Monday, January 9, 2012

Cruise 2011: Day 5, At Sea

As we were leaving Jamaica, the captain announced that due to Hurricane Rina, we would be heading to Nassau, Bahamas, instead of Cozumel, Mexico.  This was exciting, since we had already been to Cozumel, but we hadn't been to the Bahamas.  Well, I had been there when I was five, but I don't remember a whole lot.  However, I was a little disappointed that we hadn't known sooner, so maybe we would have done an inland adventure in Jamaica and save sailing/snorkeling for the Bahamas.

We decided to take it really easy on this sea  day.  I think we might have even missed breakfast, LOL.  Not sure what we did in the morning, but we made it to Johnny Rockets for lunch.  This has a $4.95 cover charge, and then extra charge for some of the items (like the floats).

It's a yummy place.  We also had breakfast there one morning (that is free), and it was quite good, but very slow.  We also learned that "cream" means (artificial) creamer.  We had to be explicit.  I think Johnny Rockets was the only place we found cream; the coffee "shop" had 5% cream, I think.  I'm used to 10% minimum.
I think it was after lunch that we finally got to go ice skating.  On our first cruise, we thought we'd be able to go every day.  However, there was so much going on that we went only once.  This time, there was no public skating until day 5.  We were the first on the ice, and it was still really wet.  I nearly wiped out, and when I turned around, I watched Rob take a tumble.  He really whacked his elbow.  You do have to wear helmets, but other safety gear is up to you to bring.  The skates on the Allure were much, much better than on Freedom and Liberty (that was back in 2007 and 2008 though).
Later in the afternoon, the Captain said we'd be able to see islands.  I wish I knew what islands these were.  The above photo is how it looked with the naked eye, off our balcony (oh, I was loving the balcony!).
This is the "super zoom" on my new Canon.  Loved it!
I don't know what this white blob was.  It looked like an iceberg, but we were in the Bahamas.
Later, we saw this ship.  This ship, the Tamerlane, is a car carrier.  More info can be found here.  Fascinating that the picture in that link was taken in Australia, about a month after we saw it in the Bahamas.  I wonder what it's route was.  You can read in the link what it's route was after that picture was taken, but not before.

This day was the second formal day.  I don't remember exactly what the menu was, but it looked nice.




I'm wearing the dress that my mother wore at our wedding :)
We had cherries jubilee for dessert.  As a child, we had this a lot, but ours was always flaming.  This one wasn't :(
The entertainment for the night was a cover band/show, adbacadabra.  You don't get to know what the headliner show is before the cruise, and although I'm not a big ABBA fan, you know that Royal Caribbean has only the top entertainment!
You can catch a listen to the show on YouTube

It was a late night, but quite a nice day, relaxing on the ship and getting excited for our day in Nassau!