At Sea

Day 5 (day 3 on ship) Today we have breakfast in the Buffet where I promptly find the Omelette Bar! Here, you don’t wait at the bar, but I am given a restaurant ‘beeper’ that sounds a signal when your omelette is ready. Tummy satiated, it’s off to explore this humongous ship.

What do you do when you come across a Merry-Go-Round on a cruise ship? Well, you ride on it, of course! Then a kid on a Zip Line flies overhead! We find the Aqua Theater in the back of the ship that we will attend later tonight. And a display showing how a Hobby Horse is made!

We find the “Ultimate Abyss” slide on the 16th floor near the back of the ship. It is a 10 story dry slide that drops you to the 6th floor in 30 seconds. So of course we have to ride it! It is a double slide so Elee and I race to the bottom. I barely eek out the win amid complaints that, “Mine wouldn’t start”, and “I got stuck at the beginning”, yadda, yadda, yadda, LOL. But it was nothing less than thrilling!

We find our way to the “Royal Promenade”, a shopping and entertainment ‘street’ that runs most of the length of the ship on Deck 5. It is impossible to even tell you are on a ship! We find a bar on Deck 6 that overlooks the Promenade and order a couple of drinks while we sit and people watch. Before we know it, a Pirate Show begins among the people milling about and approximately 30-40 entertainment crew put on a show that takes up 100 yards of the Promenade, full with pirate ship props and shark fins floating along the floor. Costumed swashbucklers of all kinds perform to the crowds delight and it seems that by random luck, we have positioned ourselves perfectly to observe the festivities!

We are overlooking a set of fountains that sprays water through colored lights while the pirate show takes place all around it. Elee steps away for a few minutes to use the facilities and when she returns, she exclaims, “When did the Fountain turn into a Bar?” I had been so busy focusing on the show that I never noticed a full on bar, the “Rising Tide Bar”, had dropped down upon the fountain from Deck 8! It turns out that it drops and rises several times per day and you can go in the bar while it is in motion!

The show concludes and a couple arrives with a travel version of the game, “Rummy Cub”. They invite us to join them and we play a round of the game. Our latest new friends, Donna and Randy, from Fort Lauderdale and Philadelphia and quite congenial and friendly.

We wander around more of the ship, even the elevator wells are something to look at! We end up in our cabin where we don our swim gear and kick back in a hot tub on Deck 15. After which we find a bar in the Promenade hosting a Travel Trivia game. We join in the game and don’t do as well as we thought we would but it is fun anyway. The bar is offering Happy Hour Margaritas and we imbibe some more!

We have already made dinner reservations in the Solarium Bistro where, true to their word, Maitre de Salem and Chef Alicia make and serve us complimentary Filet Mignon. Waiter Adhi from Bali takes great care of us and the meal is fabulous! Tonight, Elee joins me and we go back to the Globe & Atlas to listen to the guitar player, Ana. We take up residence at a table for 4 and before long, a brother and sister, Chris and Angie from Minnesota join us and we have another fun evening making more new friends!

At 10:30 PM, we attend the “Aqua 80” show in the water theater at the back of the ship. We made reservations for this show at home before we even left. This show is comprised of high flying aerial acrobatics and high diving from 6 stories up, all while the ship is in motion! Spectacular athletes perform all kinds of aquatic stunts and a few of them even fly over and behind the audience on aerial trapezes!

It is now midnight and tomorrow is a Port Day, so back to our stateroom we go!