Once again, I woke up early. It’s the last full day of the cruise. NOOOO! We were cruising through the Bahamas at this point, so there were land masses around us. It seemed windier today, but the water still seemed relatively smooth (at least compared to what we had seen the first few days of the cruise), so I got dressed in my swimsuit and coverup, pleasantly surprised by how forgiving this new swimsuit is. Target apparently knows how to make cruise swimsuits!
Since I was awake so early, and had realized the night before I did not have nearly the amount of cash needed for tips for the remainder of the trip, I went down to guest services to adjust the tips being charged to my account, to reflect the extra I wanted to give our team. I had no wait at that (pre-7 am) hour. Given how crazy I knew guest services would be that evening, I was thrilled to be awake and moving this early, to get things accomplished. Here’s hoping they never move away from being open 24 hours a day!
Once again, I was in Cabanas shortly after it opened for the morning. Since I had noticed that spare tire the night before, I went a little less crazy at the buffet for breakfast. And once again, I ate outside in the sunshine, watching the wake of the ship.
After breakfast, I went back to the room, where Nick was still sleeping off his late night. It was clear we were getting closer to Castaway Cay, but it would still be awhile. So I started packing.
Eventually, I was pretty sure I could see Castaway Cay, so I went out on the veranda for quite some time. Last year when we sailed, we basically pulled straight up to Castaway Cay, and then did a 180 to back in. This year, we took a more circuitous route...literally. We did a giant circle in front of the island, to get in position to back in.
By now it was very evident that it was VERY windy. We had heard multiple times around the ship about how hard Captain Marco had tried to dock the previous week, and how, after 3 tries, the day had been turned into a sea day.
We absolutely crept into the channel; at times I really wasn’t sure we were moving. Then we got lined up with the dock, and it was evident that those thrusters were running full bore, and we appeared to not be closing the gap between the ship and the dock.
In the end, though, we were able to dock, albeit, a bit late.
In the end, though, we were able to dock, albeit, a bit late.
I think we were cleared to go ashore about 10. Nick had gone to breakfast while we were docking, so while we were definitely not the first people off the ship, we were off the ship around 10:30.
We gradually made our way to Serenity Bay, stopping for pictures and shopping along the way.
We gradually made our way to Serenity Bay, stopping for pictures and shopping along the way.
Once at Serenity Bay, we wasted no time in ordering Konk Koolers from a roaming bartender and parking some chairs at the edge of the water. Then, once the Konk Koolers were finished, we headed out into the water. It was a really nice day, with lots of fish visible (couldn’t catch the ray or barracuda on my camera),and a fellow cruiser who, if I had to guess, is a science teacher, that came over to show off a sea slug she had found.
Sooner than I would have liked, we both were hungry for lunch (and a bit sunburned), so we dried off, and headed for the bbq, with Nick stopping at the bar for another Konk Kooler for him. I abstained from a second drink, since we had a tasting in about 2 hours.
Lunch was delicious. I followed it up with a bit of palm tree picture taking.
Then we took the tram back towards the family beaches. We explored the Pelican Point area a bit.
And then we went shopping. I underestimated how far away the store I wanted was, so I perhaps wasn’t the most popular, but it’s all good. I bought a couple souvenirs (and most importantly, the really cute Castaway Cay reusable bag), and we made it back to the Heads Up bar with plenty of time to take a few pictures before our mojito and caipirinha tasting. Could this tasting have been held in a more beautiful location?
Our primary bartender for this tasting was Gilbert. He and his assistant bartenders were fantastic and funny. When we arrived, we were assured this location had lots of “medicine” waiting for us. Then, when we got started with the tasting, Gilbert shared that he usually uses a 3-count for pouring rum when making mojitos, but we all looked like we needed a 5-count instead. Then he made us promise, if it got to be too much, we would tap out, because he was not taking any of us back to our rooms; we had to be able to walk to the tram. He continued reiterating this and joking with us throughout the tasting, which only got livelier when other cruisers started making drinks. One woman counted to 5 for her rum pours in Spanish, because those numbers take longer to say. And Nick...I’m not sure how he was counting, but he really tried to kill everyone with the caipirinhas he made.
By the end of our hour, we had had very good sized pours of a standard mojito, a pineapple mojito, a mango mojito, and a caipirinha. And we all were wondering where Gilbert had been hiding for the whole cruise, because he was awesome.
Nick and I both successfully stumbled back to the tram, which we took to the next stop, then walked the rest of the way to the ship, taking pictures along the way.
I have to say that I REALLY appreciated the water dispensers and cold towels that we had access to as we reboarded the ship after all the sun and mojitos. Nick did too.
Getting back on the ship was easy enough. Getting an elevator was a little more challenging. People just don’t know elevator lobby etiquette! But, eventually, we made it back to the room, and promptly ordered room service: a cheese plate for me, chicken tenders and key lime pie for Nick.
Room service arrived within 20 minutes, and I enjoyed my cheese plate on the veranda, soaking in that view.
Once we started heading out to sea, I started packing in earnest. There wasn’t a huge rush, since we were not going to the show tonight, but I wanted everything packed before we headed for dinner. And I did accomplish that. And so did Nick. It was a relatively relaxing evening, and I caught a bit of the sunset before creating one of the saddest sights on a cruise: putting the luggage out.
Then it was off to dinner, which was in Animator’s Palate tonight. This was a great way to end our cruise, since it was the Animator’s Magic night. We were given directions for our drawings the minute we sat down, and we didn’t receive our menus until our drawings were complete, to get us to expedite those drawings. When Ronaldo took our food orders, he took it for all courses, including dessert, so that he wouldn’t have to disrupt us during the show. The food was probably the worst of the entire cruise tonight, but it was still a fun evening. I had the Malaysian chicken skewer appetizer (yum), the white cheddar and broccolini soup (reasonably good but not great), the chicken schnitzel (least favorite entree of the cruise), and the celebration cake (delicious), with one final drink of the day. The show was fun to watch, and at the end of dinner, Ronaldo handed back our drawings with animator stickers on them, and we said our good byes to our tablemates and our servers, since we would not be able to have breakfast in the dining room the next morning.
After dinner, we spent some time in the atrium just taking in the atmosphere. Then we started walking aft on deck 4, which meant we passed through La Piazza. Ciaran and Michael happened to be performing, and NOBODY was there. Nick grabbed seats for us immediately. We sat and listened for at least 20 minutes.
When they went on break, we slowly made our way back to our room, where we found our final towel/bed runner animal of the cruise (which we never figured out…).
Nick watched a movie that had been talked about at dinner, and I crashed eventually, knowing full well that I would be awake early the next morning, grateful that the room wasn’t vibrating, since we were sailing slower than the not-so-magical 20 knots.
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