Reality strikes again!

At about 7am, we got up and looked outside to see how the unloading was going. What? We weren't even docked yet! Yep, that's water between us and the dock.

It took about another 30 minutes to get alongside, tied up and all the unloading to begin. There were 7 ships unloading and loading today, so it was quite busy. This is the Westerdam behind us.

And to the right, Ruby Princess right across from us, Crown Princess off in the distance, as well as Celebrity Constellation.

Behind the Ruby Princess was Carnival Conquest and Oasis of the Seas. The building you see above with the buses in front of it was our exit point - we walk off the ship and follow that blue walkway down and around.

Disembarkation started about 810am, so we finished our breakfast, filled out our paperwork and I watched to see how the lines were looking. It didn't look too bad, until I realized there were a serious lack of cabs showing up, and there appeared to be several hundred people in line for them. We had done the luggage valet program, which is where you put your luggage out the night before and they take it to the airport for you - I don't have to touch it until I get back to Portland. Very handy - since you can disembark whenever you want.

Things seemed to improve about 845am, so we started our trek off the ship and through customs. It was an absolute breeze. The CBP agent looked at our paperwork, asked where our luggage was (airport) and said "have a nice day!" Could not have been easier, that's for sure.

We also lucked out when we got outside - there were shared vans you could take to the airport for $11 per person, and there was one leaving with 2 seats left and no luggage space, and since we didn't have any with us, we hopped in and were there lickety split. It was about 915am - off the ship and to the airport in 30 minutes. Pretty good!

Security was a mess - Chris was TSA precheck, and I wasn't, so it took me about 20 minutes to get through security which is horribly unorganized - and with all the new people randomly being assigned to precheck who have no idea about not taking off your shoes etc that line wasn't moving too fast either. Chris did beat me by about 10 minutes because I was behind every holiday traveler who had no idea what to do at the security checkpoint. Sometimes people amaze me.

We parked ourselves in the Delta Sky Club until we needed to board the aircraft to Atlanta, about 1215pm. Got caught up on some emails, made some phone calls and generally just sat around. The boarding process was nightmarish (holiday AND cruise travelers.....!) but we made it to Atlanta safe and sound.

Another 2.5 hour layover, we had a late lunch and then went to the Sky Club for an hour. Then off to our gate - which was in the international terminal (E concourse) so that was interesting.

Currently on the flight from Atlanta to Portland getting caught up on the blog, and trying to post it from 34,000 feet........It's kind of fun to live track your own flight when you have onboard wifi!!!

Back to reality, and work!!!! Hope you all enjoyed my blog and the photos!

 

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Back to the Dining room!

After we got downstairs, it was crazy to see how busy everything got! Have to have a few pictures of the bar staff! I have no idea what Putu is doing here, other than pouring my Caipirtini!

The ship is beautifully decorated for Christmas - when we got onboard 2 weeks ago there wasn't anything, and then every night a little more appeared.

We did return to the dining room for dinner, and it was the best dinner we'd had there. It took less than an hour, and the food was hot and delivered promptly with a smile. Here we are before we ate!

I had my final bowl of French Onion Soup (so my favorite!) and Chicken Kiev, which was EXCELLENT.

Then it was back to the martini bar to say goodbye to all of our new friends, both from the staff and other guests that we had met while onboard. Putu being a crazy man again.

And Nicola, the other flare bartender.

We went upstairs, put the suitcases outside and tried to get some shuteye before the long travel day tomorrow.

 

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Sea day #5, Towel animals and Zumba

The last day was just as nice as we could hope, and we beat some of the chair hogs out and got some pretty decent seats. Had a little breakfast (they make fresh waffles, which are awesome!) and worked on making sure everyone would be well aware of my vacation location when I return (ie, my tan freckles)

Since we were out of volleyball tournaments, they brought up an ice carver (carved a fish) a flare bartender (showed how to make drinks) and the housekeeping staff to show off towel animals. Who knew you could make this many types of towel animals?

My favorite is the seal off to the right. Never seen that one before

Then it was time for the Zumba class. Apparently this had been going on all week at 9am and 4pm, although it doesn't resemble any Zumba class I have ever seen. They did it on the pool deck, and sometimes there were even people in the pool doing it as well. Crazy!!! I watched for a bit, then decided I liked my hearing the way it was (the music was REALLY loud) and headed downstairs to finish packing. Packing is dreadful, and thank goodness we didn't buy too much, so we knew it would all fit in the cases, but what a giant pain. So after cramming everything into our suitcases, we headed downstairs to our hangout location.

