Sunday, or Barbados

So, as many of you already know, Chris and I have been to every single island on this trip at least once,
Which means, we don't do many tours, or anything else for that matter.
This tour on Barbados was the only one we were planning to do for the whole trip, so it had better be good! We booked online with a company well recommended from our Cruise Critic group, Calabaza. Wondering how it worked out? Hands down, one of the best trips we've ever taken. The snorkeling was marvelous, and the afternoon sail and snacks were outstanding. They picked us up at the dock right at 215, and we were back about 630pm. Other than it being a bit chilly (so I put on a long sleeve shirt) I can't think of anything I would change. The crew was fabulous, Andrew the captain, and Chris and Keelie the crew were super friendly, funny and generally had a good time.
Our first stop was Caryle bay, where we looks for some turtles....must have been a busy day earlier, as they were not hungry for any sort of snacks Keelie had for them. But a few came by to check it out.

Next, off to the other side of the bay for the shipwreck marine park. There were 3 shipwrecks we snorkeled about, and the variety of fish was amazing. That's my flipper, btw.

Then back on the boat for a late afternoon sail up the coast in our rented catamaran.

This is Chris and Chris....once Chris figured out there was another Chris onboard, it became the joke it was "Chris" fault whenever something went wrong.

Back to the ship, got cleaned up and had a late dinner. Outstanding, but a bit slow since we were in the prime eating time.

Posted with Blogsy

Day at Sea

Well, this whole day was really quiet, we skipped the pool since that's where everyone was, and had another nice lazy day on the ship. I read a book, watched some bad TV and generally was a lazy bum. Here's the only photo for today's entry.

Posted with Blogsy

Curaçao Day 2

Alright, don't blame me, but I didn't get up until 10am. Please remember 4 hours ahead of pacific time, so I'm sure there is an excuse somewhere....
Spent the ENTIRE day the the pool....nothing to report except my feet.

We left Curaçao, and are currently headed to Barbados with arrival being Sunday. We had dinner at Luminae, the suite restaurant, and headed to the martini bar to hang out after. Apparently they let everyone bartend.

Soon, time for bed and the sea day tomorrow.

Posted with Blogsy

Curaçao, day 1

Well, the ship docked about 7am....we decided to get out of bed about 10am since the chair scraping above our heads had become rampant.
Got dressed and headed to the pool deck to stake out our claim for the day. I found some seats facing the correct direction (so we'd have sun all day) and not to near the front (so you didn't have to hear the bad music) and on an aisle, for easy egress. Plus near the bar...... :)

Those are my feet on the left.....
Grabbed some food, and then sat by the pool for multiple hours watching the world go by while reading a book. It's really amazing how much time you can spend doing nothing. About 3pm, we headed back to our room(since we are on the pool deck) and got our stuff to head out to shore for a bit. We took a few pictures, and no, I still don't own a selfie stick!

Right off the pier is the Rif fort

The Queen Emma floating bridge (a bit windy)

Random street in Curaçao.

The motorcycles belonging to our onboard biker gang.

Chris found out, by evesdropping at the bar, that the motorcycle costs $700 to load and includes fuel, sine they have to empty the fuel from the tanks at each port.  They are filled with nitrogen and secured like any other cargo.  Today they are spending the night on the pier, because they are going riding tomorrow.  So now you know! 

Posted with Blogsy

Aruba

Our first stop was Aruba. And I have nothing to say, we sat by the pool, it was windy and we went to dinner. I read a book by the pool and did very little else.

There are no photos, and we set sail at 8pm for Curaçao. Seriously, the chillest day ever.

Posted with Blogsy

Second sea day....

Well, we got up bright and early at 11am! Grabbed some breakfast and then headed back to our balcony for some quiet reading and music. Man, while the hike back to our room is substantial, it means it super quiet except for the engines, all you hear is prop wash. So I read for several hours, and about 330pm Cesar, our butler, showed up with snacks, and had to basically tap us on the shoulder on the balcony, because we were sitting outside, it was about 80 and gorgeous.

