Sea Day 1

We slept pretty well last night, we were certainly tired from all of the travel we did yesterday.

The seas were not rough, just a little choppy, but that helped to rock us to sleep last night.  Today’s weather forecast was for partly cloudy skies and 15-20 knot winds, but directly from our stern, so there was not a lot of rocking motion.  The only issue we have is that there is some kind of vibration on the whole ship, and it must be coming from one of the propellers.   It is cyclic in nature, but it is quite apparent, even for us on the bow of the ship.  The closet doors all creak from the vibration.

I got up around 7:15 AM and got dressed to go for some coffee and a muffin at the Living Room Bar on Deck 1.  It is usually a quiet place and I can work on the blog for a bit before going back to the room to wake Stephanie up.  This is my best time for writing in an undisturbed setting, other than a few people chatting at the bar while drinking their coffee.

I was able to work for about 45 minutes before going back to the room to wake Stephanie.  We got ready and headed up to the World Cafe for a buffet breakfast.  One of our goals is to go to sit down breakfast in The Restaurant at least once during the cruise, but it was not going to be the first day.  On the way to breakfast, we were finally able to meet our Cabin Steward Lunlang.  He was out in the hall with his assistant.

We had a nice breakfast and decided to head back to the room to get my computer so we could watch Sunday Mass since we will not be able to go to church today out in the middle of the Caribbean Sea!  The cabin stewards were in the room cleaning, which was nice, now we knew we would be done fairly quickly if we wanted to come back to the room in a bit.

We struggled to find a quiet out of the way spot to watch Mass on the computer, there were a few people everywhere we tried at first, and we did not want to disturb them with the sound on while watching the Mass.  We finally found a quiet place where no one else was, but there were quite a few people always passing by.  We watched most of the Vigil Mass from last night through the Corpus Christi Facebook page, we wanted to watch that Mass because it is the one we normally attend.  

We got about halfway through Mass before some people sat right beside us, so we packed up the computer and headed back to the cabin to watch the remainder there.  At least we knew the cabin cleaning was already completed and we would not need to leave for that.

After we finished watching Mass, our plan was to go and walk laps around the Promenade Deck for some exercise.  By this time, it was getting a little more sunny outside, so we put on some sunscreen knowing we would be out in the sun, and I especially needed to put some on my head after recently having had some surgery for, guess what, skin cancer removal on my scalp!

After walking our laps, we wandered around a bit, looking at the Christmas Decorations in the Atrium, and then heading to look out the stern on Deck 7 behind the World Cafe.  After that, we headed inside to the World Cafe Bar to try a late morning, well almost noon beverage.  Stephanie instructed the bartender on how to make her a peach Bellini the way she makes them at home, and I asked for a Bloody Caesar with Clamato Juice.  Of course, they had to go and get the Clamato from another bar, nothing new for us to experience, but at least they had more supply than last time on this ship, and it was in the larger bottles, not the smaller cans we had last year.

Neither drink was perfect, but it was a start in breaking in these bartenders to our tastes.  Mine was good other than it had way too much Wistershere Sauce in it, and I had not been asked about that quantity, so now I know I need to let them know for the next time.

After our one drink, it was already about 12:20 PM, and we headed to a table in the buffet to get some lunch.  Stephanie had looked at the lunch buffet menu for today on the Viking App on her phone, and several things sounded good, but in the end, the best part was a caramel cheesecake dessert.  Although several other things sounded good, like a shrimp PoBoy sandwich that Stephanie tried, it was just not that great.  We did have a couple of glasses of the white wine of the day, a Sovegion Blanc.  We stayed at the table for quite a while just watching people and the Ocean.

Finally, we decided to go and look at the jewelry store and the small clothing shop.  After visiting those and then going down one floor to visit the shop with colognes and perfumes, we were done with our window shopping.  At least I can try a couple of the colognes.  At first, we did not think they had testers to use for sampling the different colognes, but after we asked and were told where they were, we were finally able to see all of the testers, they were hidden in the back of each row of all of the different perfumes and colognes, maybe an attempt to hide them from usage, or maybe just to make the displays look better, who knows.

After that, we headed back to the cabin to grab a couple of things before heading up to the top deck to play putt-putt.  This was a rematch of our putt-putt challenge from last year where Stephanie thoroughly beat me every time.  This year was much different, at least for today’s two matches.  I was putting really well and pretty much dominated today’s play much like Stephanie had done a few times last year.  From there, we walked around before finding some comfortable padded seats on deck 8 near the stern of the ship.  We relaxed there for a bit, both of us drifting off a time or two.  It had been pretty cloudy when we first sat down, but then the sun got stronger and we did not want to get sunburned, especially on our legs where we had not applied sunscreen earlier for our walk.

