Celebrity Equinox ~ Day 7

April 29, 2016 deladane Leave a comment

Saturday, March 19 ~ Colon, Panama

Much like Costa Rica, I had a lot of trouble finding a solid tour company for our day in Panama. While many cruise ships travel through the Panama Canal, it is rare for a ship to dedicate 10 hours to a full day docked in Colon. There was really only one company I could find with excellent reviews on both Cruise Critic and Trip Advisor: Almiza Tours by My Friend Mario (http://www.bscpma.com/mfm/citytour.htm). Looking back on the website now, I no longer see the tour that we booked, but we booked a full day group tour to the Gatun Locks of the Panama Canal, a Canoe Ride to the Embera Indian Village, and a hike to a waterfall for $95 per person, including lunch and all entrance fees. Their website had a form to register for the tours, and they sent me an email confirmation within a few days of booking. The confirmation letter stated that there are people at the port who try to impersonate their company, but they are frauds. We were warned to walk passed the people with signs for My Friend Mario and to go directly to the Fantastic Casino. They said to look for people wearing the My Friend Mario logo on their shirts, and to make sure we saw our name on their list of people on our tour. That sounded a bit more dramatic than I was used to at other ports, but I guess that’s what happens when you travel to a less commercial cruise port and opt to book a tour privately and not through the cruise line!

Instead of fighting the crowds at the Oceanview Cafe, we decided to order room service for breakfast this morning. We put our doortag out last night with what we wanted, and requested the 7-7:30am time slot. I had read on Cruise Critic that even though the standard veranda cabins have a limited selection on the breakfast room service menu, they will sometimes honor special requests. Probably not anything super fancy, but if it’s something they already serve to the Concierge Class cabins or suites, sometimes they will give it to the regular cabins if you ask for it.

This is a copy of our breakfast room service menu. We had 3 of these doortags in our cabin when we boarded the ship, but I’m sure Rhonda would have gotten more for us if we ran out.

And this is a copy of what we ordered for this morning:

Our phone rang promptly at 7am to tell us that food was on the way, and there was a knock at our door 5 minutes later.

Not only did we get everything we asked for, but it was all served at appropriate temperatures (the omelets were steaming hot, and the smoked salmon and cream cheese was still cold). Our only complaint was that the bagels were quite small, so on future days we ordered 2 bagels for each of us.

We ate breakfast on the balcony and watched a foggy sail into Colon.

It was amazing to see all the boats lined up and waiting for their turn to enter the Panama Canal! Despite the scary dark clouds, the weather remained overcast and humid all day but it never rained.

I was surprised at the bright paint on the buildings near the port. I don’t really think of Panama as a tropical Caribbean port, but it looked like that’s the vibe they were trying to create.

Lots of taxis and tour vans were lined up and waiting for us to dock.

In case anyone was curious about if the lifeboats affect the view from cabins on deck 7, this is the view if we looked straight down from our balcony.

It did not obstruct our view at all if we were sitting in our chairs and looking out at the ocean, but obviously we could see it if we looked straight down. It didn’t bother me at all- I actually liked seeing the lifeboats because it reminds me that I am on a cruise ship and not a hotel on dry land!

Anyway, back to Panama… I spy the double arches! Authentic Central American food haha

The dock employees were working hard to pull in the lines.

John came on the overhead a little after 8am to announce that the ship was
cleared and we could head out. We grabbed our tote bags, double checked we had our bottle of bug spray, and went down to deck 2 to the gangway. Sure enough, there was a man standing just beyond the port gates holding a poster board with photos printed from the My Friend Mario website! We ignored him and continued on to the Fantastic Casino right ahead of us, and quickly found a guide with a list of all the tours and saw our name on his list. It was only 8:15am, and we weren’t due to meet for the tour until 8:40am, so we waited a few minutes for the other people on our tour to join us.

Once all 10 of us were there, we walked over to our air-conditioned mini-van and set out for the 20 minute drive to the Panama Canal. On the way, our guide Igua (I think that’s how you spell/pronounce his name??) told us lots of history and facts about Panama. In stark contract to Elvis who stayed silent for most of our car ride yesterday, Igua was very chatty and informative, and I really appreciated his efforts to entertain and educate us. He interrupted himself mid-sentence to tell us to take out our cameras ASAP as we were about to cross over the new expansion of the canal and he didn’t want us to miss our photo opps!

These locks are currently in their testing phase, and they are scheduled to open in July 2016 (Captain Costas said he doubts they’ll be open before next summer! haha) They are 40% larger than the original locks, and they operate with a different mechanism than the original locks. Instead of using mechanical mules to pull the ships through the canal, they will use tug boats. Also, the water that fills the locks to raise up the ships to the next level will be stored in huge basins next to the canal:

After we crossed the bridge, it was about a 2 minute drive to reach the Gatun locks.

Tickets to visit the Gatun locks cost $10, and Igua had pre-purchased our tickets and handed them to us while we were still in the van. As we got out, he said we would spend about 45 minutes here.

There are 2 of the original mules on display when you first enter the facility.

We had to climb a huge staircase to reach the viewing platform, but I think there were also elevators for those who cannot climb the stairs.

