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Published: January 25th 2009
There She is!
Not Felipe's girlfriend, but our ship the Navigator of the Seas.Alligator Alley
We foolishly believed Nate who said “oh yeah, door-to-door one hour to Fort Lauderdale from Fort Myers!” My calculations had said closer to 2 hours. Well my calculations were more accurate and poor Felipe was stuck at RA Sushi waiting for us for an hour. This was precipitated by Google Earth being wrong about the location of the restaurant and was not mitigated by the fact that we were hauling at 90 MPH down Alligator Alley with the top down with a white BMW 5 Series running radar cover.
We both admit that coming down to Florida keeps becoming more and more of a shock as we are unaccustomed now to how things are done down here, from the way women dress, to what is considered acceptable behavior, to how they drive. Some of those behaviors I have kept, but Jennifer has been working on me for eight years now, so they are slowly dying away and now even shock me. The problem with how they drive is that normally I’m the only one who drives South Florida-style in Ohio and in Ohio every other driver is very predictably slow and passive while down here you have the
Our Stateroom
Nice, the key was the staff, they are truly an amicable and professional group. grayhairs who are slow but completely unpredictable and oblivious and then you have everything from ‘baby on boards’ to rice burners whizzing around with no turn signals and no fear if there is barely a car length between you and the next car.
Felipe, the Latin Fonzie
We finally found the restaurant following significant frustration at the challenge of finding it and numerous phone calls to both the local Benihanas and information all to no avail. They have the wrong number in directory assistance for RA Sushi in Pembroke Pines just in case any of you try to find it. The sushi was good and as another sign that we are becoming “Ohio-ized,” the server was shocked and made us order less on what is a normal quantity for us at Restaurant Hama or Asian Gourmet in Columbus. That’s bad when a server reduces their income. It was great to see Felipe who some of you know and was my other roommate from junior year in college when Jennifer and I first met. Felipe was known for his prolific ability to meet very interesting and open women at the same time. Felipe is still up to his antics,
Deck 8
Looking forward on Chris/Barbara's and April/Bob's staterooms. It seemed all the good action always happened to starboard so we had great views. living in Miami, but just a little calmed down, most likely as he admitted some of his earlier antics landed him some unexpected consequences. In any event, Felipe is a great guy and we wished we could have spent more time but we had to rush off to catch the cruise.
Cruise Departure: Navigator of the Seas
The boarding process out of Port Everglades was no trouble at all and we settled into our staterooms on the starboard side, 8th deck aft.
One thing is for certain, both from what we saw and what frequent cruisers told us, Royal Caribbean blows Carnival out of the water! Of course the "Fun Ships" are also cheaper to cruise on more often, which explains their popularity, but it doesn't make up for the loss in value, we would definitely sail with Royal Caribbean again. The rooms are a little older but are wonderful, the balconies have a good size. The food at dinner was good but as much as it is great that the crew is very international, some of the poor staff has a very low level of English and speaking Spanish to them just seems to befuddle them more.
The Promenade
In the new ship Royal Caribbean is building, this will be open air. This is the equivalent of an enclosed mall, the shopping was rather limited however. There have not been any events so far and we have the second day, today, at sea. Jennifer was very excited about the fact that we can order room service breakfast for free and she spent a good ten minutes fretting over the menu yesterday. Planning and eating food remains at the forefront of Jennifer’s agenda . . . even at sea. We saw what I thought was a shark in the water near the cruise ship but based on the large splash it made, I may reconsider that it was a sailfish, this is just north of Cuba. The thing was five or six feet in length. If anyone has a better guess, let me know.
Formal Dinner
We had the formal dinner aboard ship and everyone dressed nicely and not too many garishly dressed except for a few prom dresses here and there, definitely bringing the purple suit next time. The food was good and we got our wine immediately.
The waitstaff sang some Italian songs which we are still uncertain for what purpose but they were very good in any event. We gave Barbara some roses to celebrate the anniversary of her pancreas and kidney
Busy Day at Port Everglades
I think we crossed paths with that Carnival ship in Jamaica. The Royal Caribbean vessel is the latest addition to the fleet according to our bartender. transplant.
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