Fiji Island Cruise - February 27 - March 9, 2014

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Friday, February 28, 2014

Today is our first of many sea days. To our surprise, Cindy and I slept in until 7:00ish. This is huge for me, Mr. up early in the morning. We cleaned up, got dressed, and then headed to breakfast. We did not want to eat upstairs in the Windjammer, instead in the dining room. It is nice to be served to instead of preparing you on meal.

We arrived a breakfast just before 7:45am. The dining room staff seats you, just like we are used to on other ships. The only difference is they wait for a group of 10 people and bring you to a table. We sat with a table full of Australian ladies. They were super funny and seemed to be traveling on their own. They had something to be at by 9:00am, so getting there food quickly was the theme. For breakfast Cindy and had berry yogurt with granola (yogurt was tart, but still good), Cindy had an egg white omelet with veggies, and Todd had eggs over hard with hash browns and bacon/sausage. Both of us had an english muffin. We were done with breakfast by 9:00am.

Our main focus this morning was to get connected to the Internet to send the kids a note and post my blog for my FaceBook friends and beyond to read. I also wanted to check my personal email quickly. How the Internet works on this ship is you need to go to the Internet Café, swipe your SeaPass and then purchase one of the packages. We bought the 250 minutes package for starters. Once you purchase the minutes, you had to move to one of the several mobile hot spots on ship to connect to the Wifi. To connect to the Wifi, we found a mobile hotspot in the Schooner Bar, deck 4. I quickly signed on to post my blog and then check my email. This was all done in 23 minutes. Time does go quickly.

We brought my computer back to the room and wanted to check on where to wash clothes. Guess what, Royal Caribbean does not have laundry facilities. This is not something I expected. Princess Cruises does. I guess I missed that small detail when I booked our trip. I would have packed more clothes, oh well. Cindy ended up hand washing (we did bring along laundry soap tablets) some of our under garments and socks. Our plan regarding clothes now is we will reuse our pants/shorts, send out shirts, and hand wash under garments. It will all work out. Note to self, remember to look if the cruise ship has laundry facilities before packing, ha.

We then moved to the Shore Excursion lecture. I always like going to these lectures because they give you lots of help on making sure we either picked the correct tour or possibly consider other aspects you missed while booking at home. One thing about Shore Excursions with Royal Caribbean is they higher recommend booking tours before you arrive on the ship. What is different than Princess is, you pay for your shore excursions in advance. I did not like doing this at first; however I heard that many of the tours are already booked. The shore excursion lecture was very informative. She spent time going over the must see’s for each port. We are very glad we attended. The three big things we should see in the three ports we visit are beach/snorkeling, Kava ceremony, and Fire Walking. The only part we did not have on our itinerary was fire walking. We ended up changing our tour while in Loutaka Fiji which will include a fire walking ceremony. Can’t wait for this.

After sitting through the shore excursion lecture and changing our tour, Cindy and I went to lunch in the dining room. The same process as breakfast, they sat large groups in the dining room. We ended up having our dinner mates join us, Ty and Arthur. For lunch, Cindy had a turkey wrap which she really enjoyed and Todd ate a Mexican Black Bean and Avocado salad with salsa dressing, quite yummy. Lunch was super quick, only 30 minutes.

Following lunch, Cindy went to work out in the Gym and Todd went to work on updating his blog. We were both productive. Cindy said the gym is really awesome. In the middle of the gym there is a huge hot tub. When Cindy came back to the room, she said it was super-hot/humid in the gym. Part of that was probably because of the hot tub.

Prior to getting dressed for dinner, Cindy and I took a quick power nap. We are on a holiday, right?

Tonight was formal night, so after our well-deserved nap, we got dressed into our formal wear. Cindy wore a beautiful tropical dress and Todd wore a tuxedo with a red bow tie and cummerbund. Both of us looking pretty slick.

After getting dressed we headed to the 14^th floor of the ship to enjoy a happy hour special, $5.50, for Martini’s, in the High Notes bar. Cindy had Cosmo and I had a Appletini. It is ton of fun sitting in this bar because the view done on the pool, jogging track and open ocean waters is just awesome. We had the couple next to use take our photo with the Martini’s.

Following our happy hour drinks, we started to venture down to our dining from dinner. However before getting to the dining room, we stopped to have formal pictures taken. We found a really neat place standing on staircase.

Dinner this evening was fantastic for both us. We really had some great conversation with our table mates and food was great. I forgot to mention in my blog yesterday that before the waiters start servicing us, the maître-de plays an introduction song to start off the dinner. During the song the waiters bring out trays of bread. Fun stuff. Like our first night they serve a three course meal; appetizer, main dish, and dessert. For appetizer, Cindy had a garden salad and I had a chilled banana fruit soup. For dinner, Cindy and I ate beef wellington with potato and veggies. For dessert Cindy had a sugar free cake and I had a piece of cheesecake.

Following dinner, Cindy and I went to another bar on the 5^th floor. The bar is called the Champagne bar. We had the drink of the day. This was really good and the price was right, $7.95 and we got to keep the glass. While sitting and a bar table, the captain of our chip was sitting across from us and started to ask question about our experience thus far. We told him that this is our first time on a Royal Caribbean cruise and so far so go. We asked him what his favorite to sail into was. He mentioned Stockholm, Asia, however he could not pick one. He has sailed out of Galveston before.

One of the couples from our dinner table came by and joined us for drinks, Ty and Arthur. We chatted a little but Ty had this great idea to have our pictures taken with the captain. This was very spontaneous, but these make the best photos. We could not chat for very long, we wanted to see the show this evening.

We quickly moved to the theatre for the 8:45 pm show. This show was based around music in movies. Cindy and I knew several of them, however not all. There were African American singers that were awesome. They were strong and did a great job singing many of the songs. The others were good; however they were not as powerful as the others. There was an orchestra sitting in a pit in front of the stage. I have never seen this on a cruise ship.

Following the show, Cindy and I thought it would awesome to go find a hot tub to sit in and relax. We have always wanted to do this, however most the ships have small hot tubs and we can’t find anything available. We did find the adult pool area and found a hot tub. Although we could not figure out how to turn on the jets, the water was super warm. Within 5 minutes of being the hot tub, we met an older couple from Long Island, NY. I have traveled to Long Island on business for years and they both knew where I stay. They apparently live very close to this area. Our new NY friends apparently knew people to get the jets turned back on. After about 15 minutes, the jets were back on, however no additional warm water came into the tub. We had a very nice conversation with the couple (I believe their names were Ron and Julie, however not 100%).

We lasted in the hot tub for about an hour before heading back to our room. Before going back to the room, we had to face the strong wind and cold temperatures (thought we were in a tropical environment. Oh well

We were in bed by 12:00 am, however it was awesome just doing things at our own pace today and having a good time meeting others.

Tomorrow is also a sea day. Apparently the seas will be rough due to a Cyclone off the east coast of Fiji and a large high pressure system off the east coast of Australia. The wind speeds may be 40 mph winds. I can handle some motion, however before we left for the home, I ordered transderm patches to go behind my ear. The only down side to using the patch, I get an extremely dry throat and feel like I am congested. This is better than the alternative, getting motion sick.

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