As we reached the bleachers at the viewing platform, the Island Princess was pulling into the first lock. We had great timing as we got to observe the whole process for that cruise ship. The ship moves forward through the canal on her own power, but there are tight ropes attached to the mules to hold the ship steady right to left to avoid it from hitting into the walls of the canal. When ships pull into most ports of call, a pilot boards the ship to advise the captain of current conditions and any safety concerns. The Panama Canal is the only place in the world where the pilot actually takes control of the ship and makes all decisions regarding it’s positioning. The pilot directs the drivers of the mules to keep the ship centered side to side in the locks to avoid any damage to the ship or to the canal walls. It will take a ship 8-10 hours to pass through the Panama Canal, whereas a car can drive the 50 miles from the Atlantic to Pacific coast in about 1 hour.

Island Princess entering the locks:

There is only 18 inches of space between the ship and the canal wall! Now that’s a tight squeeze!!

Once the ship is in place, they slowly close the locks.

Ok, now they are closed all the way! The lady standing on the edge with the microphone was explaining the process and constantly telling us to sit down in the bleachers and stop taking photos while standing in the aisle haha We only selectively listened to her! Take note that the canal wall lines up to the black square opening on the side of the ship.

The mule driver is paying close attention to his ropes.

There are actually 2 canals that operate simultaneously, so while the Island Princess was in one of the canals, a huge container ship was moving into the second canal.

Meanwhile, the locks are slowly filling up with water.

Now notice where the wall hits the side of the ship! That black square I referenced earlier is now at the top of my photo!!

Once the lock has filled with water, the ship is cleared to pass into the next chamber under it’s own power.

Once the Island Princess moved on to the next chamber, we left the viewing area. Igua gave us a few minutes to use the restrooms and look around the gift shop, and we met back at the front entrance at 10:15am. We were only supposed to spend 45 minutes here, but we ended up spending twice that time! Igua said the drive to our next stop would take an hour and a half, so we piled back into the van and he passed out some sodas from the cooler to enjoy during the ride.

We arrived at our destination at 11:45am. We got out of the van and everyone started to apply their bug spray to protect against mosquito bites and the Zika virus. The plan was to get in a canoe at this location and go for a 20 minute ride up the river to the Embera Indian village. A man from the Embera tribe came over and told us that there was no water in the river, so we could not get in the canoe at this location! Apparently Panama has been in a state of drought for a while, and the river dried up. We all found it hard to believe that this happened overnight and that no one at My Friend Mario knew about this problem in advance so we could redirect our van. In fact, when I emailed My Friend Mario a month ago, they told me that our hike to the waterfall was cancelled because there was no water in the waterfall from the drought! So if they knew there was a drought and that there was no water in the waterfall one month ago, shouldn’t they have known that there may be a problem with the river that feeds that waterfall??

Anyway, the Embera man said he would come in our van and direct us on how to drive to the village. We were under the impression that we would be on a short drive directly to the village, but we were very wrong. We drove for over 30 minutes on a windy, narrow, bumpy dirt road through the jungle. When we got to the end of the road, this is what we saw:

Looking back towards the road we drove on:

While it was a pretty view, we did not see any signs of an Indian village. We just saw a whole lot of nothing but vast open fields! Three other men from the village came over to us and explained that we needed to walk through the fields to another place where we could get in the canoe and ride for 40 minutes to the village. The original ride was only 20 minutes, so this would be twice that time in each direction, plus we couldn’t see any signs of the river anywhere near us! We had no idea how long the walk to the river was, and we didn’t trust these guys at all at this point.

Finally, one lady from our group spoke up and said she was concerned that we may miss the ship if we continued on this tour. By now, it was 12:30pm, and all aboard was at 5:30pm. We were nearly 2 hours from the port, and we had nearly an hour and a half of canoe time, plus who knew how long to walk to/from the canoe dock. We could spend maybe 30 minutes at the Embera village, but it just didn’t seem worth the risk. We were all very upset and disappointed at how My Friend Mario handled this situation, and it all seemed so easily avoided considering that the river did not dry up overnight. How did no one know that the river was dry?! Igua called his office and said they agreed to give us all a full refund of our tour if we left to return to the port right now. The 10 of us debated our options and ultimately decided that while we were greatly looking forward to experiencing this village, it was not worth the risk of missing the ship. We agreed that our best option was to return to the cruise port and take the full refund. Before we left, the Embera men were nice enough to pose for a photo with us.

This was the van we were in all day:

They were NOT happy that we were leaving. Apparently the women of the village had cooked us a large lunch. Maybe they should have figured out that their river was dry and there was no way for us to get to their village to eat that lunch!!