After some snacks, we got cleaned up for dinner -tonight was Qsine without cruise critic friends. Total of 10 people. Had to quickly hang out I the Martini bar for a bit, not a whole lot of action other than from the biker gang. My quote for the trip "there's no fish that can drink like an old fish" because they can drink, those old biker people.

Dinner was excellent, and there aren't any pictures so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Posted with Blogsy

Night 2, aka "evening chic"

Okay, so they've done away with formal night, which is nice because Chris is tired of lugging his tux along, and I'm tired of wearing spanx to dinner. Celebrity has introduced this "evening chic" thing, and no one is quite sure what that means, especially for women! So there were a wide variety of clothing choices this evening, some better than others.
We headed back to Luminae for dinner, and it was excellent. I had French onion soup (duh) with a mushroom and truffle risotto, followed by Cornish game hen. Umm, yummers! Chris had a small Caesar salad, the risotto and a brown butter,sage and spinach gnocchi, which was meh. Here's a fancy picture of formal night in the restaurant.

The Martini Bar is still a good hangout, but seems to suffer from a lack of lead flare bartenders...so it's not as exciting as last time. But they must have heard we were coming, and stocked up on the Grey Goose.....

We went and saw the new show "Topper" about a guy who collects interesting people and keeps them in his hat......okay.....that's a bit of an odd premise, but we can go with it. It was all very contemporary pop/rock music, so that was interesting.

Posted with Blogsy

Day 1 at sea!

Well, last night we lost an hour as we flipped the clocks ahead to Atlantic Standard Time. Plus we needed to get up by 830am to have some breakfast before attending a Cruise Critic party at 930am. We had some delicious breakfast at Luminae, pancakes, bacon and some crispy hash browns for me. We had just enough time to run upstairs to the Sky Lounge for the get together, where we met some of the people we have been chatting with for the last few months and who we will be taking a tour or having dinner with.

After that, back to the cabin for some rest and relax, I got my iPod and reading materials and satoutside on the deck for a few hours until it was time to eat again, up to the ocean view cafe for lunch and some of my favorite ice cream, the After Eight mint.

It's a favorite! Then back to the room for a shower and get cleaned up for dinner and a show!

Posted with Blogsy

First Night out

I don't have any photos from our first evening on the ship, dinner or anything else, so you'll just have to read my words instead.

Anyway, we had our sailaway out the channel, and then hauled out into the Atlantic Ocean. I'm not sure if it's the fact our cabin is all the way aft, or if we were just crossing the current but MAN there was some rocking and rolling going on! Really, we were turning and the whole ship was listing while we made the turn - not enough so that anything moved, but you had to stand a bit crooked!

We unpacked, and then decided to check out Luminae, the suites dining room. This is a new addition to the ships and I am a BIG FAN. They carved off a portion of the main dining room, and redid the interior. It's quite nice looking, and much quieter than any dining room I've been in. Almost like a specialty restaurant. I'll get some photos maybe tonight, since it's "Evening Chic" night.....this is the replacement night of formal night - so I'm sure it will be interesting. Back to Luminae - we had a great meal, they have a separate menu but will bring you anything from the main dining room as well. So I had my favorite, French onion soup, a tomato and burrata salad and beef filet. And a chocolate ganache/mandarin orange tart with a hazelnut crust. Now that was GOOD!!!

The show for the evening was a comedian and we missed it, but the people watching was spectacular from the Martini bar.....I've never seen so many loud, drunk people this early in the cruise!! There's a group of motorcycle riders onboard (they bring the bikes with them on the cruise to ride in the islands) and I think this was some of them (based upon the motorcycle tee shirts they were wearing). They were having a really good time, and as the night went on, more and more ship crew in fancy jackets kept showing up (security, looked like some head bartenders etc) to keep an eye on things. Nothing happened before we left to go back up to our room - so I am sorry I don't know the ending of that one.

