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New England and Canada Cruise – Day 5, at sea

October 20th, 2009

Yet more photos have been posted from our trip! As usual, click on any of the photos to see the entire album, this time for Day 5.

We were excited to have our first sea day of the cruise. I can’t believe that our first one was on Day 5! I think in the future I will lean towards cruises that have sea days right away. I loved our port stops, but it’s nice to have that sea day to get acquainted with the ship and relax a bit before the whirlwind tours.

Gabe and I slept in as long as the munchkin would let us. She slept until 8:45am (7:45 her time as she hasn’t exactly adjusted to the time change). We didn’t complain about that! We got ready and headed to breakfast in the dining room. On our previous cruises, this has been our favorite spot for breakfast. This time, we decided we preferred the breakfast buffet in the Windjammer. The food wasn’t a vast improvement in the dining room (though we felt that it was on our other cruises). Plus, the service was a bit too slow for Maddie (despite asking for them to bring some Cheerios ASAP). Our dinner waiter was working the breakfast and came by the table a few times to marvel at our child who was actually eating. We told him not to take it personally; breakfast is her meal! He couldn’t believe that she ate so much.

My parents found us in the dining room towards the end of our meal, and we headed to the Fisher Price Royal Tots playgroup with my mom. The cruise had less than a dozen total kids. Three of the kids on the ship were under 3 years old. Maddie’s playmates were another girl who was two months younger and a boy who was about 9 months old. Everybody had shown up to the playgroup much earlier than us, but Maddie didn’t mind having all the toys to herself.

We really enjoyed having a balcony on this cruise! I hope that we haven’t spoiled ourselves for future cruises. I’m pretty sure we’re not going to splurge for that balcony every time! We were pretty happy with our cozy interior room on the Grandeur of the Seas when we didn’t know what it was like to have our own balcony! Maddie loved it about as much as she loved running on the decks on her first cruise.

Gabe, Maddie and I attended the Cruise Critic party with my parents. Kristin and Chad skipped it, and I think had more spa treatments. Gabe won a bottle of champagne in the drawing at the party. My family had plenty of wine and champagne for dinners for the rest of the trip as my parents had purchased the wine package (7 total bottles for the whole trip).

We went to lunch at the Windjammer and then to Logo trivia! Logo trivia had 50 different icons supposedly representing national chains and such, though a few of them turned out to be regional. Gabe, Maddie, and I formed a team with my parents. We were excited to be able to get 42 of the questions correct which earned us first place and a bunch of coveted keychains.

Mom, Kristin, and I entered the slot tournament while Gabe relaxed on our balcony with a napping Maddie. The three of us decided to enter the tournament together, splitting any winnings that any of us happened to get. The slot tournament was hilarious. We just pushed that button as fast as we could! Everyone got a chance to participate in a preliminary round, and the top winners in those rounds played in a final match to determine the winner. Kristin made it to the finals, but she was unable to secure the win. Oh well. It was entertaining and only $20 each to play. Better luck next time!

Next on our agenda was Team Trivia in the Safari Club. Mom and I headed to the trivia where we expected to meet Gabe and Dad. Gabe had decided to spend time on our balcony with Maddie (we didn’t know this until we tried calling the rooms to find them). We couldn’t find Dad, so Mom and I formed a team with some strangers. The trivia had a great turnout (maybe 40 teams?), and our team was first! The prize this time was a bottle of champagne. Our other teammates didn’t want the champagne, so we added it to our alcohol collection.

Mom and I went to get Gabe and Dad for the cheap $11 Bingo session. My parents had never played bingo before, so we had a little excitement teaching them how to play. I was close to getting Bingo on the first game and was even able to stand (they ask you to stand when you’re one away from Bingo). That was as close as any of us got to winning a prize. Oh well. Once again, at least it was cheap! Maddie had her snack while we were playing Bingo and made it through the session.

We opted for a different plan for dinner that night. I went down and decided what I would want to order for dinner and decided to entertain Maddie outside of the dining room until the appetizers were served. Maddie and I played in the Centrum. We looked at the drink menu (lots of colorful photos), watched the elevators go up and down, and then danced to the live music. We showed up to dinner about 30 minutes late, and I was surprised that my family had not even ordered our appetizers yet! Turns out that they had a family style Caesar salad to start the meal, so things were a little different that night.

Nonetheless, the delayed start time for Maddie did the trick and she made it through dinner. We went to Mom and Dad’s room to watch the sunset, but we had missed it (plus it was a big cloudy anyway). Gabe went to the casino (to lose more money) while I hung out with Mom and Dad. Before Maddie went to bed, she had a lot of fun watching the crazy dance party in the Centrum! We watched the madness from the 8th deck. It was quite entertaining, and Maddie enjoyed the music, lights, and crazy dancing people.

I went to the casino while Gabe put Maddie to bed where I lost less than $20. I thought my time in the casino was better spent watching my family gamble, so I watched Chad, Kristin, Mom, and Dad play roulette, video poker, and blackjack for the majority of the time. My $20 came into play when everyone was winning at blackjack. I was not so lucky! Oh well…at least I kept the losses to a minimum.

I went back to the room to relieve Gabe, and he headed to Quest with the rest of the family. I was sad to miss the craziness of Quest (especially since we missed it on the last cruise), but glad to let Gabe have a good time with my family. Kristin and Chad had never experienced the Quest madness, and I think they all had a good time. I’m always amazed to hear of the things that people will do in that game show. It’s a crazy, crazy time. While they were gone, I got ready for bed and caught up on my trip report notebook. Unfortunately, this is the last day that I managed to put onto paper…so I’ll be winging it for the remaining trip reports.

The next day we had another morning shore excursion, this time in Halifax, Nova Scotia – yet another new province to add to my list! I was excited to check so many new destinations off of my life’s travel list.

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Posted by kerry on Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 at 5:46pm.
Categories: life.

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