Stoked to finally be onboard a cruise that I’d booked and re-booked 3 times over the last 3 years, it was time to celebrate; to party; to EAT; to tour…
Isn’t it appropriate to start with a glass of champagne for sail away? (This is a rhetorical question.)
But first a few housekeeping items to take care of. All that cumbersome baggage needed to be dumped, even though by now we had shed ourselves of the heaviest of it all. I do appreciate the bell services that cruises offer to get your stuff delivered. We made it to our low-budget cabin and wondered if there’d been a gigantic mistake.
This is what we saw:
How were 4 people going to fit on 2 beds?! I mean we all liked each other well enough, but… Just no. The little couch was a fold out, but that was still not going to quite cut the mustard. (Which reminds me of “cut the cheese” which is a story I don’t want to forget to tell; if I do forget, could someone please remind me?)
Prematurely incensed, I was this close to picking up the phone to call our cabin steward, but one of us… I’m not even sure who now, looked up.
Ahhhhh, there it is.
Obviously, Mikki and I were relegated to those, but we wouldn’t see them until after dinner and turn down service. So it was actually PULL DOWN service. We watched our required muster video and tapped “I watched it.” for the whole party then went to find a snack. On the way, we also tapped in at our muster station and were taken off the naughty list.
Mikki and I had to visit the Customer Service desk to see if she could be added to one of the shore excursions that I’d booked but was full by the time she tried. Luckily, there was one spot left and we were so happy this worked out! It was also nice that they applied the cost of the one she was able before to book to the new one, so there wasn’t much more OOP for the new booking.
After that, we all explored the ship a little to get the lay of the land. Well, okay, not technically land, but you know. There were some very interesting pieces of art for sure, but truth be told, Holland America, the line I took to Alaska a few months ago, has the art thing won in spades. My favorite was this one… a real ego booster when you’re half naked at the pool.
We still had a few hours before sailing so were able to find just the right place to watch everything and be comfy, and all too soon it was time to get things moving! Being the nerds we are, we found ourselves perched over the rail geeking out over the tugs and pilots and the whole 180* turn that the ship did inside the breakwaters. Pretty cool stuff, ya know.
Oops! Time for another drink! (They’re ‘free’ with the purchase of an $2100 cruise).
They had a special going on for 30% off in the specially dining steakhouse if you booked for the first night, so we did. For $30 we got an all you can eat deal that we couldn’t pass up. It’s an occasion to get a little dressier, so I put on one of my casual dresses (no photos of any of us; we were SO terrible at this!) and we all promenaded down to the Tuscan Grill. Our reservation was for 6:30 and to our complete surprise, the place was nearly deserted. I thought to myself, uh oh, this can’t be good…
We were given a nice table and left to peruse the menus.
In the end, we got a small charcuterie and some bruschetta to start. Both were fantastic! We ordered a bottle of some Montepulciano Tuscan Blend wine as well. The sunset we were treated to made for a little slice of Heaven on Earth.
Sadly, I fell down on the job of getting photos of our mains. I know that I got the Snapper with Rosemary Sauce and Mashed Potatoes (the one photo I did get), Mom got the 9 oz. Filet, Dad, maybe? got the Ribeye, and Mikki ordered the Filet as well with a side of Lobster Mac and Cheese. Maybe. The only things that I can say for sure about the mains are that Mikki was grossly disappointed in the Mac and Cheese, but the steaks and my fish were quite good. Turns out, this would be our best meal by a very, very wide margin and we probably should have done the upcharge and eaten here for all of our meals.
Of course, we were far too full for dessert, but ordered 5 of them anyway. These had mixed results.
To share, we got the Spumoni Donuts, a strawberry shortcake, fig gelato, a crème brulee, and some sort of panna cotta which isn’t on the menu anymore. Everything was really good, except the donuts in the donut dish which were stale beyond being edible. The sauce was other-worldly though. Funny how dessert can always seem to find a way into an already overly stuffed tummy.
The entire next day was a “sea day” which gave us plenty of time to relax and decompress after some hectic and stressful travel the days before. If memory serves, and more often than not these days it does not, Mikki and I found our way into the pool and hot tub, we napped, and we found what would be our favorite pre-dinner act to sit and watch- a husband/wife viola and cello duo who played gorgeous classical. My dad had a ton of requests, some of which they could play, others they “promised” to learn. Our favorite was the Offenbach Number 50, Opus 2. Crazy good!
We also found ourselves at the first of many trivia games. We won that one- the only one we’d win the entire cruise. We had a great time enjoying many of the onboard activities. But for today, we’d be happy with very nice dinner, a little trivia, and a great night’s sleep!
One regret I had while on this trip was that I didn’t bring a book. I’m just not much of a fiction reader at all but did find that I had some extra time that I wished I could fill. I even asked for recommendations from y’all, but sadly, I ran out of time to actually follow through and buy one. We did get “free internet” for the cruise, but almost EVERYTHING was blocked including YouTube, so basically the only thing you could do was Facebook or IM. There was a small library, but I never bothered to make my way down there, so I guess it wasn’t that important in the end.
The next day we’d be in our first port by the time we woke up. So stay tuned for Olympia/Katakolon Greece!!