St Thomas, part 2

As we've learned, I can't put too many pictures in or it won't upload correctly!  

After spa day, time to get ready for dinner and watch the ships sail from port

We then headed down for dinner at Giovanni's table, an Italian restaurant on board.  We had a very awesome multi course meal.

The appetizers

Our pasta - spaghetti bolonaise, lasagna, risotto and crab ravioli!

We finished with some steak and lamb chops, no photos there, sorry!  And then we headed for the Aqua show, Oasis of Dreams.  Wow.  What they can do on a moving ship is really amazing!  Not much plot to speak of, but the diving and swimming was amazing.

Then we rode the carousel on the Boardwalk, Chris was a little excited!

Then off to the Rising Tide bar, with our bartenders!

From left to right, Harold, Leroy, Gaston and Jorge.

Then off to bed! We were tired, and have a bridge tour at 9am tomorrow!

St Thomas, USVI

Today, we stopped in beautiful St Thomas.  We arrived about 9 am (10am local time) and docked at Crown Bay, the secondary dock in St Thomas. There were a total of 5 ships in port today, including the Celebrity Reflection in Crown Bay with us.  We got off the ship about 1030am and took a cab to the downtown area and walked around the cute old part of Charlotte Amalie, the capital of St Thomas and checked out a few stores. After picking up a few things, we took a cab back to the ship and stopped at the supermarket to pick up some bottled water and diet Pepsi.  We then walked back to the ship and I took a few photos

That is a big ship!

We then got back on board and grabbed some lunch and then walked around to get some pictures of the Celebrity Reflection.

We then had some time to kill prior to Pam and my spa adventure.  A massage, facial, foot massage and scalp massage.  Excellent relaxation for a lazy afternoon!

Our day at sea

Today was one of those lazy days you often dream about.  We completely skipped breakfast, and about 1130 am headed for Johnny Rockets on the Boardwalk for some lunch.  It was a beautiful, if very windy day, and while we were enjoying our lunch, I snapped some nice photos of the Johnny Rockets staff doing one of their dances to some of the music playing.

They even got some guests involved!

We then walked over to check out the Aqua Theatre, where we are supposed to see Oasis of Dreams tonight.  We will see if it actually occurs, as they cancelled last nights shows due to the amount of movement on the ship.

Back to the room and our balcony for a relaxing day in the shade, with the beautiful ocean.  We have had a lot of movement on the ship today, so we heard a lot of ocean wave crashing sounds, which were perfect for napping.

We finally decided to break for dinner and headed down there about 515pm, and spent some time in the Diamond Club prior to dinner. At 6pm, we headed for the dining room and had a very nice dinner, while trying to ensure we were done in time for the 730 show.  Which, we found out, was cancelled due to high seas, as expected.

Back to the Diamond Club after dinner for some drinks and people watching, always a good time. 

Some photos of the club and the view of the promanade.

Then off to the Rising Tide bar, for a couple of hours riding it up and down with Alistair, the DJ from the nightclub, who was "driving" the bar this evening, who we had met on night one.  Had a great time and ended up heading to the nightclub at 11pm when he started DJing the Motown hour.  It's amazing all the odd people you see there.  Here's a photo

Kind of dark, but an interesting evening for sure!

Tomorrow we dock in St Thomas, so more fun from there!

Nassau, or what you do when you don't leave the ship

Today we finally got up about 1030am, got dressed and headed up to the pool area to see what was going on.  We are docked in Nassau from 7am-2pm, so about 11am most people are still off the ship and the pool area was very empty.  We decided to grab some lunch and headed for the windjammer cafe - which is tiny in comparison to other ships, mostly because there are about 12 other places to eat during the day.  But the place still gets super crowded, so we felt really fortunate to get there about 15 minutes prior to the scheduled opening and they were already open, with hardly anyone there.  The food was pretty good, Chris had some very good German Sausage (and he'd know, with all his trips to Germany recently!) and some nice pork schnitzel as well!

After lunch, we headed for the room to pick up some books for the pool deck, where we stayed until about 130pm.  There is a pool area known as the "beach pool" where the deck chairs are almost in the pool - it's got an area with umbrellas and beach chairs.

picture of beach area

At 130pm, we headed up for the helicopter pad for our "top tier sail-away" - it was actually really neat, because they don't usually let guests out there.  We had some champagne drinks and enjoyed the view.  The weather was beautiful and we had a perfect sailaway.  Here's some photos -

the helipad

looking out across the other ships in port as we are leaving

Sailing out of Nassau harbor

we then went back to the main area in the center of the ship and spent some time walking around checking out things we hadn't seen yesterday.  This ship is so big, I don't think it is really possible to see everything without running around like crazy people, so we'll stick with what we like.

