Today I ordered a brûlée grapefruit, with toasted sugar on top (OMG must buy a little blow torch for the kitchen at home) and avocado toast topped with an egg, and it was fantastic. Way better than a fast food breakfast, and that avo toast would cost $14 at Toastique (because they are McGee’s favorite and I’ll buy anything to keep a runner fueled up).
It was sweaty hot and sunny today, with a real feel in the high 90s. I can handle temps in the high 90s, really I can, but I like the kind where there is single digit humidity and the real feel is in the high 80s as a result. Today was just plain oppressive. We both signed up for 24 hours of international service through Verizon and I immediately combed through nearly 200 emails for any of those nasty ‘Cancellation Notices’ from Princess. I didn’t see one (yay) but I also didn’t see our Goodwill FCCs doubled from Princess’s original 25% bonus for the cancelled cruises to the 50% they promised us of Friday night. Nor did I find any credit at all, doubled or otherwise, for the cruise credits we missed. Hopefully by this weekend those items will be addressed.
We relaxed in a double lounger on the back of the ship until lunch, and today chose to go to Beach Buns, a sandwich shop on Deck 8. G chose his usual tuna salad sandwich and I wanted a caprese sandwich with pesto made into a salad (they had mixed green salads) but that just blew their minds, so I got the sandwich and the salad with no dressing and scraped all the sandwich stuff and pesto off the ciabatta bread and put it on the mixed greens and was good to go. That’s the kind of thing that wouldn’t warrant a raised eyebrow Princess but apparently just isn’t done here.
One of the emails I had received was from Stockperks telling us we qualified for a $100 OBC for this sailing. Unfortunately, it was sent Monday morning and Guest Services won’t apply it to this cruise. I knew it was a long shot, but I completed the application immediately after booking this cruise and hoped we’d get lucky, but no. Still, iCruise gave us $100 OBC, so we’ll use that for our Teppanyaki dinner on Friday.
And we spent the rest of the afternoon just as we spent yesterday afternoon, relaxing on board, except this time it was on the back of Deck 8 and we occasionally used the plastic loungers that sit in the water on the edge of the infinity pool back there. This ship is definitely growing on us. Today was a delight, with many people off the ship in port. No high noise level, no crowding…it all seemed perfect today.
G has been pretty happy with the beef options on board (at least as good as Princess, he says), and when we looked at the menu in the dining rooms for tonight we saw beef Wellington, so we returned to the HoJo Atlantic. I can’t fault our servers- in fact, the entire crew is very friendly- but this is just a different style of cruise dining and I remain not a fan of the dining rooms. Tonight I had a southwestern quinoa baby shrimp salad which sounds a lot better than it was, and then, naturally, I was still hungry so I had key lime pie.
We went to two different comedy clubs tonight. The first was PG rated and harious. The second was adults only and mildly amusing. There was also a production show (early and late), and we could have included the late showing in our evening entertainment but I believe it will also be performed tomorrow night.
Interesting note: as we made our way from one venue to another, we passed a concert that can only be described at classic rock in Center Stage. It resembled a real rock concert like nothing I’ve ever seen before on a cruise ship. I hope that repeats tomorrow night also.
We loved the opportunity that staying on the ship today at Mahogany Bay gave us to explore and really live in the space. I found hot tubs I didn’t know existed, saw how food options work on a port day, and, most of all, experienced a few hours of relative peace. We may repeat tomorrow, especially if it’s really hot again.