 

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Informal Formal Night

As I said, we decided not to dress ourselves in our finest clothes this evening, but headed for the Martini Bar to people watch, mostly because the variety of what people seem to think is considered "formalwear" When we arrived, they were planning on doing a 24 drink pour - Putu, one of the flare bartenders, was going to pour 2 rows of 12 martinis each all at once. This requires a lot of setup and premixing, so it took them about 30 minutes to get ready for the pour. Here's some of the pictures, and I do have a video that I will try to upload and add a link for when I get home. Stacking all the cups, since he has 2 rows they have to be aligned to the glassware that you can see stacked on the bar.

And here's a triumpent Putu after not spilling a drop!

We then headed upstairs for some dinner - and on formal night, they will cook you a steak to order!

Chris and Michael casually waiting for their steak.

Steak, chicken, lamb - they would cook anything you asked for! And it was pretty tasty as well.

While it wasn't really busy, we saw many of the senior officers eating their dinner up there, so the food has to be pretty good!

Back down for some more people watching and parlor tricks from the bar staff.

Then it was time for bed - last full day coming up!!!

 

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Sea Day #4, Volleyball and chair hogs.

Well, the day dawned beautifully, and since I had managed to adjust to the time change from the west coast, I was waking up around 630am most every morning. Not getting out of bed, because I'm on vacation and should be able to sleep in!!!!

Breakfast up in the Oceanview Cafe is always pretty on sea days with the wraparound windows - you are up on deck 14 and you can see for miles when it's nice!

It's always a challenge to get up to the pool before the chair hogs show up. What's a chair hog you ask? Well, it's a passenger who decides that they are more important than anyone else, and gets upstairs early to place towels and some small, insignificant personal items on the "best" chairs, so they can have a leisurely breakfast (or whatever) and come back to their saved chairs. There are rules against this of course, but they are rarely enforced. Chair hogs at work in the next photo.

Notice the lack of any real personal items, just some magazines (and my personal favorite!) books from the ships library! Just enough that no one will take the chairs, but nothing really important like a Kindle or Ipod. Those chairs were empty pretty much the whole day, only occupied when the chair hogs weren't eating or doing some other activity.

People always wonder what there is to do on a sea day. Personally, I'm planted out by the pool or on a sundeck with a book, my ipod and loads of sunblock. But many people like other things - there's daily trivia (usually 2 or 3 sessions per day) classes you can take, lectures etc. This sea day featured Pool volleyball - with the marine officers (who run the ship) facing off against the hotel officers (who run the lodgings and food)

The marine officers are on the left, and they got whupped by the hotel staff. The big scary looking bald dude in the middle of the pool? Executive Chef no less! They then played the guest winners, and beat them pretty badly too. Lucky for them!

After that finished, we were invaded by the Thriller flash mob. Yes, those are guests dressed in ripped t shirts dressed as zombies performing to Michael Jackson. Apparently they had been practicing all week. See, something for everyone.

It was formal night, although we made an executive decision that we weren't getting dressed up tonight. So our plan was to eat in the Oceanview Cafe again.

 

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Here comes Allure of the Seas!

Well, it appears that Allure has made it to the port! There have been some known issues with her propulsion system and they are limited on their max speed until she goes into drydock for repairs in February - which means shortened port stops already. This is coming into the channel.

Next, swinging her around to tie up to the dock.

And then, the tie up

It's fairly impressive to watch her come in, all things considered, for the biggest ship in the world to be so maneuverable is quite amazing.

We discovered that the reason she was 4 hours late (vs 1-2 for the propulsion was that she left Nassau about 2 hours late on Dec 9th, due to a snapped cable on lifeboat #1. The below picture shows the missing lifeboat (look all the way forward, open spot!) and the masses rushing off the ship to see a bit of St Thomas.

There should be a 6th boat in front of the set of 3, right above the building on the dock. We heard she will stop by Nassau and pick it up on her way back in on Saturday. Interesting story, to say the least!

I am not sure how late they stayed in St Thomas, but we picked up and sailed away ourselves at 5pm (about 2 hours after Allure arrived)

We had dinner reservations with Pam and Michael at 7pm at the Tuscan Grille, the Italian Steakhouse specialty restaurant onboard. It was excellent - and always fun to have dinner with friends. It took about 2.5 hours to eat, so we took a stroll around the deck afterwards and headed for bed. Only 2 more sea days to enjoy before the end of our cruise!

