Vacation Blog VI, first day at sea and I found some fish

Saturday, March 26^th

8:30 AM – Up and packed and ready to go, basically. First downstairs to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. It is one of those “free with room” breakfast buffets that you get in a lot of these types of hotels, and the quality matches what you’d expect. It’s not very good. There is one catch: It’s not free at all, it’s a pretty awful $40 breakfast. At the very least the ‘make-your-own-waffle’ bar somewhat salvages the meal. Definitely the least impressive thing about our stay at this otherwise perfectly fine hotel.

9:45 AM – We get a call from the front desk telling us that our 10 AM shuttle is ready; they actually called 10 minutes ago to tell us there was NO 10 AM shuttle and asked if we wanted to catch the 11. After explaining that their front desk compadre was the one that told us there would be no problem with us taking a special shuttle at 10 AM (but apparently they didn’t check with the shuttle driver about it), the shuttle driver agreed.

9:55 AM – We are in the shuttle and ready to take the 15 or so minute drive to the Port….

9:57 AM – …….we arrive at the Port. Apparently the shuttle driver had another appointment or something. Holy shit.

We are actually scheduled to check in between 10:30 and 11 AM (hence why the 11 AM shuttle wasn’t much good to us) and our cruise documents state that anyone showing up early will be turned away until their designated check-in time. That turns out not to be the case, however, as we breeze through security and check-in in minutes and now it’s time to wait until it’s time to board the ship, which is supposed to be around Noon. We are given a paddle that says we are in “Group 6” to check-in. Not too much longer after we get there it starts to get very crowded and we notice that people are now getting Group 20. Sometimes it’s nice to be early.

11:45 AM – They start calling groups to board. It takes 45 minutes or so for them to get to us but I’m still glad we got here when we did and aren’t sitting there with “Group 20” in our hands.

The staterooms are closed off when we get on the ship, so we take our carry on bags with us to the buffet for lunch. The food is really terrific, much better than your average buffet fare (and 100X better than the buffet on the Princess cruise we took to Alaska last year). One thing I notice that seems odd, though, is that despite the enormousness of this vessel, the buffet seems much smaller that I expected.

…..except that it’s actually HUGE, we just only found half of it on our first journey here. Wow, just massive.

Near the end of our meal they announce that the staterooms are ready. Off to our “Aft-facing mini-suite with large balcony”, one of only two such staterooms on the ship. Are they exaggerating the size of the balcony?

Nope. 

The entire room is huge. It’s more like a hotel room than a cruise ship stateroom. We are going to be SO comfortable here for the week. This room is actually completely handicapped-accessible; which means nothing to us, of course, except for the huge amount of space. You could roll two wheelchairs around in this room; which might be us by the end of this cruise if we keep eating at that buffet.

3:30 PM – Time for the mandatory muster. Tracey says “mmmmmmm mustard”. That’s my wife. Hands off guys, she’s all mine.

We head up to the Manhattan dining room where, coincidentally, we are booked for dinner in a couple hours, for the muster and life jacket demonstration. After they finally manage to get all the guests accounted for and quiet (they have to shush the group about 20 times), the demonstrations takes about 3 minutes and we are on our way back to our suite to await our luggage which hasn’t arrived yet.

4:15 PM – Our luggage still isn’t here, but most of the rooms around us have theirs so we are confident it will be here soon. We decide to go and check out a bit of the ship, including the HUGE casino and the Michael Mondavi wine bar where we expect we may spend a wee bit o’ time this week.

5:15 PM – Back to the room to find our luggage has arrived and the mini-bar items that we requested be taken away are gone. We need room in the fridge for our white wine, bottled water and pop! No room for tiny bottles of crap we aren’t going to drink anyway.

5:30 PM – Up for our dinner at the Manhattan Room, one of the dining rooms that is free with the price of the cruise. They do have a few premium offerings for dinner with an extra charge if you want them, including an entire Maine lobster for $20. We both order an appetizer, main course and dessert and the whole thing costs us exactly zero dollars above what we’ve already spent on the cruise, and that always feels good. This is not your average dining room either, it’s VERY nice, the staff is friendly and attentive and the food, all of it, was fantastic. My appetizer of shrimp risotto was one of the 3-4 best risottos I’ve ever had.

To celebrate our first night on this nearly new ship (I’m not sure if I even mentioned this before, but this is the Norwegian Escape, their fleet’s newest offering, which just took it’s maiden voyage in October, 2015), we brought along one of the Pinots that we got from Hartford. I’ll have full reviews of that bottle, along with all the other wine we consume on this trip, on my wine blog when I have time to update and upload it. A sneak preview: the review of this Pinot is going to be spectacularly positive.

7:00 PM – After dinner up to the brew pub they have on the ship for a rousing game of “Name That Tune Trivia”. It turns out to be all about TV Theme Songs. Clearly we watch too much TV as we got 16/20 questions correct. But clearly we don’t watch enough TV, as someone else got 17. Assclowns.

They don’t have any good wine in this pub (it’s a brew pub, after all) so I order a Dos Equis, because although I don’t usually drink beer, when I do, I prefer Dos Equis. Actually this is the first time I’ve ever had it. I’m probably not even spelling it correctly.

After we flame out like a couple of TV Theme Song losers (Jesus we missed Taxi. TAXI!! That was so obvious….gotta give the Devi her due, though, Tracey nailed a couple of really tough ones, Fantasy Island and Dynasty), it’s time for the wine bar. Again I’ll have more specific details on the wine on my wine blog at a later date, but suffice it to say we had a good time and perhaps slightly overindulged. Our waiter knew his wine and made some good recommendations, and we tried a wine flight of pretty decent stuff which actually included a wine from Uruguay of all places. I didn’t even know they made wine in Uruguay.

Actually, after tasting that one, I’m still not sure they make wine in Uruguay.

We take the last glass of wine to go and do a little light duty free shopping and then back to the casino where I notice the poker table is empty, but there are a couple people wanting to play, so I sit down and get the game started. I don’t play for too long as Tracey is bored watching me, of course. Shortly before I get up, the following hand comes up (blinds are 2/5):

I am in the small blind with AQ offsuit. Two limpers, button raises to $20, I call, big blind and the limpers call. Flop is Qxx with two hearts (I don’t have a heart). One of the pre-flop limpers bets $10 (WTF???), button raises to $30, I shove my $135 into the pot. The next limper snap calls the $130 cold. I look to Tracey and shake my head, this guy obviously has a set and I’m drawing next to dead. The other two fold, the turn and river bring nothing interesting, and I table my AQ and start to get up to leave, when the other guy turns up Qh3h for top pair and busted flush draw. Wow, that, ladies and gentlemen, is when I would destroy this game if I had hours to sit and play in it. That guy put $130 into a pot of about $250 with really nothing but a flush draw; he cannot POSSIBLY be ahead at this point with his pair of queens. If he knows anything about poker, which he clearly doesn’t, he knows I am three-bet bluffing here less often than I cheer for the Seahawks, meaning he is not getting anywhere near the odds he needs to draw at his flush or two pair. Crazy poker. Good for me, though, as this was literally the only pot I won in the time I sat down and ended up breaking even thanks to his poor play.

11:15 PM – Back up to the room to hit the hay. This was a pretty big day for embarkation day, and we have 2 more days to relax at sea before we get to our first shore day.