Food & DINK
We travel. We eat. And we travel to eat.
Cruise Day 6: An (Almost) Private Cruise Ship
Because we ended up going to the beach on Wednesday, this left us with no plans for the final day in Bermuda. Rather than spend more time on shore, we decided to stay onboard and enjoy a quiet ship. And by enjoy, I obviously mean relax and eat everything in sight.
We again breakfasted in the buffet, which was still surprisingly busy for a day when many people were in port. Still, compared to a sea day, it was a delight. After yet more omelets, we made our way to the pool deck to enjoy the pool sans crowds. As I mentioned previously, this is really the only way to enjoy the pool on this ship if you don’t want to be pressing up against random strangers as you swim. Unless you’re in to that sort of thing, obviously.
Speaking of getting too personal with strangers…We enjoyed swimming in a quiet pool for a while before making our way up to Spice H20 to enjoy some quiet time in the grotto. Unfortunately, our peaceful grotto morning was interrupted by the single most disgusting thing we’ve encountered while on a cruise. As we were walking through the various sections of the grotto, Kathleen spotted a used condom stuck on one of the rock walls. Needless to say, this grossed us out. Kathleen alerted a crew member, who seemed none to enthused about the task of retrieving the thing, but they did address it promptly. This was simply a reminder that on land or on sea, some people are just fucking disgusting.
Not really in the mood to explore the grotto any further, we hopped in the Spice H20 hot tub, which was nice and empty on this morning in port. We enjoyed almost a half an hour of private hot tub use before it began to rain. Wanting to save our beach bag from getting soaked, we hopped out of the hot tub and sought shelter from the storm.
We made our way back down to the pool deck and grabbed a couple of loungers under an overhang and protected from the rain. We went back to the pool deck because there was an activity in the Daily at noon that interested us, or so we thought. The Daily listed a “Born in the USA Video Concert.” To us, this meant they would be showing a Bruce Springsteen video concert on the poolside screen. This seemed to make sense—a ship leaving from New York would probably be full of passengers from New Jersey, for whom a Springsteen video concert would be something fun. But, sad to say, this was the greatest case of false advertising I’ve ever come across. There was a video concert, but where the Born in the USA part came in, I have no idea. Instead, it was random live performances by a variety of bands, none of which were Springsteen. It was weird.
The only way to cheer us up after such a letdown was a delicious lunch, so we headed back up to Margaritaville to relive the glorious lunch we had earlier in the week. Everything was as good as the first time, and I stuffed myself to the point of bursting.
The storms really started picking up by that point, so we decided to forego any additional outdoor activities. We made our way to the spa and spent a very enjoyable couple of hours relaxing in the hot tub, getting our bodies massaged in the thalassotherapy pool, and lounging on our favorite padded loungers.
Allow me to pause here and tell you a spooky story, and why we believe our cabin was haunted. The first night onboard, we’d asked our cabin steward to fill our ice bucket in order to cool our complimentary bottle of Champagne. We ended up not wanting to open the Champagne the first night, and the steward dutifully kept it cold for us each day until we wanted to enjoy it.
However, every single night, in the wee hours of the morning, the ice bucket would make a very loud clang noise, as if someone forcefully put the lid on the bucket. This happened seriously every night, though I didn’t have the foresight to check whether it happened at exactly the same time each night.
After the fourth night of this happening, I jokingly mentioned to Kathleen that maybe it meant our cabin was haunted. And here’s where things get interesting: This particular afternoon, while Kathleen was showering, she was startled to see writing on the shower wall. According to her, the writing said FY DIE, which to me either means fuck you, die, or we had a ghost with some particularly ominous thoughts about the upcoming fiscal year. She also said it looked like the word DEVIL. Needless to say, she was weirded out, especially when she tried washing it off and it just reappeared. We had no additional ghostly encounters after that, but it was definitely spooky!
Our evening stop at Cellars had a bonus accompaniment to the wine that evening; Orly was playing jazz guitar from 7:15-9:00. We again enjoyed relaxing with a few glasses of wine (plus cheese), all the while listening to Orly make me feel inferior about my guitar abilities.
Since Margaritaville was so filling, we again decided to skip a full dinner. We instead revisited Pinchos and tried a few new items we’d overlooked during our previous meal there. When you dine there, DO NOT miss the beef skewers! They’re skewers of pieces of steak and potatoes covered in an amazing beef stock sauce and a chimichurri type sauce. It was so good, we ended up ordering seconds, and I ate both rounds so fast I forgot to give Kathleen time to take a picture. I’m getting hungry just thinking about it.
We again spent a relaxing evening listening to Piano Manny and Orly, drinking Retributions at the District and Getaways at Tobacco Road. I’m nothing if not predictable.
With only one day of vacation left, we were loathed to go to bed. We wanted to pack as much vacation enjoyment in as we could. Unfortunately, our late night stamina isn’t what it used to be, and we were once again back in our cabin and slumbering by about midnight.
Up next in cruise day 7: one last day at sea.
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