New England/Canada Cruise. Day 7. You Have Your Hands Full.
We woke up today for our final day, to be spent relaxing at sea. On our way out of the room we got the first good piece of advice of the trip. This whole trip people have been telling us how cute Hallie is and how we need another one to go with her. I don't remember if I mentioned earlier that our stateroom attendant told us we need a boy to go with her. Well, this morning one of the stewards on our floor who we see and say hello to every day told us, “you have your hands full with her. She’s enough for you right now.” Totally unprompted. Totally correct.
We skipped breakfast for ourselves but got a quick yogurt for Hallie, as we headed to the dining room at 10:30 for our tour of the kitchen. The tour would be me, Tzvi, Hallie, my parents, and the other 100 or so people who were gathered. There were so many people signed up for the tour that they took us into the kitchens on decks 4 and 5 in smaller groups. We first walked through the kitchen on deck 5, which is primarily used for room service and the buffet. Basically it’s a kitchen, but everything is on a much larger scale. After that they tried to seat us for lunch, which seemed unfair given that some people got to see deck 4 instead, which is where the bakery is. No problem, we just asked the food and beverage director, who said our guide would take us through the deck 4 kitchen as well. The kitchen was mostly the same, though it had a much nicer smell of freshly baked bread.
I'll take alllll of the bread
After the tours we had brunch in the dining room. The whole event was billed as a bottomless brunch and galley tour. I think they made a mistake in listing the event though, because it was really a bottomless bubbles and galley tour (i.e., endless champagne). The food was not bottomless – it was a three-course waiter service meal. Seeing as we didn’t drink the champagne, it wasn’t anything too special. When we sat down at the table there were some breads we hadn’t seen before, as well as a basket of chips, salsa and guac, and also some olive and other spreads. There was also a plate of sushi, but between the meat sushi and shellfish we just had them take that away. Otherwise the food was pretty much the same as what you got at other meals. The Caesar salad was exactly the same. The waffle said it came with a berry compote, but it instead came with a skewer of watermelon. Tzvi had mushroom soup and then a veggie pot pie that kind of just seemed like it was a bowl of mushroom soup with a piece of puff pastry across the top. Dessert was also nothing special, and none of this would be particularly problematic if the meal hadn’t taken two full hours. I honestly don’t know what we were doing there for two hours. It felt like it would never end. I think I fell into the sunken place during the meal. Maybe that’s what they mean by bottomless.
cheers!
I'll take allll of the cheese
veggie "pot pie"
During brunch, Tzvi got up and went to look at the photos we had taken the night before. If you’ve cruised in the last ten years or so, you’ll know that the way cruise photos used to work is that they would have a room where everyone’s printed photos are hung up on the walls and you have to walk around looking for your photos. Part of the fun was seeing everyone else’s weird photos. Of course that’s all been replaced with computers – you just swipe your room key and all of your photos come up. When they used to print the photos there were strict rules about not taking pictures of your pictures. Now that they’re on a computer screen, they’ve added a watermark on the screen so you cant get a photo of your pictures, and if you do try to take a photo, you get the Royal Caribbean watermark all over it.
Well, standing and looking at the photos, Tzvi saw one that he wanted to show me back in the dining room, so he took a picture of the computer screen with his phone. One of the photo workers was immediately on him telling him to delete the picture. Tzvi argued back, saying that it made no sense to bother him about taking the photo, since that’s why they have watermarks on them! The man told him, ‘no, it’s like you went into the grocery store and took the cereal off the shelf without paying for it,’ which was an oddly specific comparison. Tzvi kept arguing that it really made no sense – if you’re not supposed to take photos, then what’s the point of the watermark. Eventually the man was distracted by his supervisor and Tzvi just walked away. Anyway, it was pretty pointless of the man to argue with Tzvi, because we ended up buying all of our photos (one price for a flash drive of everything).
Here are a few photos from earlier in the week that came in the package of photos we bought.
After lunch we decided to walk Hallie around the ship to see if we could get her to sleep so we could go in the hot tub. It had been pretty foggy all morning, though when we got to the pool deck it was suddenly sunny and clear. Hallie wasn’t falling asleep so we got her out of the stroller and into a bathing suit. She splashed around in the kiddie pool for a while and had a great time. It was kind of cold and windy to be in the pool and the wind kept blowing cold water on us. It wasn’t fun.
