Day 2 - Friday April 13th, 2012

Day 2 –04/13/12

First full day at sea

I woke up about 07:00 and couldn’t get back to sleep. You can’t even tell we’re on a ship except for the very small vibration that is ever present. I’m used to being a lot closer to the water when I’m on the Conch Pearl. I go out on the balcony here and I’m four stories above the water. It’s still quite cool outside but I’m going with shorts anyway. We won’t be outside unless we head to the hot tubs.

We had breakfast with Dave and Annette at 09:00 in the Windjammer Café. We weren’t sure if they would make it. We moved the clocks ahead one hour so that’s one less hour of sleep. It was a long, relaxing breakfast. Again, food, food, food.

After breakfast we went down to meet with the ETA folks to pay for our lunches on the island rides. On the way back we stopped for coffee in the Promenade Café then headed outside for a look at the ship’s bridge. There are observation windows that look down into the bridge area, giving you a bird’s eye view of all of the controls. It’s quite a streamlined operation; very automated, very electronic. We continued walking around the decks, visited the sky bar then around to the back of the ship. Here there is a rock wall, basketball courts, in-line skate track and a miniature golf course. We stayed around and played nine holes of golf. When we finished with the golf we continued on to the Nineteenth Hole bar then up to check out the chapel. It’s in the highest part of the ship.

Since this was a sea day there wasn’t much going on. Everyone was relaxing. It was a bit cool to do the pool thing so Barb and I went to the movies in the afternoon. We saw Zookeeper. Actually Barb saw Zookeeper…I slept. No surprise there. After the movie we went back to the room to get ready for the ‘formal’ dinner. We got a little dressed up and met with Dave and Annette.

They had photographers everywhere with backrounds set up for professional shoots. We had our pictures taken a few times. Then it was off to dinner. There were a lot of tuxedos and I felt akward in just a jacket and tie but it was nice dressing up. Dinner was fantastic as always. After dinner there was a big production show but there was no way we were going to stay up for that so we returned to our cabin where neither of of us really remembers going to bed.