The weather stayed good last night for the Saints-Eagles game on MUTS, and what a game that was! We've seen some exciting football this week. If you're a football fan, you understand our enjoyment of football on the big screen with other like-minded passengers; if you're not, bear with me. After today, there are only four more days of football left. (Five if we count the Pro Bowl. So...four more). The Emerald Princess is our home right now, and this is what we do this time of year...stay home and watch football. And shovel snow (if necessary).
Captain Nick had warned us of rain today on St. Thomas, and either his forecast was way off or he was simply preparing us for the worst after already experiencing so much rain this cruise. The morning was sunny and the day looked like it would be gorgeous. This caused us to momentarily re-think our prior decision about staying on the ship to watch football, but, in the end, that's exactly what we did. We'll be back in St. Thomas again in either six days or ten days (I'm not certain of the itinerary for next cruise), but we'll have several long months without football.
We spent breakfast with Darko in the DaVinci Dining Room interneting and eating simultaneously. Our first task every morning is to check to see if Mom has turned into a Popsicle or snowman. If we don't receive an email, we start to long-distance worry, which is the worst worrying there is. Admittedly, 4G on St. Thomas was excruciatingly slow today...but at least it was unmetered. We actually have plenty of Internet minutes left on the ship, but there is a calmness associated with interneting without a timer. Serenity now!
Sadly, we were met by an ambulance again today.
Another plan for today had been to get off the ship to (are you sitting down?) jewelry shop, like everyone else does on St. Thomas. The ammolite pendant that G gifted me is on a simple chain, and it really needs to be on an omega chain to show it off to its best. I remembered that friend Adelle had purchased a beautiful reversible omega necklace two years ago in St. Thomas, at a store called Royal Caribbean (no relation to the cruise line). And what I'm about to tell you will prove, for ever and always, that I am NOT a shopper. Whereas a huge percentage of people on this ship were taxiing into downtown Charlotte Amalie to go shopping, I stayed in the buffet, where I used my iPhone to Google Royal Caribbean jewelers, then called them to ask about lengths, widths, prices and availability at the Crown Bay store (which I was looking at, right out the window). My thought was that I would be able to walk off the ship, into the store, make the predetermined purchase, and get back to the ship in about 10 minutes.
Then G caught up with me and told me that lounge chairs were already getting snapped up, long before the Chargers v. Bengals game began at 2pm, and that was as far as my shopping went. We scurried out there to claim ours. I'll get the omega chain next time, football permitting.
So there I stayed, from about 12:30pm on, first watching the soothing undersea video that is shown between features, and then watching the Chargers v. Bengals game. I had become a strong, albeit temporary Chargers fan (but just wait until next week!), and so found that game highly entertaining. Our chosen loungers were on the upper level of the MUTS seating area, on Deck 16, mostly because that was all that was left when we got out there, and we alternately baked and then shivered as a few brief, light rainshowers moved through. Wet towels are chilly when it's only 80 degrees (don't sprain an eye here). At one point, I went to get new pool towels from the towel booth by the Neptunes Pool, and they were washing and drying them so quickly to keep up with demand that the towels were still warm. THAT was nice. As I sat there, sitting on wet towels and wrapped head to toe in temporarily dry ones in a rain, even I thought that we were a bit too fanatic. But then I watched the Packer Backers wearing 18 layers of clothing and knew I was wrong. We're lightweights at this "spectatorship sacrifice" thing. ;-)
Luckily, by sailaway at 5pm, when the Emerald Princess started moving and there was a light breeze across the open deck, the rain had stopped and the sun, though low in the sky, was warm. It turned out to be a perfect night for football. For the second game, because we truly had no dog in this fight, we were rooting for the Packers, only because friends Jim and Marcia are coming on board on Wednesday, and they are big fans and we've enjoyed some fun football viewing in the past with them on the Emerald Princess.
Sunset from MUTS.
We alternated getting pizza (me) and a big plate of French fries (G, and that was my first time at the Trident Grill in years), and chocolate covered strawberries retrieved from our cabin, and drinking fuzzy water (me) and the beer stockpiled in our cabin from our minibar setups (G) and were happy as could be, skipping formal night and the production show in the Princess Theater and the mentalist in the Explorers Lounge and live music and Piazza balloon drop (another one!).
It's not even halftime, but I'll end this one here, as my battery is drained after a day in St. Thomas. Except to say that both the Christmas stollen and decorations disappeared overnight.
As much as I loved both of them, I was not sorry to see them go.