After swimming Hallie was finally tired so we walked her for a few minutes and then left her with my mother once she was sleeping. I should add that my mom was spending the entire afternoon looking at wedding photos and dealing with getting her own photos stored properly on her computer and backup drive. Nothing like spending your vacation looking at old photos. Making memories one old photo at a time. We then purchased a cocktail in a hollowed out pineapple from the bar (we named him Fred, as we always do on these trips) and then made our way to the hot tub. Poor pop pop was waiting for my mom, but she never showed up. At least she watched Hallie.
After swimming we went back to the room and packed as much as we could since our bags had to be out in the hall by 11 pm. We then changed and got ready for dinner and headed to the dining room for our last dinner. As usual, Muhamed brought our kosher food as well as a big bowl of blueberries for Hallie. Then mama started asking him about whether there are elderly people who live on the ship. She started saying something about people who come on with their aids (helpers) and then asked, “Do you have people with aids on this ship?” He said no, though I’m not entirely sure he understood the question. Actually, I’m pretty sure he didn’t, because he chose that time to say, “Let me go check on your food.”
Dinner took a while and Hallie just wanted to run around, so we spent a large portion of the meal dancing one deck up at one of the bars with live music. She was a star. Everyone enjoyed watching her. There was this one old Asian lady who we saw there every night and she was really encouraging Hallie. I wonder if some family just left her there every night and said "okay grandma, we'll pick you up in 5 hours." While we were dancing, apparently the waiters did their usual 'final night celebration' which included walking around waving napkins etc. Then, a new addition, they all went to the middle of the dining room and sang "leaving on a jet plane." It was very nice, but in retrospect it seems weird. How many of them ARE leaving on a jetplane? Not many. I guess they are talking about the people, but still odd. Anyway, it was still really nice. Michael, our waiter, didn't participate much. He seems to be all business.
We said our goodbyes and after dinner we took Hallie to the piano bar to hear the piano man. She had heard him earlier in the week and has been asking for him since. Everyday, “where’s the piano man?” Well, she finally got to see him, and of course right then decided to get shy and bury her head in my shoulder. She said she was enjoying it though, so we stayed for a few minutes. While sitting there an old man came in with a woman who appeared to be his daughter. They were speaking quite loudly and she said he should stay there and she’d be back for him later. The piano man heard this and said, “oh don’t worry, he’ll be here.” The man took this as an opportunity to pick up one of the microphones which was laying on the piano. “Oh are we going to sing? What are we going to sing?” The old man chose God Bless America. So, we all stood and sang God Bless America, followed by America the Beautiful. He really belted it out, and he was not good. It was quite funny.
Hallie started to get cranky, so we went back to the room and put her to bed. Tzvi sat in the room watching TV while I went with my parents and Austin to see "late night adult comedy." This comedy was infinitely better than the other one. He had some good jokes about how people are now relieved to be seated next to a black person on a plane (as opposed to certain alternatives) and obviously how fat people are on cruises. Standard, but funny.
After comedy, we went back to the room and then Tzvi and I went back out to enjoy our last night on the ship. We started by hitting the casino as Tzvi discovered a piece of paper in our room alerting him to his own free $5 of casino play. However, once we sat down at a slot machine we found there was no $5 on his card, which was the moment I remembered that the paper said it had to be used before 10 pm. Whoops.
After the casino we sat for a little while in the piano bar listening to the piano man. We ordered a khalua and cream which was delicious as khalua and cream always is. We were sitting pretty close to the piano man and at one point he asked (jokingly, I think) if we were brother and sister. We shook our head no. Honeymoon? No again. Business trip? We nodded yes. After a while at the piano bar we went upstairs to the promenade and sat listening to the guitar man at the pub, who was once again finishing up his set.
Around 1230 we went back to the room and went to sleep. Since we weren't changing the clocks back until 2, our 12:30 bedtime was really 11:30. I kind of like this mini-daylight savings.
Fun day. I'm not sure what I dread more about tomorrow morning – vacation ending, or being in New Jersey.