We had quite a smooth ride last night. Sometimes the first day out of San Francisco we encounter some rough seas but not this time. Maybe we’ve been on ships too much to notice movement anymore? Maybe, but waking up in the night felt just like being at home. How much like home? When I turned over in the middle of the night I told hubby I thought the electric blanket had turned off. Oops.
I guess it makes sense to get home and the ship mixed up. At this point I’m not sure our home is our home or a cruise ship is our home. We were on this same ship four months ago and when we stepped on her yesterday it was like we never left. I really did think four long months away from cruising was going to give us enough of a break to make things seem new and different, but instead it was again the feeling of like we were coming home. We know our way around, we know some of the crew, we know what we like and what we want to do. We know where we like to store things in the cabin, which one of us is in charge of what, and who gets the bathroom first. We know to take the elevators up to get down, know when to turn our tunnel vision on, and know where to find the quietest seating at the buffet. (Speaking of the buffet, it was super-quiet last night. Plenty of empty tables, no screaming kids, and people using inside voices. It was so nice and relaxing.)
I was trying to rack my brain to figure out something new we did in these last two days that we didn’t do before. I could only come up with a couple things 1. We switched out mini bar items for different ones than we usually do. 2. We went to the dining room for lunch two days in a row. If we were being honest I could probably add in a number 3. We had enough drinks to turn both our cheeks all rosy. Otherwise everything is the same.
As usual, we:
- got our Most Traveled Guest invitation. (It’ll be a cocktail party.)
- booked another cruise for May. ($299 per person for a week in Alaska? Oh, yeah.)
- skipped the $10 sale in the dining room.
- didn’t go to the art auction.
- skipped tonight’s formal night and Champagne Waterfall.
- stayed away from the crazy pub lunch line.
- dropped off the encouraging words money pockets around the ship and into the Wake Show box.
- hung out with our bartender buddy.
- visited with our assistant waiter “son”.
Dang, we’re boring. Actually, we feel calm, relaxed, and comfortable. Just the way we like it.
While nothing is new with us, the ship does have some new things. The Grand was in dry dock a couple weeks back and came away with a revamped hamburger/hot dog place. It’s now called The Salty Dog Grill and here’s the new menu:
The pizza place is also revamped and now called Slice. Here’s that new menu:
Mermaid’s Bar is now called The Mix. They don’t have any new signs up yet, but I did grab a picture of the bar menu they now have for all the bars out on deck.
The ship also has some new carpeting, upholstering, and new screens in preparation for the Medallion. The screens aren’t activated and we don’t have Medallions, but all mailboxes are gone.
One more new thing –on embarkation day at check in we were given this paper with all the locations for lunch.
Usually on embarkation day the dining room is a nice, quieter place to eat. Now that everyone is giving that paper – with the dining room on the top of the list – the dining room was packed that first day. Like, really packed. There were very few empty tables in the whole place. It was loud and hectic and definitely not the relaxing experience it was in the past. Might as well go to the buffet if we want that kind of craziness.
We’re off to Santa Barbara tomorrow, but we’ll be treating it as a sea day and staying on the ship. Our bartender buddy leaves for the home day after tomorrow so we are squeezing out every last minute with him that we can.
For those interested today's Patter can be found here.
