Saturday, July 17, 2010

Cruise Vacation Blog Part Three

22 May 2010 Enchantment of the Seas Day Three: At Sea!

Here I am out on our balcony again. It’s partly cloudy and there is rain off in the distance.

We don’t have a lot planned today; we’ll probably hang by the pool most of the day. Tonight, we’re having dinner in the ship’s specialty restaurant, Chops Grille. You have to pay a premium to eat there ($25 per person) BUT everyone on Cruise Critic said it was well worth the extra money. So, why not? We have a late RSVP, though; 9:30 pm!

By the way, a fun (and cheap) activity, I discovered, is to go to the photo gallery and look at all of the dorky pictures of people. Ha ha! Seriously, I almost died when I saw the picture of us on our first night on board. Talk about both of us looking half-crocked; the only thing that made me feel better is that many people looked far worse for the wear than we did. Oh, and the ones of us last night were okay but I blended right into the fake background. Seriously, my dress was almost the exact same color; about all you could see of me was my teeth and my bling-bling. You’d think they could have chosen another fake background! No matter, we hadn’t planned on buying them, anyway.

According to the Cruise Compass, today’s drink of the day is a Bahama Mama. Yesterday’s was a Mango Tango. I wonder if all the drinks are gonna rhyme?

Later

As predicted, we spent the majority of the day in the Solarium. We had to sit at one of the tables for awhile until a few pool chairs opened up. No matter; we played Gin. It rained a bit and got quite humid in there with the roof closed; sort of like a sauna.

Dinner at Chops Grille was FANTASTIC. The food was certainly a cut above the stuff in the main dining room; sort of reminded me of the food on the QMII. I suppose one might wonder why not simply have that caliber of food in My Fair Lady every night but I would imagine it might be a challenge to do so with so many people/meals to prepare. Not that there is anything wrong with the food in MFL. Anyway, what we had was great. Mr. B also ordered a special bottle of Cabernet so, yeah, definitely yum-yum time.

Our waitress told us that the crew signs on for contracts of 7 ½ months and they work seven days a week! At the end of their contract, they get 2 ½ months off before returning to work (if they chose to return, that is). They don’t always get to come back to the same ship; they have to apply for the ones they like. Apparently, Enchantment gets a lot of interest.

We’ll probably join the Crown and Anchor Society (loyalty program) and become RCI fans. It will be interesting to sail on different RCI ships and compare. I’m not so sure, though, that I really want to go on any of the “monster” ships with 6,000 or more passengers. That might be a bit much. It would be nice to take a cruise every two years or so. It all depends on Mark’s schedule and the money situation.

Speaking of money, Mark is trying his hand at Blackjack. So far, he’s down $15. You’d think with his aptitude for numbers and memory, he’d do great. But, he’s not playing single deck, so, that could be a challenge. While he played, I wondered around and played a few games of video poker. I’m actually up right now by a whopping $1.25 or something like that. I’m just not a good gambler as I hate to lose.

Tomorrow we will arrive in San Juan, our first port of the cruise. As I’ve never been there, I’m looking forward to getting off the ship and wandering around a bit. We did not book any sort of excursion or tour since mom and dad told us they had a fun enough time simply doing stuff on their own. Plus, we won’t be there all that long. I suppose if we like it well enough, we could always go back for a longer visit. That is one of the positive aspects about cruising, I believe; the ability to check out a lot of different places with the eye to determining if you’d ever want to return. No danger in booking a week somewhere, discovering you absolutely hate it, and then being stuck there a week (sort of like our trip to Puerto Vallarta two years ago!)

Tonight's towel creature...oink oink oink!

Didn't take any other pictures today! Amazing!

Mrs. B

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