It was a long, quiet 2-hour drive back to the port until Igua awkwardly interrupted the silence to make an announcement. Apparently he communicated again with the main office and they were only going to refund $65 per person instead of the full $95 originally promised. They said that our tour was supposed to have 3 parts (Panama Canal, Canoe Ride, and Embera Indian Village) and we did 1 of those 3 things, so we should pay 1/3 of the cost of the excursion. Some people in the van got very upset about this, saying that we made a decision to return to the port based on the information that we would get a full refund so it was unfair of them to not honor that promise. It wasn’t really about the extra $30 as much as we felt this was one more way that My Friend Mario did us wrong. Most of us will only ever be in Panama this one time, and this was our chance to see and do as much as we could in our 10 hours in port. Instead, we spent over 4 hours in a van going to no where and we completely wasted the majority of our day because of something that could have easily been avoided with better coordination. We all knew that river must have been dry for a while, and had My Friend Mario been upfront about it from the start of the day, we could have discussed as a group what Plan B should be. Maybe we would have opted to change our itinerary to one of the many other options listed on the My Friend Mario website, or maybe we would have wanted to spend more time at the Panama Canal. Either way, none of us would have elected to drive all the way out to the Embera Indian village if we had known there was no way to actually get there! In the end, we decided it wasn’t worth the $30 to waste more time arguing with Igua when we
got back to the port, so we each took our $65 and called it a day. We did tip Igua at the end of the day because we knew this was not his fault and he did the best he could to help us in an unfortunate situation. I ultimately place the blame on the My Friend Mario company, as even though they blamed the Embera tribe for not notifying them about the dry river, it is still their responsibility as a tour company to be in contact with those involved with their tour and to help facilitate our day going smoothly. If they knew that the waterfall was dry, then they should have known the river was dry too.

By now, it was 2:15pm, and J and I were determined to make the most of the
rest of our day. We poked around a few of the stores right outside the port gates for a few minutes so I could buy a souvenir, and then reboarded the ship. We quickly went back to our cabin to drop off our bags and change into bathing suits, then went up to the Oceanview Cafe for a very late lunch. J opted for another burger from the Mast Grill, while I wanted to try the stir fried noodles. This is located in the Asian foods section, but there are no signs about it and you really just have to know that it’s an option or else you would miss it! I ate here 2 or 3 times during the cruise, and every time, I was the only person there and they had to go find someone to make my stir fry (as in there wasn’t someone standing there manning the booth like at the pasta bar). It’s a shame too, as it’s a really great option for a made-to-order lunch! They have lots of fresh veggies set up like a salad bar and you get to put as much as you want into a bowl, and then hand that over to the man who will cook the veggies along with your choice of chicken or beef. You can also pick which sauce you want and if you want noodles or rice.

I had zucchini, carrots, mushrooms and chicken with noodles. The sauce was sweet and tasty, but unfortunately for me, it will filled with chili flakes! I cannot tolerate anything spicy, so I wish I would have known they have chili flakes in their sauce (there was no indication of that). I did my best to pick out the chili flakes because I did not want to waste the whole dish, and I was so famished that I didn’t want to waste time waiting for them to re-cook it anyway.

We wanted to take advantage of most people still being off the ship on excursions, so we grabbed a few drinks from Slush and got into an empty hot tub in the Solarium!

Ahhhh, now this was relaxing!! The Solarium was actually somewhat crowded, surprisingly so considering it was still 3 hours before all-aboard time.

The Aqua Spa Cafe was already closed for the day by the time we got there (so it’s a good thing we planned to eat upstairs at the Oceanview!)

I really loved the teak lounge chairs with thick padding, but just an FYI: you can’t make them sit upright like a normal lounge chair so it was hard for me to write in my journal when we were in there.

Luckily for us, we snagged one of the round sun beds, so we set up camp in there for an hour or so and observed the view of Colon in the background.

At around 4pm, we went back to the cabin to get ready for the evening. Sail away was scheduled for 6pm, so we went up to the Sunset Bar to have a few drinks and watch the action from the aft view. I do find it odd that the aft balconies have so little privacy! We could look straight down and see onto nearly every balcony! I guess if you want your privacy back there, you need to be far enough back under the overhang of the deck above you!

There was one other small ship in port with us who sailed away while we were waiting.

As he did every day at all-aboard time, Captain Costas came on the overhead with the days updates. Unfortunately, today he announced that there was a passenger returning from the ship’s Panama Canal excursion who needed medical attention. They called for an ambulance and it was currently on it’s way from Panama City. What?!? Is that to say that Colon, the country’s second largest city, doesn’t have an ambulance?? It seemed very strange that the sick passenger should have to wait over an hour for an ambulance to arrive from the other side of the country!

Anyway, so much for our plan to watch the sail away from the Sunset Bar before dinner. The Captain said the ambulance should arrive at around 6:30pm and would need about half an hour to assist the passenger so we wouldn’t set sail until after 7pm. We decided to go back inside and grab a drink at the Gastrobar before dinner.

The Gastrobar has a food menu for a small fee, but I never saw anyone ordering any food there. It seemed a little weird to me that they would charge for food here considering there are so many other free places to eat on the ship. I wonder if they will eventually discontinue this part of the menu if no one ever orders from it?

While the specialty here is exotic beers, they also offer a nice selection of wines.

It was so convenient that both the Martini Bar and the Gastrobar are located on deck 4 right outside the MDR as we often had pre-dinner drinks here and then left by 6:58pm to arrive on time for our 7pm dinner reservations.

Gorica told us they were just cleaning off our table 514, and asked us to wait 2 minutes so they could get it set for us. We used that as a chance to take a photo in front of one of the giant pieces of art. These murals made great backdrops for our photos, and they have so many different ones throughout the ship!

Tonight’s dinner menu

Yummmmm, Escargots! My favorite treat on a cruise!

