Sea days … oh how I love sea days. I woke up a couple of times to check the time and the last time it said it was 9:25am. We have a 10:00am Cruise Critic Meet & Greet in Henry’s Pub. We got moving pretty quick and luckily made it on time.
Cruise Critic is a website that is dedicated to providing information about cruising. Besides have reviews for all the cruise lines, they have discussion forums where you can find any type of information related to cruising. Probably the most active forum is the Roll Calls. Prior to a cruise, someone will start a posting for your specify cruise and then you can go in and post anything related to it. For example if you have a tour and you need more people to join, post it in the roll call. We had lots of people in the roll and a Meet & Greet is the way that you get to finally see these people you have been chatting with online in person.
The Hotel Director got things started by introducing no less the Captain. He told us that we were going to have excellent weather for our voyage. We were also introduced to each of the department heads who said to contact them anytime if we have any issues. Norwegian also provided coffee and snacks. We had a chance to talk to a few of the other passengers even some that will be joining us on our tours.
One of our goals for this cruise is to try and eat in each of the fifteen restaurants. Today we started with lunch in the Windows Main Dining Room. We thought they might not be open because we could only see one other table with guests. We got seated by the window where we enjoyed a quiet, relaxing lunch. Karen had the roasted tomato soup, tuna salad sandwich and peanut butter-cup cheesecake. I had a garden salad, fish & chips and key-lime parfait.
We found a couple of loungers and enjoyed the sunshine. We both seemed to be nodding off while reading our books, so we thought that maybe we should just head back to the room. The rest of the afternoon was spent just having a nap. It has been a very long time since I spent a whole afternoon doing nothing. Before dinner, we had to attend a make up session for the mandatory life boat drill that we missed yesterday.
When we booked our cruise with Karen’s niece Marie, she was able to get us the 5 night Ultimate Dining Package for free. This means that you can eat in any of the five specialty dining options without having to pay the cover charge. Tonight we booked La Trattoria Italian Restaurant. Once again we were seated next to the window. Karen had Insalata Caprese, I had the Caesar Salad and we both thoroughly enjoyed our Lobster Fra Diavoloa. After dinner, we went back to the cabin to enjoy left over birthday cake on the balcony.
We spent the rest of the night relaxing around the different areas on the ship before retiring for the evening.
Looks fabulous! All of it!