Sunset: Day 49 (At Sea)

I have nothing exciting to report for today, except to say that it was a truly relaxing one. We went to the wine tasting at 3pm, and Skywalkers about 5:30pm, but are foregoing formal night and wearing regular dinner clothes are having dinner in Cafe Caribe, the dinner buffet. Luckily for me, they had seafood stew (ciappino), my very favorite, so I'm happy. We watched this beautiful sunset from the Deck 7 promenade before dinner, and are going to see Motor City tonight, followed by the Saints game on the big screen.
Tomorrow: another day at sea, and then turnaround day in Fort Lauderdale. Can we handle 50 more days of this? Oh yeah!

Christmas dinner

I attended 5pm Mass and afterwards we went to dinner. As we walked into the dining room, we immediately noticed that we had CANDLES on the tables. Fire is the greatest danger at sea, and open flames are strictly prohibited except in special cases such as a candle on a birthday cake or candles on the altar at Mass. But a lit candle on every table is a very special treat. We also had English crackers on each table. They contained a paper crown and a small toy (mine had a whistle).
There was a special Christmas dinner menu and dessert menu. We couldn't decide between the desserts, so we ordered all five and had a taste of each.
It was a wonderful Christmas!

Gingerbread house competition

At 3:30pm, there was a gingerbread house decorating contest, to be judged by the pastry chef.

Kids holiday fair

This afternoon, from 2pm to 4pm, the kids club staff put on a festive fair in the Piazza. There were several stations set up, with balloon animals, face painting, pin (button) decorating, wheel of fortune with prizes, antler making and cookie decorating. This was all topped off with a visit from Santa and a present for each child on the ship.

You just never know

We took the #10 bus TO the beach this morning, but we've learned to never buy a round trip ticket. On the return, we waited no more than 3 or 4 minutes before this privateer drove up. He wouldn't have honored a return ticket purchased from Arubus, but accepted our $3US with no issue at all. So with music blasting, we rode back to the ship in the open air school bus in the second photo.