Prosciutto Di Parma

Homemade Gnocchi al Quattro Formaggi (this was phenomenal! It’s a good thing J and I shared it though because it was very rich and probably very caloric as well haha)

Steak Dianne

At 7:45pm, we saw the lights from the ambulance drive away from the port. I hope whoever required medical attention got the help he needed. Luckily this was the only time we were delayed on the cruise from someone requiring an ambulance (at least as far as I know!).

We noticed the ship was moving a few minutes before 8pm, so we ended up leaving port 2 hours late. Yet another time that it was fun to have a window seat in the dining room! Thanks Gorica!!

I expected Captain Costas to come back on the overhead to announce how this delayed departure would impact our arrival into Colombia, but he never did, so we went to sleep not knowing if we would dock at 10am, noon, or somewhere in between.

Continuing our quest to try every beverage offered on the ship, we ordered a few dessert wines tonight. I love sweet wines and J loves ports so it was fun to try some new brands we hadn’t tried before.

A late harvest muscat for me and a tawny port for J

Dessert menu

Cannoli Tutti Frutti

Sacher Torte

Tonight’s 9pm show was an Elton John impersonator, Craig Meyer. He was great fun and sang lots of upbeat songs in crazy costumes.

When we got back to our cabin tonight, we did not have a daily schedule on our bed. I’m not sure if this was because Rhonda forgot to give it to us, or because they didn’t print it for some reason. We did find the schedules at guest services on Sunday morning.

Up Next: our first time on the continent of South America!

Cruise

Celebrity Equinox ~ Day 6

April 22, 2016 deladane Leave a comment

Friday, March 18 ~ Puerto Limon, Costa Rica

We were very excited for our port visit today as neither of us had been to Costa Rica yet, and we had heard such wonderful things about the country from friends and family who have been there on land vacations. Most of those people had been to the Pacific coast, which is much more touristy and built up as compared to where we would dock in Limon on the Atlantic coast. When I started researching what we should do today, I knew I wanted to see some of the exotic animals. Costa Rica is supposed to be a good place to go zip-lining, but we just did that in St. Lucia last year and did not want to do it again on this cruise. I looked around in the Costa Rica forum, but found very few options of tour operators with whom I could book a private excursion, but there was one company that seemed promising. Oscar Brown Tours (http://oscarbrowntours.com/tours.html) offers several different tour options, including zip lining, a canopy tour, aerial tram ride, horseback riding, deep sea fishing, snorkeling, and a few other options. We decided to book the combo tour and a visit to the Jaguar Rescue Center. Here is the description from the company website:

As we combine the Jaguar Rescue Center, along with the Tortuguero Canal tour, you have the opportunity to enjoy more of our beautiful country. We start by taking you to the Jaguar Center. This Center is a non-profit, humane-society organization in Puerto Viejo of Limon, Costa Rica. They are dedicated to recover maltreated, hurt, in poor health or abandoned animals, which once reestablish, are then reintroduced to their natural environment in protected areas. When you get there, you will have direct contact, and will be able to spend time up close and personal with howler monkeys, wild cats, sloths, raccoons, reptiles, etc. You can also observe all the venomous snakes of Costa Rica which are housed in terrariums (cage) imitating their natural habitat. The best thing here is to cuddle a baby sloth; they also allowed young howler monkeys to dance across your heads and shoulders, while you hold it. With your visit you will get a unique experience to interact with Costa Rica’s wild and timed animals and help a valuable cause. This place is located in the South side from the pier. We’ll get you there as little as 45 minutes. We include our complementary stops, such as: the banana plantation, life style of the country side, and the option of one beach stop (black sand beach or a white sand beach) we offer time beach (you can walk on the beach or take a dip in the water). The II part of this tour, takes you to the Tortuguero Canal ride. This is a tour through the rain forest, where as you go comfortable seated in a boat with cover, to protect you from the sun or the rain. On the way you will see all wild life: alligator, monkeys, slots, different type of birds. This tour goes for approximately 6 to 7 hours. Soft drinks and complementary lunch are included.

I sent them an email to the address listed on their website, and after a few weeks I still hadn’t heard back. Not knowing what the problem was, I sent them another email through one of my other email accounts, and I did get a response from Carol Brown within a few days that time. She actually lives in Brooklyn, New York and spoke fluent English, so it was very easy to coordinate the tour details with her. She said the tour would cost $95 per person, payable in US dollars on the day of the tour, and there would be a maximum of 12 people on our tour.

We spent the next 9 months so excited at the idea of holding a sloth! That was one of the things we were most looking forward to on this cruise, and we had many sloth jokes between us in anticipation. A few weeks before the cruise, I sent them another email to re-confirm, and everything was good to go.

We woke up at 6:30am to get ready for the day and pack up our day pack. This would be the first of 4 days when we were in the “Zika Zone”. About a month before our cruise, there were health warnings about the risks of getting the Zika virus from a mosquito bite, so we bought some extra strength bug spray with 25% DEET and hoped for the best. I wasn’t willing to cancel our vacation on the off chance that we got a bug bite, and Carol reassured me that there haven’t been any reports of people contracting Zika where we were going for our tour. We went up to the Oceanview Cafe for breakfast, and exited the ship as soon as the ship was cleared at 8am. There was a surprisingly long walk from the ship to the exit of the port, where we were supposed to meet our driver. We were also quite shocked at how hot and humid it was this early in the morning! Whoa! This was no joke!! haha

It took us 15 minutes to reach the exit gate, and then we saw this:

There were tons of tour guides lined up along the gate, all holding up signs from their company and looking for their passengers! It was a bit overwhelming, but we did find someone holding up a sign for Oscar Brown Tours. We told him which tour we were booked on, and watched him look through his list to find our names. It turned out that we were the only people booked on this tour, so it was a private tour for just the 2 of us! Our driver was Elvis, and he walked us over to where his sedan was parked. We hoped in, he turned up the air conditioning, and off we went to the Jaguar Rescue Center.