We headed back to the cabin and Stephanie napped while I finished the post for yesterday, and for most of today.  

I then called Guest Services to cancel our included tour tomorrow in Cozumel.  We think we found enough information online to determine that there will be a 10:00 AM Mass tomorrow on Christmas Day at the Corpus Christi Catholic Church in Cozumel.  At least we will try to go to Mass for Christmas Day.  The excursion was scheduled to start at 9:30 AM, so our choice was one or the other, and we thought we would give it a try even though we could not absolutely confirm the Mass time.  We will just get off the ship at about 9:00 AM and walk to the church and check it out.  If we happen to miss the Mass, we will just explore the town and then head over to Pancho’s Backyard for some lunch,

We both got ready for dinner and since I was finished first, I headed down to the Living Room Bar on Deck 1 to get a pre-dinner glass of wine and hopefully find two seats at the bar.  Our plan was to go to dinner in The Restaurant, which is located on Deck 2 just a short distance from the Living Room Bar.  They do not take reservations per se, so we were planning to just see how bad the crowds were and head to dinner after a glass of wine.  Since it is Christmas Eve, we expected it to be crowded.

I met a gentleman at the bar and we started talking.  His name was Carl, and he and his wife Pam are from near Sacramento, California.  

Stephanie joined us a short time later and we all talked for a while before I thought we needed to go ahead and go to dinner.  They thought we were going to another restaurant, the Chef’s Table since we both took different routes to the Restaurant, and we joined back up again when we all got there on Deck 2.  There was quite a line waiting to eat so we agreed to eat dinner together, thinking we would get a table for four quicker than individual tables for two.  It was not much of a wait and we were taken to our table, which was near the exit of the restaurant, and in a generally quiet location.

Menus were brought by the wait staff as well as a wine list, and we were served water, but we all did not know it was water with “gas”, our server had not asked, and now we all needed them to change the water to “still” water.  They are usually in different colored carafes to distinguish one from the other, but the server brought the glasses over on a tray and we did not see them get poured out of the carafe.

Unfortunately, no one came back to the table for at least twenty minutes or more.  The Restaurant was crowded, but apparently, there was a shortage of staff to handle the Christmas Eve crowd.  Finally, someone came by to take our wine orders and we told that server about the water, and he got it changed out.  Then it took a while for the wine to be brought out, everything was painfully slow.  We all had planned to go to the Captain’s Reception at 9:00 PM, but now that was looking unlikely because we had not yet even ordered our food. and it was already after eight

After another 15-20 minutes, our food order was taken, and then a while after that, our food was served, but unfortunately, two of the items were switched between Stephanie and Pam.  Also, I had ordered a salad with my meal, but it did not arrive until I was about halfway finished.

The dinners were pretty good, Stephanie had Ahi Tuna and I had a Mushroom Risotto.    By the time we all finished with dinner and then ordered dessert, the restaurant was much emptier, most people had already gone to the Capain’s Reception. 

Dinner had been nice and we enjoyed talking with Carl and Pam, but dinner service was just way too slow, and the service was just not that good.  We are glad we are not on the World Cruise, it would be hard to fathom having that slow of service for that long of a cruise.  By the time we all finished, it was about 9:10 PM, and we all left to head to the Reception, hoping it was still going on and we were not too late to completely miss it.

We thought Carl and Pam were going to meet us at the Theatre, they had stopped off at the restrooms on the way.  We had gone back to the room first, also for a bathroom break.  And then we headed down to the theatre.  Carl and Pam did not show up at the Theater unless they had gotten there before we had.  We went inside and watched the very end of the last song of the show, and then talked afterward at the exit door to one of the entertainers who had also been our private lifejacket instructor on the day we boarded.

We headed to the Living Room Bar and found Carl and Pam there.  We did not ask what happened, we just told them good night and we headed to the Explorer’s Lounge for a nightcap.  There were not many people there when we arrived, so it was easy to get seats at the bar.  At 10:15 PM an entertainer started playing the acoustic guitar and singing some older 1970’s songs.  He was really good.

We only stayed for a couple of drinks before heading back to the room for the night.  Tomorrow, we are docking in Cozumel, and plan on leaving the ship around 9:00 AM to go and find the Corpus Catholic Church, and hopefully, attend what we think is their 10:00 AM Christmas Mass.

Footnote:  It was really odd that we never talked to and hardly ever saw Pam and Carl again for the entire cruise.  That was a first for us after having talked with them for so long and even had dinner together.  Maybe they just did not like the company at dinner, but it seemed to us that it went well.  I guess that is just people…….