Family Cruise 2014: Day 8, At Sea

On cruises, come the last day, people seem to fall into two groups:  those that vacationed hard at the start and are now sleeping away in their cabins, or those that took it easy at the start and are now running around trying to get to everything they thought they'd have time for later.  We're kind of in the middle.  We're pretty good at pacing ourselves, but four days in a row of going ashore (somewhat early), and we were not keen on starting day 8 too early.  The days are pretty long, if you go to any of the evening shows.  Many mornings on the cruise started off cool (especially the first couple while at sea from Florida), and this morning felt cooler too.  We were on our way home :(

First up was another attempt by the girls on the rock wall.  I think Nya made it to the top this time, but Meg didn't.  She got confused at one spot and just came down.

This is Lucy, above.  She did a great job!  I don't have a picture of Nya.

Megan tried a different route, but it was hard!

After lunch was a Q and A in the theater with performers from different shows, including a guy from Barrie, Ontario, in the ice show.  One thing that was brought up was that this ship (or, this class of ship--there's three, I'm not sure if it was that one ship or all three) has the largest live orchestra at sea.  There is 8, I think, on that ship, and other ships (including the larger Oasis class) have only 7, and only 5 on the smaller ships.  Several cruise lines do not even use live music in their shows...including Disney!!  How can you go to a theater show and hear recorded music?!

Royal Caribbean prides itself on its art collections on the ships.  Just walking down the cabin corridors, you'll find interesting art, with information plates.  In the elevator area, there is larger scale art, like this:

I tried to take the picture at the scale that you see it at while on the elevator.  A typical sort of still life, but what is the medium?

Mmmm....seems kind of stripey.

Super zoom to the rescue:

It's a mosaic made from spools of sewing thread!!!  How creative!!  There's a well known "knitting picture" that it reminds me of, Debbie New's "Granny Squares" afghan.  Mmmm.  Can't find a good picture on Google :(

Meg and I went for another skate at some point.  We kind of lost track of what everyone was doing, where they were, for most of the day.  LOL.  We had walkie talkies, but either people didn't take them, couldn't hear them, the batteries were dead, or someone else was on the channel.

We did miss the fruit and vegetable carving and the towel folding, and the Hip Hop dance class, LOL.

 The afternoon was spent on the pool deck, except Mum and Lou went to play bingo.  The kids had a great time with the two girls from Ohio that they had met earlier in the week.

I like this picture of Lucy underwater.  I'm glad all my kids like being in the pool.  They don't like swimming lessons anymore, but they're quite fine in the ocean or pool.

Dinner....

 There were some great dessert choices as usual.

 Hugh and Lucy really started acting more like siblings on the trip.  It was nice to see them start liking each other!

There was a Farewell show at 9:00....don't ask me anything about it :)

Hugh and Lucy were going to go to the Teen Room for the evening activities, with the Ohio girls, but Hugh wasn't feeling well, so they didn't.  That was fine, since we had to pack and get our suitcases out in the hall by 11pm, I think.  Earlier in the week, Guest Services told us that Megan's suitcase couldnt' be fixed, but they had a new one for us.  It was much larger, and seemed better at first (four wheels!), but then we found the inner pocket on the lid was torn.  And it had a terrible plastic smell!  Like my pink suitcase, it was hard to balance, and kept tipping over.

Someone suggested getting a picture of the suitcases in the hall, just in case something happened to them overnight.  Good idea!  People seem pretty honest though. Actually, this isn't all the suitcases--Meg's isn't here.  And there might have been another carry on size suitcase.

Despite needing to get to bed early, we didn't.  We had to say good bye to Lou and Nya!  As usual, the week (we even had an extra day!) went too fast.