The next morning, we woke up to my favorite view:
I'm an early riser and Wes wakes up a little later than me, so I decided to wander a bit before heading to the Solarium Bistro for some fruit:
Rode the elevator up to Deck 15. If you see these freestanding viewfinders around the ship, take a peek. You'll find some cool scenes inside:
Pool Deck as I walked forward, toward the Solarium.
Children's Pool Area:
Beach Pool (my favorite):
Cantilevered Whirlpool:
I was a little disappointed in the Solarium Bistro since I was hoping they would have berries (strawberries, blueberries, raspberries) available during breakfast, and they weren't there. However, they did have pineapple, mangoes, honeydew, watermelon, cantaloupe, and grapefruit available every morning. I really enjoyed being able to have mangoes every day.
And this, my friends, is the #1 reason why DH and I love having a balcony when we cruise:
It's become a tradition- we almost always have room service breakfast on our balcony each morning when cruising, unless it's way too hot out there. In that case, we have breakfast in bed, lol. Leading up to the cruise, we'll remind each other about our breakfast tradition. We really look forward to it. Besides the fruit that I brought down from the Solarium (mango and pineapple), the table is filled with the types of food you can expect from room service at breakfast. The other fruit plate is on the room service menu too:
And you can't beat the view with breakfast:
Our view looking straight down:
Our Meet and Mingle was in the Comedy Club at 10:30 AM. We had a nice turnout. The activities director was the great. He gave the more informative overview of the different classes of ships, from the smallest up to the Allure. He did a raffle for various items as well.
The final raffle was for a very large bag full of freebies. And guess what? Wes won! We never win anything so that was very exciting! Here's what he won:
At the end of the M&M, many of us stayed a little later to talk. If you're reading this blog and were from our sailing, it was great to meet you!
After the M&M we went up to the Royal Promenade to see the Move It! Move It! Parade. We ended up on Deck 6, looking down on the parade. It was a lot of fun....King Julian is my favorite. Come to think about it, I think the only time we saw the Dreamworks Characters was during the parade and an ice show. If you're not interested in seeing them, you won't.
We decided to have lunch at Johnny Rockets, located on the Boardwalk. I loved these scupltures on the way to the Boardwalk. Basically, it's supposed to be the same carousel horse, in the various stages of its creation. Pretty cool:
We had a fun time at Johnny Rockets, and the food was good. There was a $4.95 pp charge for the restaurant. I had to have my chocolate malt
When a certain song comes on (I can't remember which), the waiters stop everything to do a dance in the restaurant:
I spent some time in the Solarium after lunch. It was such a beautiful space...but it was HOT. And the Solarium pool water was pretty warm. I could have stayed longer if the pool water was cool enough to be refreshing, but I learned pretty fast that I couldn't take all that heat for too long.
...but before I left, I had my Labadoozie- no alcohol. It was in a pretty cool bamboo keepsake container too.
I went back to the room to find Wes resting and watching TV. Now I have to say, we did spend a lot of time in the room watching the Dreamworks movies (there's a whole channel onboard) that we never saw in theaters. Hilarious I know, but we were in desperate need of a lot of rest, so this was perfect! We watched Megamind (absolutely hilarious movie) and took a nap. Actually, the nap thing became a daily routine. It was heaven! I wish I could do that at work
Tonight was formal night. We had reservations for Chops. While getting ready, we were treated to a beautiful sunset:
Central Park is beautiful at night:
Now I was a little disappointed with Chops on the Allure. I know that part of the reason was because I can't eat my steaks the way I want them right now. I love a medium steak, but I have to order mine medium well-well done, and that's not as flavorful to me. The sides were a little bland too, from what I remember from other ships. Don't get me wrong, we had a nice time and the atmosphere was really nice. It was like having a quiet dinner in the city.
I started with the crab and shrimp cake. That was pretty good. I wished the remoulade had a little more kick to it, but it was still tasty. Wes had the filet with roasted potatoes and green beans, and I had the petite filet with asparagus and crimini mushrooms. I think perhaps I should have gotten the larger filet, since they butterflied the petite filet. By the time it reached the table, it was VERY well done, and quite dry. Oh well, lesson learned.
It was so dark in there that my food shots weren't all that good. I did get a shot of the Chocolate Mud Pie- my favorite dessert!
Now don't laugh....we finished our dinner pretty early, around 9:00, and we had a reservation for the 10:30 showing of Chicago. Well.....we learned pretty fast that a late show wasn't going to work for us. At home, I'm normally in bed around 9:00 (actually, about 8:30
). So I was already fading fast when dessert arrived at Chops, and not even all that chocolate could wake me up! 
We went to the room to take a quick nap before the show...only we never got back up to head to the theater! We couldn't cancel our reservation online, so we called the front desk to cancel it for us. We were then able to use the room's TV system to reschedule and reserve the early show for another night.
That was it for our first sea day! We had a very relaxing day. Up next- Labadee!
No comments:
Post a Comment