Back to our rooms to get changed for formal night dinner - it is always fun to get dressed up when you don't normally have to.  We then went to the Concierge lounge, which is open for suite guests and diamond plus guests (frequent cruisers) and had a drink there while enjoying the view.  We are apparently being chased by a Carnival ship - you can see it to the right of the anchor in the below picture.

Pam and Michael met us there, and we then all went down to the dining room for dinner.  The dining room was very impressive - it's huge!  And there are lots and lots of tables in the my time dining section where we are sitting.  Our dinner was very good, and we enjoyed meeting our waitstaff, who did an excellent job serving dinner.  Once dinner was over, we went to check out the Diamond Club, a concierge like lounge for diamond and diamond plus cruisers.  It was nice, overlooking the promanade, but very loud inside when the band was going.

We then headed for the Rising Tide Bar again, it seems to be our favorite place because it moves around.  I snapped a few photos, including the Carnival parade that was going on in the promanade.

look, there's Chris!

After a bit of time there, we decided to head back to the room for bed.  We've got a busy day at sea tomorrow!!!!

Also, no emails from Delta (or anyone else, for that matter) claiming to have found my ipad.  Sad, but not unexpected.......

Boarding day, part 2

Well, last night was a fantastic dinner at the steakhouse onboard, Chops Grille.  We had made a reservation for 630pm prior to leaving last week, by emailing the onboard concierge.  It was quite handy and all our reservations for the week were made in one easy shot!  And, I even made a sneaky announcement that it was Chris' birthday and that we were celebrating Pam's as well, and they had that in the reservation as well, and came out with some dessert with birthday candles!  Don't they both look thrilled?

We then spent some time at the Rising Tide bar, which moves up and down like a giant elevator from deck 5 to deck 8 and you can ride it up and down. It was pretty quiet this evening, boarding day is like that.  Then we headed off to bed, as we were still recovering from jetlag.

Onto Oasis!

Well, we've made it to the ship!  It's huge, much bigger than I was expecting.  We got up and replaced, and then had a lovely breakfast at Cracker Barrel.

Always delicious pancakes!

Then we took off driving for the port and arrived about an hour later, dropped off the luggage and were on board within 30 minutes.  Since it was after 1pm, the rooms were open, so we stopped by and checked them out.  Nice!  They are good sized, but a little smaller than similar cabins on other ships. Our luggage had not yet arrived, so we wandered around and checked out the ship.  OMG, this ship is HUGE!

Here are a few photos first, Central Park.

And here's a view from the pool deck

The Boardwalk

Aqua theatre

So, we've just had muster drill (most unorganized ever!)  and are now in a bar.  Soon, back to the room to unpack and get changed for our dinner at Chops, for Chris's birthday!  Yay Chris!  

Worst Travel Day Ever!!!

What?  I know everyone is shocked to hear this - and it all comes down to one thing - I LEFT MY IPAD ON THE FIRST FLIGHT!  Yes, that is correct.  Somehow, I did not put it back in my bag and in my sleep deprived and befuddled state upon arrival to Atlanta at 6am (that's 3am for us left coasters) I did not notice until 2 hours had gone by and we were on the 2nd flight to West Palm Beach.  Then Chris and I had to play the "where was the last place we remember me using it" game, realizing that I was fiddling with it as we got on the plane in PDX, and then promptly forgetting to put it away.

Unfortunately for me, i did NOT have the find my ipad locater enabled on that device, so I did report it to Delta (I'm not that confident that it will find it's way back to me) and spend most of the morning changing passwords to anything I used on the ipad......annoying for sure.

Here comes the next question - how on earth am I writing this?  Well, upon getting picked up at the airport, we promptly drove to the scariest Best Buy I've ever been in, and after 5 minutes with nary an employee in sight, we drove on down to a different mall and hit the Apple store.  I am now the proud owner of a new Ipad 4 with retina display, and a beautiful bright green case - so I won't be leaving it behind any longer.  :)  We also enabled the locater feature, and downloaded all my apps from the App Store, so things are looking a little brighter as I write this.

Anyway, the weather here turned into a beautiful day, about 80 and sunny, and we were trying for a late lunch at this restaurant called Jetty, that apparently doesn't open until 430pm (we were there about 230) So we ended up at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co across the street.  It had a lovely view, nice tropical breezes and about 5 things on the menu that I could eat (being allergic to shellfish) so I settled on a Caesar salad with chicken, that was actually quite good.  Back to Pam and Michael's house, a short nap and then we sat around, had dinner and generally chatted it up.  Now attempting to sleep, and decided to take a few minutes to keep everyone updated.

More fun tomorrow I am sure, off to Port Everglades and the Oasis of the Seas!  I'll actually provide some pictures as well - since I have a fancy new ipad, I can just take the photos in a snap! And maybe we'll get lucky and hear from Delta that they have found my ipad......!

This is the first post for our vacation

Right now, I'm trying to figure out how the best way to start packing would be.  Probably to throw some stuff in a bag, but it hasn't happened yet.....