Winter Break 2023. Day 7. Beyond Burger.
We woke up today in sunny St. Martin!
We had breakfast at the buffet which was the same as usual. I haven’t yet tried the “Fried Bread,” but I think I’ve made the conscious decision not to. Perhaps next cruise.
A little before ten Tzvi took Hallie down to Café Al Bacio. We had heard that Captain Kate goes there to get her coffee in the morning so he thought they’d give it a try. Hallie was dying to meet her so she shoveled in breakfast and then made Tzvi take her down. Low and behold, there she was! She talked a bit with Hallie and was really nice. She even gave her a special bonus riddle: What’s blue and smells like red paint? (answer tomorrow, or you can ask Hallie, who got it almost immediately).
By the way, the answer to yesterday’s riddle (you see a boat full of bodies, but there’s not a single person on board. How?): They’re all married.
Tzvi texted us that Captain Kate was on Deck 4 so we all left the buffet and headed down. Madeleine had been so excited to meet her but then got so shy and wouldn’t even look at her. Captain Kate showed us photos from her recent shoots. She has this mermaid tale that she wears and she actually wore it going underwater in St. Marten. Apparently, that morning she had also put it on and took photos in the pools on the ship. She said it was around 7am and yes there were people already at the pool witnessing this. She looked great. She’s the first female captain of a mega cruise ship and very impressive. She’s very good at social media and she’s so so kind. She was so great with the girls. Like, she’s captain of this huge ship in charge of everything but she took time to just talk to us and the girls. Thanks Captain Kate!
After that, Inbar went to the gym, Tzvi went to the pool, and I took the girls to camp. We made a deal that I would go to the gym later. (Stay tuned to see if that happened.) Hallie played on her side of the camp a little and then joined me and Madeleine. There was also a dad with a girl there probably a little older than 1. From there, we had a quick lunch because we were supposed to meet off the ship at 1230 for our shore excursion. Well, of course we were late.
We were herded (as they do on Caribbean shore excursions) to an old coach bus for a 25 minute bus ride to Orient beach. On last year’s cruise we stopped at St. Marten and went to the beach that’s a ten minute boat ride from the port, and that was pretty gross and had music blasting. This year we thought we’d try something different. (Stay tuned to see if that worked out.) On the bus ride Hallie started davening out loud and a woman told her she had a very nice voice. When we got there, a woman in a bright yellow shirt got on board and told us that she was our guide and bartender. I guess that meant she was going to guide us off the bus and on to the beach. Well, as we were guided off the bus it started to pour. Some liquid sunshine! So we sat under a covered area until it stopped. During this time I tried to walk Madeleine to sleep. Eventually it worked.
When it stopped raining we got some seats and right away we were accosted by women asking if we wanted our hair braided. On the bus, our tour guide/bar tender told us that we may get ripped off and we shouldn’t pay more than 2 dollars a braid. Of course Hallie wanted to get her hair braided. Last year I said no, and then she went back to school and all the girls had their hair braided and she didn’t. So this year I said yes, but I knew we are suckers and would end up paying too much so I walked over to our tour guide/bartender and asked her who to use and to negotiate a price for me. For Hallie’s hair we negotiated 4 braids at 3 dollars a braid, so not bad. She had it done and it was painful for all of us. But she was pleased with it. (Stay tuned to see how long they lasted.)
It rained on and off for a while and Hallie played in the sand. After sitting around for a bit and sipping the diluted rum punch, Tzvi said it was time to take a walk. As we were on the French side of the Island we were right next to the nude beach. So we took a nice walk down to the nude beach. It was an experience. There were lots of naked bodies of all shapes and sizes. People hanging around. Their penises hanging around. It was very traumatic.
When we got back it was almost time to go. Thank God. We packed up, and guess what, it started pouring again. We made it back on the bus and drove back to the ship. Tzvi ran back on the ship with the girls and my dad, while Inbar, my mom and I stayed to walk around and shop, though there was nothing to buy.
Back on the ship we went to the burger grill by the pool and got a veggie burger. The girls got smoothies, and of course Madeleine spilled hers all over her chair. The burger was actually delicious as were the fresh fries. It was really fun.
We wanted to swim, but the weather wasn’t great out, so we headed into the solarium. The solarium is adults only, except every day from 4pm-6pm when they have family time. It was pretty empty except there were two women in the pool. Madeleine was sort of running around outside the pool, and Hallie swam and enjoyed the pool. We could see the women weren’t so happy, and when we finally got out of the pool and went into the hot tub, we saw one of the women get out of the pool and walk over to one of the pool attendants. I couldn’t hear her but I could tell she was complaining and saying something like ‘this really isn’t acceptable.’ Then I just watched her face as the attendant said the words “family time.” Then she walked away shaking her head and they got out of the pool and sat shaking their heads for 20 minutes while we sat in the hot tub. We made sure to leave promptly at 6pm.
We got back to the room and showered and dressed for dinner. While I was getting dressed our attendant knocked on the door with a little plate of desserts and a card from the hotel director saying thank you for your feedback, because I had gone online to fill out a form saying how great Ismail was.
When I was leaving for dinner I found our attendant vacuuming the sand out of our stroller. That was amazing, and we didn’t even have to ask, so it looks like I’ll be filling out another compliment card.
Inbar took Hallie to the show to see a cello concert, which Hallie enjoyed and actually sat through. Then we went to dinner in the Cosmopolitan dining room so the girls could eat because we had separate reservations later, but since we were already there we figured we might as well try tonight’s specials. Tzvi had a blue cheese salad, except when they brough it they poured vinaigrette on it, and when Tzvi asked where the blue cheese was, they said a lot of people don’t like blue cheese so they don’t bring it, but Tzvi specifically wanted blue chese (which was why he ordered it), so that was just confusing. Eventually they brought him blue cheese dressing. We also had first dessert before heading off to our dinner.
Our reservation was at Eden at 9:00pm, but my mom was about 40 minutes late because she had a psychiatry meeting at 830. I guess reservation times are just suggestions? We ended up not ordering until 9:40, and then there was a show that started at 10:30 which my father was complaining about (it was too loud), though in fairness we probably would’ve been almost done by 10:30 if not for my mother being 40 minutes late. I will say that I actually did enjoy being able to listen to the show during diner, which was very well done. I won’t go through every dish we ate, but I will say there were a lot of them. They were all strange, but also all very good.
After dinner we went for our nightly khalua and cream and third dessert, because you always need a dessert after dessert.