The drive to Puerto Viejo took about one hour through mostly rural roads, although we did pass through a small town and the Chiquita Banana Plantation.

The town of Puerto Viejo is so far south in Costa Rica that Elvis said we were close to the Panama border. There are lots of hotels and hostels along the main road, and it seems to be one of the few touristy locations on the Atlantic coast (although those hostels and hotels appeared very basic and not at all like the bigger resorts on the Pacific). We got to the Jaguar Rescue Center at 9:25am, just as they were starting to open for business.

As we pulled up, Elvis asked us each for $20 to buy our admission tickets. We were a little confused about this because we thought the tour price was all inclusive, and he wasn’t clear about if this $20 was to come from the $95 tour price, or if it was in addition to that price. We each gave him $20 and agreed that we would pay him the remaining $75 at the end of the day. I am used to having guides handle similar situations differently in that they just pay our for admission tickets as we go along, and we reimburse them when we pay for our tour at the end of the day. Elvis could have avoided that awkwardness if he used this method.

Anyway, Elvis bought our entrance tickets and we lined up for our tour. The Center has their own tour guides, so we said goodbye to Elvis and he said he would pick us up when we were done at 11am. We were divided into groups of 12 people, and our guide Rachel introduced herself and explained that all the guides here are volunteers. She has worked there for 7 months and keeps renewing her contract because she enjoys the experience so much, but she can only stay as long as she can afford it because she must pay for her own food and housing. Rachel explained that the Center is not a zoo. They find animals in the jungle who have been injured, and they take them in to nurse them back to health until they are stable enough to be released back into the wild. At any given time, they can have a huge variety of animals on site. While they did not have any jaguars today, they did have howler moneys, sloths, owls, caymans, pelicans, and a bunch of other interesting animals. We spent the next 2 hours (the tour ran 30 minutes over) walking around the Center and looking at all the animals.

This volunteer is acting as a mother figure to these 4 week old howler monkeys…

Antelope

Rachel spotted a sloth in the tree, so we spent a few minutes watching him verrrry slowly climb down. His nails are painted bright pink so they can identify him…

He was so adorable, and it was amazing to be standing literally 5 feet from him!

Toucan

The pelicans in the gift shop are not for sale!

They had a few kinds of snakes in terrariums

These 2 snakes were keeping each other company…

Next we went to the garden where we saw 2 sloths in a tree, and a few birds…

I think he’s waving at me!

While they did not have any jaguars at the Jaguar Rescue Center, they did have a spotted wild cat…

The pelicans really claimed control of the Center haha

Apparently last night, 3 eels got into a lagoon in the Center and it clogged up the drains so they had to empty the water for maintenance. When they did that, they found a ton of eggs laid by the frogs who usually live in that lagoon, so they transported the eggs on these large leaves and clipped them onto a tree for storage.

This deer has lived at the Center for so long that she is unable to reintegrate into the wild. The volunteers tried to get her back into the wild, but she wouldn’t go, so now she just roams the grounds of the Center. She is so calm and used to having humans around her all day, so we were able to pet her and let her lick our hands.

Look closely at the middle of the photo to see a HUGE spider…

This baby owl is only 2 weeks old… I wanted to pet him because his feathers looked so soft and fluffy, but he was in a cage and we couldn’t touch him.

An adult owl

This tree is covered in spiny thorns. I’ve never seen a tree like that before!

The tour ended at around 11:20am. Wait, what? The tour is over? But we never got to hold a baby sloth or have howler monkeys dance on our heads!! Rachel made no mention at all of this being a possibility, so we weren’t sure if the description from Oscar Brown Tours was inaccurate or outdated and this was something that used to be done but no longer happens, or if it only happens when they have a baby sloth at the Center and they just didn’t have one today. Either way, we were somewhat disappointed because that was one of the main reasons we wanted to take this excursion, and we spent months anticipating the fun of holding a baby sloth! Despite this disappointment, the Jaguar Rescue Center was a great experience to see some unique animals up close, and it was nice to support their cause by paying for our admission ticket.

We tipped Rachel as we said our goodbyes and thanked her for a wonderful tour. Elvis was waiting for us outside when we reached the exit, and we discussed the agenda for the rest of our day. J and I were starving because we ate breakfast over 4 hours ago, so Elvis said we could go to lunch next, but that was still over an hour away from the Jaguar Center. Cliff bars to the rescue!! We shared a Cliff bar to hold us over, and set out for the drive back to Limon.

On the way, we passed the Sloth Rescue Center. It is much closer to the port than the Jaguar Rescue Center (20 minutes from the port, vs. the 60 minutes we had to drive), so it might make for an interesting excursion. I got a kick out of this sign for a sloth crossing…

We caught a glimpse of the Equinox as we drove through Limon.