And with the magic of Photoshop, I am still in the picture I post....!

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Sail away

Here's another shot of us leaving Miami! Chris has informed me he's tired of having to take all the photos and is threatening to buy me a selfie stick.

And inside the library

And the very civilized muster drill, in the Tuscan Grille no less.

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Miami, the next day

Well, no pictures of the marathon, we chose to sleep in. About 730 am we could hear the "whoop whoop" of people cheering the runners on, so I turned on the AC fan and went back to sleep. We had gotten late check out, so we had the room until 1pm. So we repacked the bags and here's a funny picture from last night. That's my kind of mini bar!

When we went out to go downstairs, the elevator was broken. :( So we hoofed it down 4 flights of stairs and had the maid call the bellman to help. Checked out and ordered our next Uber for the ride to the port. Between leaving the hotel room and getting in our room on the ship it was about 45 minutes! Easiest process ever. Here's some room shots.

 

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Made it to Miami and then some!

Well, I actually slept on the 90 minute flight from Atlanta to Miami, the flight was pretty quiet, not like the earlier one with all the wakey wakey turbulence. The 2 old ladies in front of us were crabby as hell, I think they were headed to Celebrity Reflection, so maybe they can say hi to my mom for me! :)

We picked up our luggage and grabbed a cab, I wanted to try Uber, but there was a significant wait so we did the cab, which was fine but cost 2x as much. The hotel is really cool, very nicely updated but super small, I think there are only 70 rooms. It's called the Winterhaven, Autograph Collection by Marriott. So I was looking for hotel rooms and they were all over $350 in South Beach....so I used Marriott points to pay for the room! Had just enough for an oceanfront king room. So, when we arrived, about 11am, it was not ready of course, so they took my cell phone and we did a walk about up and down Ocean Ave and Collins in Miami beach, with a stop at the Clevelander Bar for lunch and a drink. My, the people watching is EPIC here. It can also feel somewhat like a foreign country too....lots of international tourists and everyone wants you to eat at their restaurant as you walk by....and breakfast is served late....we were walking at 1130am and everyone was serving breakfast. So this is my kind of town, breakfast and lunch all at the same time.

So had some food at the Clevelander, which was decent bar food, but we really enjoyed the people watching. then came back to our hotel about 130pm, and holey hand grenade, our room was ready!!! What? Room 402, front and center. Here's a pic!

Decided it was time for a little nap, which was excellent. Then off to walk around, ended up walking about 2 miles, stopped at Publix to buy some diet tonic, and then caught our first Uber back to the hotel. What an excellent experience, I see why people are so fanatical about it. Took about 15 minutes, we dropped off our purchases and headed next door to try a new place called Madero Steak house, it's a Brazilian chain. The food was fabulous, they had excellent caiperoskas and I ate too much. But it was good! Back to the hotel, and had some nice drinks at their restaurant. The next stop was back to the Clevelander to check out the party scene. $10 cover for dudes, ladies are free. Drinks were expen$ive. We had a few and then did some people watching, and headed back to the hotel for the night.

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Atlanta and Snow?

Well, we landed about 30 minutes late due to wind, and it's 26 and snow flurries. What? It's cute decorative snow, so I don't think it will impact our flight to Miami. It's supposed to be 65 and partly sunny!

 

Posted with Blogsy

On the plane!

Well, we are almost ready to go, just waiting for a few stragglers. Never seen PDX this empty.....there are 4 flights going out after 10pm, so it's pretty slow.

 

Interesting, we are having to be de-iced.....something with the fuel in the wings being cold, because the carried extra due to the weather.

Posted with Blogsy

At the airport

Made it! And way early too, and the flight appears to be on time, which is nice considering the weather across the eastern US. So time to start the vacation with a cocktail! Cheers!

 

Posted with Blogsy