go ahead and pack the clothes we wore for dinner, and then change into our travel clothes for tomorrow to minimize what we still had to pack in our one remaining suitcase. Stephanie broke the “no jeans” rule for the dress code after 6:00 PM, that was what she planned to wear to travel in tomorrow. We were willing to take the chance that she would not be thrown off the ship on the last night. Shane, Julian, Michael, Tony and Angie all were at the bar for the last night, and we had a couple of farewell drinks. It was getting late, and it was time to turn in for the night, so we all said our goodbye’s and we headed to the cabin.
We set an alarm for 5:30 AM so we could get up, eat breakfast, and get dressed without rushing. We put in an order for room service for a 6:00 AM delivery, the earliest time possible. We have to be in the Atrium by 7:15 AM tomorrow morning. We packed everything we could into our remaining suitcase to try and determine its final weight, and were a little surprised it weighed about 48 pounds, more than we thought it would after having maxed out the 50 pound weight of the bag we had set our for collection earlier tonight.
We turned in about 10:30 PM, sad that our cruise was almost over.