J and I live in San Jose, CA, so we kept our eye out for any references to San Jose, Costa Rica. J realllly want to buy a San Jose t-shirt but we couldn’t find one anywhere in Limon (not that surprising considering we were several hours from San Jose!)

Do you know the way to San Jose? hehe

We finally arrived at Playa Bonita for lunch at 12:30pm. Elvis explained that we would eat lunch at Quimbamba restaurant, and we could order a chicken, fish, or beef platter with rice and beans, a side salad, and fried plantains, and a drink. We both ordered the chicken, and then walked over to the beach to take a few photos.

Then we went back to our table to wait for our lunch to be served. It was really crowded- Elvis said he has never seen it this crowded and attributed it to having a cruise ship in port. The restaurant does offer free wifi, but we were not able to get our phones to connect. Bummer!

We waited… and waited…. and waited some more, but still no food. Elvis asked the waitress several times why our food wasn’t ready yet, and she just kept saying it’s almost done. Had we known that we would wait 45 minutes for our meal, we would have spent more time exploring the beach!! That felt like a huge waste of time. When the food finally did arrive, it was very tasty. There was a delicious marinade on the chicken, and I also enjoyed the fried plantains (although they were a little bland).

After lunch, it was a 5-minute drive to our next destination: the Tortuguero Canal. This seems to be a popular activity for tourists in Limon, where we would take a small boat down the canal and get to see some animals in their natural habitat.

There were several boats lined up near the dock, but apparently Oscar Brown Tours has a contract with a specific boat and it was currently on a tour with some other tourists so we had to wait 20 minutes for them to return. Again, we felt like this was a waste of time and could have been avoided with better coordination.

Some of the other boats that we weren’t allowed to use:

Ooooh, I see our boat finally coming back down the canal so we can start our tour!

The good news was that we had a private boat tour, which was especially good because our boat only had 6 seats (it was about half the size of the boats shown above). We climbed aboard and off we went!

It felt a bit like “Where’s Waldo” when looking for the animals in the trees. Our boat guide (I can’t remember his name!) was great about finding the animals, but then he tried to tell us where to look to find the animals and that was harder than I anticipated. It was a lot like finding a needle in a haystack, but it was very satisfying when we did eventually see the animal!

I spy a monkey in the trees!

A little lizard climbing out of the water

A blue heron

Our boat guide grabbed a coconut from the water- I wished he had a knife so we could cut it open for a snack… oh well!

Selfie on the canal!

These boats are for one of the bigger hotels… they looked a lot newer and nicer than the boat we were in, but they also held about 50 passengers each!

Beautiful vines falling down from the trees

Our guide drove the boat to the side of the canal into the mangroves to search for a cayman. It took us a few minutes to find him, but then we saw his eyes peeking out from the water…

It was hard to get a good photo, but you can see the top of his head in the center of the photo…

Another boat coming down the canal

Great White Egret

Coastguard boats

The hanging sacks are nests for yellow birds

Bamboo tree

Another blue heron walking along the shore

We spent about 45 minutes traveling out along the canal, and then we turned around to head back towards the dock.

Overall, the Tortuguero Canal was an interesting experience, but we didn’t see nearly as many animals as I was expecting. Our guide said we didn’t see any sloths because they only come out when it rains. We were back at the dock by 3:30pm, and Elvis was waiting to take us the 20 minute drive back to the port. On the way, he said he would take us shopping so J could continue his search for a San Jose t-shirt, but instead he just pointed out one store a block away from the port entrance. I guess he decided that the tour was already 1 hour longer than it was supposed to be and he just wanted to go home? We paid Elvis and said our goodbyes, then walked a block back to that store to do some shopping. They had lots of souvenirs and tchotchkes but sadly no San Jose t-shirts for J. I found a really interesting souvenir that I had never seen before- it was a feather with a hand-painted sloth, matted and framed in a small wood frame. I liked that it was handmade and not mass-produced in a factory in China haha

We then walked across the street, showed our seapass cards, and entered the port gate. Right after we got through the gate, there was a market set up with lots of vendors selling souvenirs. The prices inside the port were similar to what we saw at that one store, so you could probably just skip the stores and go straight to the port market. We looked around but didn’t see anything we wanted, so we headed back to the ship.

Notice how there was a truck and a car driving through behind us? You need to watch where you are walking in this port as there isn’t a safe sidewalk.

We were back on the ship by 4:30pm, so we went back to the cabin and got ready for the evening. Now that I had upgraded to the premium beverage package, I was eager to work my way through the drinks list at the Martini Bar! We tried a few drinks before going to the dining room for dinner (the Lycheetini was one of my favorites!!)

One of our favorite parts of the Martini Bar was how entertaining and talented the bartenders were! Yopi was our favorite, and he always had a fun way of presenting our drinks. Last night, he served my drink balanced on his wrist!

Sail away was at 7pm tonight, so we watched the lights of Puerto Limon fade into the distance as we enjoyed another lovely dinner with Arsapha and Fredys.

Dinner menu

Spiced Duck Rillettes Quenelle (I’m not sure if anyone else has noticed this, but Celebrity likes to puree a lot of their appetizers…. there is no indication that the food will be pureed until it arrives on your table, but we noticed this trend several nights in a row. Luckily the food all tasted delicious!)

