Southward Bound

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Geo: 22.3758, -70.7516

I awake to the smell of coffee. Always a good sign.

Today is a sea day as we continue our journey southwards towards the Caribbean Virgin Islands. It's a little cloudy first thing but the weather on the Cruise Compass says it will get better later in the day. The ocean is very calm and the swells of yesterday have died down. Each time I venture out onto the balcony I keep a lookout for dolphins. They usually pop up at some point during a cruise which I always take as a good sign. But no sightings yet.

Again we take breakfast in the main dining room and Joyce and Jerry, who are already seated with their friends call us over to join them. Eggs Benedict again for me, I love it. There are several places all over the ship where we could enjoy breakfast but the main dining room is our favourite as you get waited on, and after all we self serve for most of the year anyway.

Our first stop was the Britto Art Gallery to purchase a lovely little cat figurine that we had seen the day earlier. Our Diamond booklet means we got a 15% discount. Britto is synonymous with Southern Florida and Royal Caribbean in particular as his artwork adorns a lot of their ships. We then stop off at the Focus photo shop to pick up some of the formal portraits we had taken previously. I say some as the others were not at all flattering so RCI can recycle those.

From there we head towards the aft end of the ship on deck 11 where is is a little hidden alcove that not many people know about. There are some deck chairs and loungers and it is a great place to avoid the masses up on the pool deck. We spend an hour or 2 reading and listening to music.

Before we know it it's lunchtime already. Today we go to the Solarium Cafe where the food is a little more healthy. Nice salad, followed by some tasty fish which is labelled 'catch of the day' but somehow I doubt they were trailing a fishing net behind the ship last night. Feeling suitably smug that we have avoided burgers and fries we go down to cafe promenade for some real cake and cookies rather than the sugar free options in the solarium. It's all about balance.

Now for some sun. Again up to deck 11 but this time on the starboard side where the sun is shining. The peace is soon shattered by the sexy man competition down in the Aquatheatre below. The sound of loud music and raucous laughter drift up to us and the competition is won by an elderly Argentinian gentleman, despite his younger and buffer competitors. We retreat indoors again as the sun is blisteringly hot.

We have an appointment at 3pm with a Loyalty Ambassador. Joyce has persuaded us (it didn't take much persuasion) to book another cruise in October 2014 that she is on. Western Mediterranean on Liberty of the Seas out of Barcelona. A far easier destination for us to get to from the UK. We bump into Cindy Dangel, a loyalty ambassador who we first met onboard Mariner of the Seas way back in 2004 and again on Freedom in 2006. She still remembers us despite the thousands if not millions of guests she would have seen since then. Little bit more retail therapy follows

We have dinner at 150 Central Park tonight. It serves up an excellent six-course menu of locally-sourced food (well local to southern florida) developed by Award-winning chef Michael Schwartz. It was excellent. We had the following set menu.

Homemade Organic Ricotta
Heirloom Tomato Gazpacho
Homemade Fettucine
Wild Salmon
Slow Roasted and Grilled Harris Ranch Beef Short Rib
Strawberry Shortcake

Every course was delicious.

We then headed next door to Vintages Wine Bar for a glass of chilled Chardonnay before heading to bed.

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