The whole trip was pretty rainy, so I didn't get a ton of good pictures, but I will post what I have. The first day, we got on the ship, dropped our stuff off at our room and headed out to explore. This ship has many different 'neighborhoods', and we went to the Boardwalk first. It was probably my favorite area of the ship. They had a donut shop, hot dog stand, ice cream shop, carousel, Johnny Rocket's, Rita's Cantina, a little jungle gym type thing for kids to play on, and this is also where the big OceanAria show is with the big Cirque style water show. We decided to grab a bite at Rita's...
Pretty sure the salsa was Pace Picante from a jar, but everything else was delicious! I had a red snapper with grilled peppers and onions. SO good.
Here is a shot of the carousel. Bella would have loved this!
After lunch we continued our tour and it started raining on us, but we managed to still have a good time. This is Jason in the Central Park neighborhood. They have umbrellas out when it rains so you can still walk around, and they had a covered bar...
There are many pools up top, with a great kids play area. There are also a ton of deck chairs, and a lot of umbrellas if you wanted to lay by the pool and not get scorched.
The first night we ate in the normal dining room. It was just ok. I feel like in general, cruise lines are starting to put pretty mediocre food in the 'free' dining areas to drive you to spend money in the restaurants that cost extra. The last Royal Caribbean cruise we took was on the Freedom of the Seas and I remember being impressed with the food, so maybe it was just a bad night. We only ate there one night!
The next day we went to the spa, which is outrageously priced, but still pretty nice. Then just kind of did some relaxing. I also got to tour some of the different rooms of my coworkers to get an idea of the different layouts. I think one of my favorites was the one with a balcony over the Boardwalk. It was really quiet if you had the balcony door closed, but if you sat out there it was great people watching, you could see the ocean off the back of the ship and you could even watch OceanAria from your balcony!
That night we ate at the Italian restaurant Giovanni's. Man. Was it good! I mean I wanted to eat every bit of what we ordered, but I knew there were more and more courses, so I couldn't. Jason and I both said if it was a restaurant in Dallas, we would go there often. SO good.
We also stayed up until about 1 am on this day. I cannot tell you the last time I stayed up that late. Seriously. But it was fun!
The next day we decided we needed some greasy Johnny Rocket's after our late night out. It is $4.95 per person, and you can order anything on the menu, as much as you want. This is what they bring out for you at first...
Pretty sure I ate all the onion rings and then felt really bad after, but they were goooood.
That night we ate at the Wine Bar there. They serve tapas so we just ate a bunch of those, which were all really good, and then went to bed early.
The process getting off the ship was super easy. We did the express where you just take your own luggage off. There was no waiting at all to get off the boat, we went straight to customs. There was a little bit of a wait once we got there, but that is pretty usual. I have to say, on all cruises I feel like I always am waiting on elevators and sometimes the restaurants feel crowded. But as many people as there are on this ship, I never felt like it was crowded. I don't remember ever having to wait for multiple elevators or anything.
There were a ton of things I wanted to do and didn't get to because of the rain. There is zip lining, rock wall climbing and several shows, including Chicago. All in all I really liked this ship and would definitely recommend it.
This is a pretty drink I had, just had to share the pic with you guys. Nothing says "I'm on vacation" like a drink with an umbrella in it...
Also, I think I have told you of my love for towel animals a time or two (thousand). We only got one, but he was cute. =)
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