Chicory Apple Pear Salad

I’m not sure if it was because of the late sail away time, or because this was a long day in port, but our section in the dining room was nearly empty tonight!

Barolo Braised Beef Short Ribs

Penne Primavera

Dessert Menu

Apple Tart Tatin

Tonight’s show was a comedian magician named Garry Carson. Most of his tricks were more of a joke than magic, but the few magic tricks he actually did were great. He likes to pull people up on stage from the audience, so that also added to the fun of the show.

After the show, we were super tired so we went back to the cabin for the night. Unfortunately, that meant that we missed a unique production show called Masque. It was performed in the Grand Foyer, and would have been fun to check it out if it wasn’t held after our bedtime! Guess that’s something else we’ll need to do on our next cruise!!

Up next: Colon, Panama!

Cruise

Celebrity Equinox ~ Day 5

April 18, 2016 deladane Leave a comment

Thursday, March 17 ~ Sea Day

Once again, we set the clocks back one hour last night to prepare for our arrival in Costa Rica tomorrow. Between that, and going to bed early last night, we were awake and ready for breakfast at 7am. It was really disappointing that the main dining room did not open for breakfast until 8am. There were lots of people awake and waiting for breakfast, so we really wished they opened at 7am, especially with changing our clocks back last night. We debated going to the buffet again, but after eating there the last 2 days, we were really looking forward to a change of pace at the dining room. To hold us over, we went to Cafe al Bacio for some caffeine and a pastry (which looked better than it tasted).

By the time 8am rolled around, there was a huge line to enter the MDR. They seated everyone quickly but the wait staff seemed overwhelmed by taking in so many people at once. We expected service to be slower than eating in the buffet, but we were there for over an hour and found it to be just way too slow of a process. It was nice having waiters serve everything to us at the table instead of fighting with the crowds at the buffet line, but I was famished by the time I finally got my meal at 8:45am. On days like this, it might have been better to just go to the buffet where I can get the same exact food but significantly faster.

Cheese Plate

Classic French Omelet, Apple Pancakes, and Corned Beef Hash

Today’s daily schedule included a flyer from the Future Cruise department offering up to $500 onboard credit for this cruise plus 2 free perks for the future cruise if we booked a new cruise today. We weren’t thinking about booking another cruise, especially since we already booked our honeymoon cruise to Tahiti on Paul Gauguin for September 2017! It sounded like a good deal though, so we went down to see what cruise itineraries were available for spring 2018. We arrived at 9:20am and there was a super long line! I guess we weren’t the only ones who wanted to take advantage of this promotion!! There is an iPad mounted outside the office, so I scrolled through the itinerary options while J waited in line until it was our turn at 9:50am. We found an amazing itinerary for a 14 night cruise on the Eclipse for March 2018 that goes to a few Southern Caribbean ports plus all of the ABC islands! Remember way back when we booked this current cruise and I had been already eyeing a cruise on the Carnival Breeze? Well that cruise went to Aruba and Curacao, so clearly I have been dying to get to the ABC islands for a long time! There was no penalty for booking the cruise today and we could cancel or change our booking up until final payment is due at 75 days before the cruise, so we booked a balcony cabin and opted to apply our $250 onboard credit to this current cruise. We could have opted to apply that to the future cruise, and that would have made our deposit refundable, but we chose to pay the $250 nonrefundable deposit and take the OBC for this cruise because we already planned to spend that much anyway. We were planning to upgrade to the premium beverage package and we had dinner reservations at Tuscan Grill, plus J wanted to take the mixology class, so with all those charges pending, we decided to make use of the $250 OBC now, not knowing if we would have a use for it on the 2018 cruise.

We spent about a half hour sorting out the details of the booking the new cruise, then we went back upstairs to spend some time reading on our balcony and drinking mimosas. It was just so relaxing to sit out there and watch the clouds float over the ocean.

Today was St. Patrick’s Day, and we noticed decorations all over the ship to
celebrate the occasion. They even had a special section of desserts at the buffet for lunch!

I forgot to take a photo of my lunch, so not sure what I ate but I know there’s no way I skipped a meal on a cruise ship! I think I might have made another visit to the pasta bar. After lunch, we walked around the ship for a few minutes. I loved this sign saying “Here Comes The Sun” on each of the decks near the glass elevators.

Library on deck 10

Grand Foyer

We ended up at the pool deck at the Slush bar where I upgraded to the premium beverage package. I was on a mission to try every drink on the Slush menu, but the drinks cost more than was allowed on the classic package and they just weren’t as good when they were made as virgin drinks. Iwan is the bartender at Slush, and he charged me $11.80 for each of the 8 days remaining on the cruise, and put a sticker on my seapass card to verify my upgrade. After being on the ship for 4 days, I will admit it got annoying when every bartender tried to convince us to upgrade to the premium package. J and I made a game out of it- every time someone asked us to upgrade, we took a sip of our drink! We always planned to upgrade at some point, but wanted to hold out a few days to save some money and drink the less pricey drinks.

With that piece of business taken care of, we continued walking around the ship. J was convinced that the coffee in the buffet was decaf because no matter how much he drank, he never felt the effects. We went over to Cafe al Bacio so he could order something a little stronger, and we shared a slide of carrot cake (yumm!)

