Bermuda Cruise – Day 2, At Sea
May 28th, 2009Day 2 was our first full day on the ship. I love sea days! We can always find plenty of activities to try, though we didn’t take full advantage on this trip. We adjusted our clocks during the night one hour forward. I had planned to go to the playgroup at 9am, but we found that our alarm had not been set properly. We woke at 8:45am, and I rushed to get ready and make it to the playgroup.
I’ll write more about the Royal Babies and Royal Tots programs in a separate post, but we did manage to join three other babies: Annabelle (9 months), Eddie (9 months), and Joey (11 months). Maddie mostly sat on my lap and watched the other babies. Considering she was the only one walking in the bunch, she may have enjoyed the older group more. They provided animal toys which were cute.
After the playgroup, we headed to the Windjammer for breakfast. We ran into one of the Cruise Critic couples that we were planning to meet later in the day. The breakfast buffet was good, but we still prefer the breakfast in the dining room.
We went to the stroller walk at 11am where we saw Eddie’s family again. We didn’t realize that the stroller walk was an actual workout. The same person who ran the playgroups headed up the stroller “run.” She urged us to go “as fast as possible” and that it was a sort of race. We had no problems letting Eddie’s family win the race. Whew, that was hard work!
Gabe headed to his hot rocks massage while Maddie and I spent some time together. We explored a bit and then went to lunch in the dining room. We joined a nice family – a young woman who is working on her PhD in psychology and her parents. They were great tablemates, and I enjoyed the social lunch since we had nobody sitting with us at dinner the previous night. Gabe joined us at the end of the meal, and we headed to the poolside to get lunch for him. He loved his hot stones massage (my lunch buddies agreed that a massage involving rocks is more manly). We caught part of Tribond Trivia, but we didn’t get a chance to play along. Mostly, we heard the recap and the answers at the end.
We then tried to get Maddie to nap before our Cruise Critic meeting, but she did not play along. We walked around the ship quite a bit. We had a bit of confusion on where to meet our Cruise Critic bunch, and the mix-up resulted in only meeting one other couple. The forum had indicated that we should meet in the Crown & Anchor Lounge, but some people interpreted it as the Viking Crown Lounge. The other couple checked both places, but we didn’t see anyone obviously looking to meet with people.
The other couple was very nice, and we decided to grab some drinks in the Viking Crown Lounge. They also had a 15-month old who they had left at home this time. Maddie fell asleep about the time that we met up with them, and she slept through our meeting. I think that the movement of the boat was good for her at naps and bedtime. I don’t think that we spent any time in the Viking Crown Lounge last cruise. It’s a nice, quiet place to grab a drink and has nice views of the 10th deck (and the ocean, of course). Every time we went there on this cruise, it was almost empty. I hear that it becomes a dance club after 10pm, but we weren’t really interested in finding out much about that.
The ship was rocking quite a bit on this day. When we were in the Windjammer for breakfast, we couldn’t believe how much the horizon was moving up and down. It was a bit crazy, but it didn’t bother any of us. Maddie seemed to notice that things were different. It didn’t take her long to find her sea legs. I found that I liked the motion of the ship, especially at night when I was trying to sleep. I will say that I had heard that you don’t feel the motion on the big ships. I have not found this to be true on the two cruises that I have taken. I have felt the ship’s motions even when we’re docked, but I might not be the best person to ask as I feel it when we’re on land for a few days afterward, too. Ha!
After our meeting in the Viking Crown Lounge, we saw the tail end of the Name That Tune trivia (Movie themes). We didn’t get to play again, but we did hear the recap and answers. It was fun to guess at them real quick before people blurted out the answers. Maddie woke from her nap and was a bit restless, so we didn’t stick around long. We hoped that she would take another nap, but it wasn’t meant to be.
We went to the Crayola Beginnings session instead. Maddie was the only baby at this arts session for Royal Babies and Royal Tots. We played with crayons and stamps and decorated a butterfly. Maddie seemed to enjoy it. The same woman who did the playgroups does all of the infant and toddler sessions. She read Maddie a story, and we went to get dressed and have our photos made.
Maddie didn’t exactly want to cooperate with the photo sessions, but she did pretty well. She was a bit squirmy and refused to smile for the photos, but we ended up with some decent photos. It was difficult for us to decide. We had our photo made in front of most of the backdrops (we learned later that we missed a few nice ones!). We hoped that the stairs photo would be good of the three of us, but the plain blue background turned out to be the best. We had a very nice stairs photo made of us on the last cruise.
The stairs were different in the Centrum area on this cruise. I think our last cruise had a more winding staircase while this one just had a shorter staircase up to the elevator area. Maybe the other staircase was better for sitting poses. I’m not sure that would have worked with Maddie, anyway.
After photos, we let Maddie run around on the decks. She really loves the decks. I have no idea what it is that makes her so happy, but she loves it. I hope that she’s just as thrilled about running on the decks in the fall. She looked like a little sugarplum fairy and received a ton of compliments tonight.
We were so excited that we were seated at a new table for dinner this night. We were a little nervous to switch tables as we were afraid that we would get seated at a table with baby-hating people. Our fears were unfounded. We sat at a table with a couple who had been married for over 60 years and their daughter and husband. They are great-grandparents and grandparents to a 3-year old that they see often. They absolutely loved Maddie! The other two ladies at our table had been friends for over 40 years and go cruising together without their husbands from time to time. They were a lot of fun. Everyone was very understanding about having a toddler at the table (not to mention that we removed her from the dining room each night before she got out of hand). We were very courteous of other dinner guests and knew when we needed to take her out of the dining room for a change of scenery.
Tonight, Gabe and I both had the filet for our entree, which I think was my favorite entree of the cruise. The steak was very good. Maddie enjoyed her first of four cold fruit soups, a tasty pear soup. She loved it! She also had a fruit plate, pizza, broccoli, carrots and bread. She hasn’t been eating pizza when we offer it to her lately. I’m not sure why she’s not interested in pizza! She did eat a little bit of everything else. The waitstaff was accommodating of her needs, though they usually brought way more than she could possibly eat!
After dinner, we went back to the room to change our clothes and put Maddie in her jammies. We put Maddie in the sling on me. We tried to go to the “Broadway” show, but Maddie wasn’t interested. We just walked around the ship a bit instead. Once she was sleeping, we went up to the Viking Crown Lounge where we had drinks and some sort of trail mix snack. Maddie peacefully slept in the Ergo while I enjoyed my favorite non-alcoholic mixed drink, Papaya Crush. I remembered the drink from last time and had had it in the Viking Crown Lounge earlier in the day. The waiter remembered our drink orders from then.
We then went back to try to put Maddie in the pack-n-play, but the transition was a complete disaster. We tried to get her to sleep in the bed, but she wanted to climb off the bed and was very restless. I told Gabe to go ahead and go to the casino, but I had to wrestle with her for the next hour or so until she (and I) fell asleep. I was so tired! Gabe played poker until quite late. We were both excited to play live poker again. After the first two nights, we were exactly even on poker (I gained $26 the first night, he lost $26 the second night). We can’t complain about ending up even!
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