First sea day

I was up early and dressed quickly.  I grabbed my Bible and cameras and headed out. 

It was warm and humid and I loved it.  My camera did not, however, so photos had to wait.  I went to an MDR hoping to score some hot chocolate.  I picked Taste over Savor for absolutely no reason whatsoever.  The sit mid-ship on deck 7 across from one another.  They gave me a window seat and at that early hour there were very few other patrons. 

I headed back to the room after about 30 minutes and found my family had gotten up.
This is the deck on the room John and I shared with Johanna and Katriel: 12182.  The other stateroom was slightly smaller, but had an angled deck as it was the last stateroom of that category before the larger ones start: 12180.
As you can see, we were perfectly around the corner from Splash Academy, which was a great location. 





And we headed back down to Taste together.
It took a few minutes for a table for 10 to be arranged. 



 

I met a woman in the restroom who had a DCL lanyard on.  I chatted with her a few minutes.  She had 27 DCL under her belt, as well as oodles of numbers of every other line she could rattle off. She likes them all and said we’d love this ship.  She did say, however, she thought that when I got off NCL I would find I was within a few hundred dollars of what DCL would have been.  Seeing as how DCL base fare was almost $6,000 MORE than the NCL base fare I wondered out loud where she thought I would see the charges.  She was speechless.  She asked what kind of rooms I’d compared and was absolutely astonished we’d gotten the rate we’d gotten on NCL.  She also acknowledged that as a FL resident she never saw such gaps in pricing.  That’s not me boasting, that’s me overwhelmed with gratitude.  She acknowledged we’d saved a bundle and that we would nowhere come near that number.

Since I am mentioning restrooms, I want to say now how great their bathrooms are.  This ship is only two years old and you can tell some tremendous thought went into the design.  The bathrooms were large, easy to find, and plentiful.  They also had automatic toilet flushing, automatic soap dispensers, automatic faucets, and automatic dryers.  They also had automatic towel dispensers and garbage cans by all the exit doors, with signs that said to use a paper towel to open the doors.  All the enter/exit doors opened inwardly. 


We got to the sports deck and found it oppressively busy.  I sincerely hoped this wasn’t going to be our lot for the entire cruise. 

There are limited hours for each activity, and from pre-trip reading, I knew there was very limited hours for the bungee trampoline.  Although it was hot and we wanted to swim, we all reasoned that it was worth the wait to get this done now in case it wasn’t available later in the week.

Johanna was too small so she worked to conquer this thing.  It took her a while, but she made it.
I had to go back to the room to get shorts and socks for those not wearing them. 








By the time they each had their turns we were ready to melt.  The ropes course line was very long so we bailed on that activity in lieu of waterslides.

Two of the waterslides say no piercings or metal bathing suits whatsoever.  I had to skip that one that day because my suit had metal.  Tab had to miss them all together because her pierced ears were too new (and only recently healed of infection). 

The little girls played in the kids’ water area all day long.  It was a great set up IMO.  There was an inner, free form shape with about 6-10 inches of water and a slide.  There was an outer free form shape with sprayers and seats and such.  Along both areas were bench-style barriers that adults could sit on to watch the kids.  I spent many hours on the benches and in the water.  Right next to it was the salt-water family pool.  My above ground pool at home is bigger.  But it was never such kid soup that it felt dangerous to let Tabitha go into it.   There was a life guard by the family pool, and the waterslides were somewhat next to/above this set up.  There were adjacent bathrooms and this whole section was between two bars.  What was NEVER available were lounge chairs.  Chair hogs must have been out very early to claim these, too, I might add.

This first sea day was the most crowded we ever found decks 15 – 17. 

Around 2:40 P.M. Marie went to the Splash Academy to join her age group on the sports deck for some games.  Kids over 10 are allowed to check themselves in and out of the club.  The deal with signing out, however, is they have to have been there for two hours.

Did I mention I hung around the kids’ pool all day?  I love this kind of thing.  They are happy splashers, I am in the sun; it’s all good.


After 3 P.M. the boys queued to do the rock climbing wall.   They were the only ones who ever did it.  Maybe next time.


And, John and I stayed by the water.  Occasionally, we would head up to some slides with Tabitha, or go watch Marie play.

Around 4 P.M. we decided to head in to clean up for dinner.  We asked Marie to meet us in the stateroom by 4:45 P.M.

Our dinner reservations were for Teppanyaki at 5 P.M.  Our chef, Michael, kept us in stitches.  And while I can’t say it was all super yummy (some Asian food thrills me, other dishes do not) the service was amazing.  The maitre d’ for Teppanyaki had been in communication with Cher and Stewart had a wonderful, personal meal prepared for him out of sight.  But we all enjoyed watching our “Japanese cowboy” make dinner.

 

Every one got edamame (gag) and salty soup (gaggity gag).  (Everyone but Stewart.  He got a garden salad.  Lucky him.)

The Seaweed Salad was delicious. 

The meat and veggies were fantastic.  And the portions were enormous.  The assistant maitre d’ of Teppanyaki asked how are meal was.  With all the enthusiasm a five year old can project, Johanna said, “The chicken! is EXCELLENT! Yum!”  And it really was.

Dessert was lame.  But we’d fix that later. 

We tried to take some family photos.  I had visions of doing this after dinner each night.  Nope.  It was always crazy windy outside and/or my camera would be too foggy and need more time to warm up than we were often willing to take.  Meanwhile, inside was often too dark.

The boys went up to play mini golf, and the older girls went to their club.  So John and I took the youngest two to Savor for dessert. 


We really enjoyed meeting one of the supervisors in this restaurant.  He is from India and showed us pictures of his daughter.  On both the DCL cruise and this one, we were regularly approached by crew members who would talk with our kids.  They would ask how old and then talk freely with us about their children.  I am always so humbled that these folks bend over backward to serve us in this opulence, while they go 7-9 months without seeing their own children and families.  My kids loved to talk with these folks. 

We headed back to the room, and even with our clocks having turned back the night before we were tired, early.  Katriel was asleep by 9:15 P.M.  Wait.  Maybe it was 10:15 P.M.  That pesky time change…