This whole trip was a little impulsive. A few weeks ago, Theresa was stressing about
a few things and said “I just need a break!”
So, we decided a quick vacation was in order. Cruises are sort of a go to for us as they
are easy (no cooking, no driving, no packing every night…just easy). About three weeks ago, we snagged a pretty
good deal and made it happen. So, here
we are!
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Brody was NOT happy with our
spontaneous decision to go! |
We started packing Friday night after work, mostly finishing
before heading to dinner.
Saturday, we
flew to Palm Beach (a new airport for us).
We had a nice lounge visit on arrival into PBI, as there was an “Escape”
lounge, so book ended our flight with AMEX lounges.
That was nice as it gave us 2 of our 3 meals.
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| Coach "lunch". |
After church on Sunday, we had an easy morning, since check
in was at 11:30 and only 30-45 minutes down the road. We had some chances to get in touch with being
spoiled. We splurged for a suite, or “the
Retreat”, which had a separate check-in with personalized service in a little
nicer area. We were quickly whisked aboard
to begin our cruise!
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| Our Suite is HUGE!!! |
Although the room wasn’t officially ready, we were able to
go drop off our carry on bags and check things out before heading to
lunch. The suites have a private dining
room, Luminae, and Theresa was looking forward to their “Lobster Roll” for
lunch. It was…not a New England
competitor. But we enjoyed a couple of
special cocktails and the rest of lunch.
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| Ooohhh!! Tanks!!! |
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| Bye bye, Fort Lauderdale!! |
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| View from our balcony. We're under the pool deck. |
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| The beach! |
We finished our safety procedures after lunch.
The old way was a grand production of
everyone grabbing their life vests, tromping around the ship looking for their
muster stations, being checked in and standing around for long monotonous PA
lectures about safety, and 45 minutes later, getting back to “fun”.
But this one, we watched a couple of videos
on our phone before embarking, then found our muster station anytime in the
first few hours to be scanned and checked in.
It was quick and efficient!
And
put us very near the “Michael’s Club”, a private lounge for suite guests!
We stopped in for a little drink and hang out
a bit waiting for our room to be ready.
Unpacking was actually amazing! We could not get over how much storage room
is in this room! Often cruise ships have
tiny drawers, small shelves, tight closets. But everything is huge. Of course, it helps that we only packed for
one week instead of two+, but we have drawers and shelves we aren’t even using!
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| "Goat Funk" - per Theresa! |
Up in one of the bars, there was an afternoon trivia
contest. We, uh…didn’t do well. But had fun!
We had an early dinner. One thing we remembered from our last time in Luminae (in Celebrity Suites) is that they offer an "Amuse Bouche" which is a sort of one bite appetizer. Tonight it was a sort of baked cracker with goat cheese inside. Bill thought it was ok (minus the cracker) and Theresa declared with a wrenched expression, "Ughh!! It has that 'goat funk'!" (she hates goat cheese, if you didn't know!). After dinner, we headed to the show, a comedian. In one of the bars they had a “True/False”
game where everyone crowded in the middle of the floor, then split on either side
depending on if they thought the answer was true or false. We got eliminated pretty early, but it was
still fun to watch. Then there was another
trivia contest in another bar which we actually won. So, it ended as a good night! |
| Dinner ended better than the "goat funk". |
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And we found this in
our room when we
got back! Thanks AMEX! |
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