Day Four: "I live here now" or "Oh my goodness! you're AdSimba!"
5/21/2018
Sleeping on vacation is not my strong suite. It's a talent that I wish I could develop, but alas, I woke up at about 5am Vancouver time and being in the hotel I had wifi and looked at what the Facebook group was upto.
One couple from England had just mentioned that they were going to walk down to the dock and watch the boat come in. Everyone else in my room was out cold so, completely unlike myself I said I would join them.
Since our hotel was only about 3 blocks from the port it was an easy stroll, I took a few photos of downtown without people
Before long I made it to the port
This is where the boat would dock, but since I was too early I walked around the are we would need to go to board later this morning
I couldn't actually get very far... oh well upon my emergence to the topside I ran into the couple who were lovely. I didn't take any photos of them at the time, but this is them
It was very easy to remember their surname as it was two letters off from a Harry Potter characters name. Their son has an important position on the boat and as such they got to ride for free, the catch was though, that they didn't even know where they would be sleeping until after the muster drill.
Anyway we enjoyed one another's company as we watched the ship sail into port
After it had been in the port for 20 minutes or so and we had taken enough looks and photos they invited me to join then for breakfast. it was about 6:30. In another uncharacteristic move, I again said yes (I may be a bit of a slave to the english accent).
we went to Scoozi's a cafe between my hotel and the port and I ordered something very simple, I though, since we would be gorging for the next week. I just asked for rice pudding with fruit. I asked to have no raisins, and they told me that was impossible, so I determined to soldier through them.
This is what came
as much as I like to try new things, yesterday's cold and congealed rice pudding flipped upside down did not thrill me.
Fortunately I was absolutely wrong, even with the raisins it was quite pleasant, somewhat like a panna cotta.
When breakfast ended I realized that it was actually not too early anymore... oops, I rushed back to the hotel where CL was awake and annoyed that I didn't leave a note....
While she got ready for the day I joined another couple in the restaurant in the basement S and P, I didn't eat this time, but we met online before the trip and set up dining together with them every night. S has a very assertive personality while P is rather passive, but they seem to have a great relationship. And most importantly they love Disney!
Finally, 10 o clock rolled around and it was time to get to the dock!
The 8 of us made a motley crew of people with large luggage, the three blocks seemed much longer this time, lol.
Before we knew it porters had taken all of our luggage and we found our way to a long line, then we were told that there was a different longer line for first time cruisers
it felt like forever, but really was probably closer to 25 minutes till we got to the front
almost like a Disney customs service
about 40 minutes and 4 lines later we found ourselves outside of the ship
It was nearly time for our cruise group meetup
This experience was surreal, we had name tags and I would walk up to people in the group that I had gotten to know online, their eyes would light up and they would exclaim "YOUR'E ADSIMBA!!!??!?! Thank you so much!!" (or something like that) I've never been a celebrity like that before, even during the week sometimes people would stop me in the hall with the same thing. the weird thing is, for at least the last 6 months before the trip my avatar in facebook was this picture of Remy:
I know that my fame was not earned but I was credited with the Facebook group being so active loving and engaging. When I got home and people asked what the best part of the trip was it was hard to relate that honestly it was the showers of love and appreciation for a week from almost random people all the time.
In deference to all of you experienced cruisers who say to go to Tritons for this meal, we rushed to Cabanas for lunch before it closed where it was too crazy to even think of taking any photos.
Still I had finally made it to the ship, a quest 3 years in the making. I was thrilled to find grilled lamb with mint jelly and my child began drinking horrendous quantities of soda.
Both my son (9) and my neighbor's daughter (12 on the next day) insisted that they could not leave their backpacks with porters at the front desk, but had no need for them as soon as lunch was over and they ran off to explore the ship together. Fortunately we found the kids in time for muster drill
Unfortunately for CL, but fortunately for me, CL had a knee injury about 2 weeks before our trip, this let us sit when others had to stand and get special privileges to accommodate her needs.
We got out of the muster drill about 5 minutes before everyone else and I was able to secure a covered table for our party to enjoy it. As I rushed to the table, full of gratitude and excitement, a thought occurred to me, I live her now, this is my reality for a week.
My child began his pizza addiction right away (yes shortly after lunch and before dinner) this is his first of dozens of slices on the ship. At home he usually doesn't eat almost anything. Personally I thought that the Pinocchio Pizza was kinda bad, but I'm glad he was happy.
The sail away party was good, lots of energy but my neighbors were on cloud 9, this is why we brought them with us, they were so excited and shouting along with the music. I don't think I could enjoy sail away without them.
We headed back to our room to wait for dinner and enjoyed our view from deck 2
Dinner was at Tritons (which I have no pictures of
, actually I failed to take pictures of almost every meal)
C finally tried the escargot, which he assessed as "fine" and truthfully I felt the same way, I ate the whole tray but I probably wouldn't order it again. Still I'm glad he can tell people he's eaten snails.
For dinner, between C and I we tried:
The Duck Confit: we found it dry and unplesant
Iced Lobster and Jumbo Shrimp: easily the biggest shrimp we had ever seen, can't go wrong
Escargot: as I said fine, but I found it more fun to talk about than eat
Oven Baked Salmon Royale: I don't remember what this was like
Crispy Roasted duck breast: This was excellent and everything the confit was not, even the parsnips it came with were excellent.
Roasted Rack of lamb: not surprisingly a much better cut of lamb than at lunch perfectly cooked
Chateaubriand flank steak: This is where my wife's addiction to bernese sauce with beef started (a surprising first for us)
and for dessert at the behest of our server Nathan:
Grand marnier souflee: a good souflee, but I couldn't detect much flavor, I wouldn't get it again
and the
Tahitian Vanilla Creme Brule: I'm a sucker for Creme brule and this wasn't too cold the way most seem to be
Having no need to see the Beverly Bells (a variety show) we headed back to our room to find and correctly put away all of the things our room steward hid when he made our bed up (we left piles of clothing on the bed in our rush to go to dinner on time)