 

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St Thomas and the still missing Allure of the Seas!

Last night we had some dinner in the Oceanview cafe, and then chatted with some of the crew we have made friends with before heading off to bed, and another wavy night on the seas! Apparently, all the bad weather to the north is messing things up down here as well, and we've had some ship motion every night. Nothing crazy, you just remember you are on a ship on the ocean!

Today was St Thomas, and we docked at 8am. About 845 I looked outside to see if Allure had shown up yet, but no. We then realized

1. Then don't dock until 10am ships time
2. Their ships time is 1 hour behind St Thomas since they stay on Florida time.
3. They are having propulsion issues and might be even later......

So far, it's 125pm, and no Allure. Updates on that later.

We went into town, a short cab ride away, and mailed some postcards from the post office, where we had to stand in line as per usual! Wouldn't be a post office otherwise!

We wandered down the main street which is very narrow.

Inside Mr Tablecloth! Best place to buy tablecloths and other linens.

Back to the ship, where some lizards were sunning themselves on the rocks. There are 2 if you look!

And back on the ship for some lunch and the pool!

It's not quite as sunny as earlier, but the pool deck is filling up!

 

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The horror of St Maarten!

Well, it wasn't quite as horrible as we suspected! We docked at about 8am, with 3 other cruise ships, Norwegian Epic, Independence of the Seas, and our good pal Mein Schiff 2 from Antigua. We were planning on parking ourselves in front of the Holland House hotel on the beach (2 chairs, umbrella and 2 drinks for $20!) and enjoying ourselves, which we did. We took the water taxi over from the cruise ship dock to downtown)

Walked up and down the beach, which had just been dredged, so there were lots of seashells for the picking. Got a few nice ones to take home too. We had a few brief rain showers, but we just covered everything up and waited for it to pass and the sun to return, which it always did!

Had a few drinks from the hotel, and tried their new menu, which was excellent. Chris and I split a hamburger and a steak sandwich and both were quite good. It was a bit windy, but overall a very nice day. I did a bit of shopping and managed to only buy a small ring at the famous jewelry store, Shoppers Haven. And yes, it really is small!

Our other entertainment for the day was watching the water taxis go back and forth. There appear to be 6, named as follows: Black Mamba, Black Stingray, Black Shark, Black Stallion, Beachcomber VIII and White Swan. The first 5 are smaller, and the White Swanwas new from the last time, and larger as well.

This picture is from later this afternoon when we were getting ready to head back to the ship.

The trip back via water taxi was uneventful and we soon arrived at the cruise ship dock and walked to our ship.

You can't see our ship because we are parked so far forward!

That's the White Swan in front of the building with the red roof.

Of course, it wouldn't be complete without a Christmas tree next to a palm tree!

The ships in port!

We got back to the ship and spent some time at the martini bar and then went up to get changed for dinner. We where scheduled to depart at 5pm, but there was some sort of medical emergency and they had to disembark a passenger on a stretcher. I hope she's ok!

We sailed away from the dock and were headed for St Thomas! Goodbye to Mein Schiff 2!

 

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Fancy Dancy Room Service

So, one of the benefits of booking a suite is that you can have your butler serve you dinner course by course in your room, off anything in the dining room menu. We didn't try this on our Egypt cruise last year for a few reasons - so we decided to try it this time. I talked to Allano yesterday and mentioned we were thinking about it, and today he set the table, left 2 menus and pen and paper to write down what we wanted earlier in the day. Pam and Michael came by and picked what they wanted, and said they'd be back about 630pm. Allano came by at 530, we gave him the order and the time, and here's the table he set! Pretty cool and fancy!

We also had a bottle of very nice sparkling wine from our friends Tom and Andre that we had received earlier in the week, so we decided to have that for dinner as well. Here's what it looked like when it arrived! Thanks so much guys!!!! :) We ate the strawberries when they arrived, also delicious!

 

Back to dinner. Here we are having a nice dinner in our room. It was fantastic actually, fabulous food and all served in our room within an hour. We had steel drum Christmas music playing in the backround to help set the mood!

We finished eating, then went out for a little stroll, spent some time at the local watering hole, and came back to the room so I could write my posts and watch some football. Dallas and Chicago and it looks freaking cold!!!!

Tomorrow - the horror of St Maarten. Why the horror? 6 ships. That's right. 6 ships scheduled for port. This should be interesting to say the least.........! It was bad enough with 4 in February!!!!

 

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