We ended up back on our balcony for a few hours until it was time for the Mixology class. This is held every sea day at 4:30pm in the World Class Bar, and the cost is $35 per person. I personally didn’t have much interest in participating in the class, but I wanted to keep J company so they let me just sit at the bar and watch for free. As it turned out, I really enjoyed the class and learned a few things I didn’t know about making drinks. Six people attended the class, plus me and another woman keeping her husband company but not participating in making the drinks. One of the bartenders, Santos, taught the class, and he started with a little intro about the various types of drinks (every drink is NOT a cocktail! There is also a swizzle, smash, mule, collins, etc.)

Santos taught us how to make 3 drinks, and each time he would demonstrate how to make a simple version of the drink, then he substituted a few ingredients for a jazzed up version of the drink and he brought 2 people at a time behind the bar to make it. Everyone had their turn behind the bar to make each of the 3 drinks: a mojito, a Tom Collins, and a swizzle drink. The class was supposed to take one hour, but actually took over an hour and a half! Maybe because there were 6 people participating and they only took 2 people behind the bar at a time? I’m not sure if this was a larger turn out than normal, and maybe they should have divided us into 2 groups of 3 people to make it go faster? One woman actually had to leave early or she would miss her 6pm dinner time! Regardless, everyone seemed to have a great time, and even though I didn’t get behind the bar to make the drinks, I still learned a lot and thought it was a good value (you get to drink the 3 drinks you make, by the way!).

Here are a few photos of J making his drinks…

Pouring a shot into the jigger

Did you know the way to know how long to use the shaker is to listen to the ice? When the sound of the ice changes, you are supposed to stop shaking because that means the ice is starting to melt and you don’t want your drink to get watered down!

Straining the drink into the glass

A pineapple mojito

Muddling raspberries for the next drink

A raspberry version of a Tom Collins

J smashing the ice because they don’t have a crushed ice machine

Swizzling the drink instead of using a shaker

The World Class Bar opens at 5pm, so people arrived for pre-dinner drinks while we were still taking the class. Luca is the other bartender here, so he kept coming behind the bar to make their drinks while we were finishing up the class. J and I loved the dry ice drinks and Luca let us hold the glass after the class was over.

No comment…

At about 6:15pm, we finally made our way back to the cabin to quickly get ready for dinner, then we went downstairs to the martini bar for a pre-dinner drink. This is our second year in a row on a cruise ship for St. Patrick’s Day, and we made it a tradition to get dressed up to celebrate.

We arrived at the hostess stand promptly at 7pm, and Gorica was happy to seat us with our regular wait staff at our window table for 2.

Tonight’s dinner menu

French Onion Soup from the everyday menu (it was soooo good!)

If you read my Carnival Valor review, you may remember that J brought green food dye to dye all our liquids green for St. Patty’s Day. It was very entertaining to see the confusion on our waiters faces when they returned to our table to see lots of green drinks and soups when they knew that’s not what we were served! From the minute we booked the Equinox cruise, J knew he had to bring green food dye again!

Duck Terrine

Slow Braised Lamb Wrapped in Phyllo

Turkey Parmesan (tasted exactly like chicken parm- not sure why they used turkey?)

Dessert menu

Strawberry Angel Food Cake (it was too bland)

Tonight’s show was the second big production show, Destiny. Once again, the aerialists and acrobats were fantastic! The music selection was very similar to the show Life 2 nights ago, with lots of current pop and R&B songs. Strangely enough, we didn’t know about half the songs- J actually thought Celebrity wrote original music for this show. We enjoyed the show, but thought it was weird that it was so similar to the show 2 nights ago. Usually each of the shows have different themes, but this show was very similar to Life, so if you do/don’t like one, you’ll probably feel the same way about the other.

The dancers were hooked up to bungee cords and ran vertically up the screens- a very cool effect!

After the show, we returned to the martini bar, where Yopi served me a candied apple martini on his wrist!

After another full and exciting sea day, we went back to the cabin to rest up for our next port of call!

Up Next: Puerto Limon, Costa Rica

Cruise

Celebrity Equinox ~ Day 4

April 12, 2016 deladane Leave a comment

Wednesday, March 16 ~ Cozumel, Mexico

Today was our first port of call: Cozumel, Mexico. I know most cruisers have been here many times, and even J had been here on a land vacation several years ago, but this was my first time in Cozumel and I was very excited. There were scheduled to be 4 ships in port today, but that shouldn’t be a problem for a port as large as this. We knew we wanted to make this a beach day as it would be the only beach day we had during the entire cruise. After considering all of the options, including a few all-inclusive places and a few public beaches, we decided to go to Chankanaab National Park. There is an admission charge of $21 per person, but we found a $2 off coupon so we only paid $19 each (they do accept USD). Here was the description from their website:

Chankanaab (word that comes from the Mayan language and means “little sea) is located inside Cozumel´s National Marine Park. Enjoy our beautiful beach park and spend your day either snorkeling or scuba diving while admiring schools of tropical fish, colorful reef and underwater statues. You can also enjoy a fresh hand-made tortilla at our Mayan casita, stop by the crocodile exhibition or the sea lion show, or perhaps relax with a massage in front of the lagoon that gives the park its name. These are only a few of the many activities you can enjoy at Chankanaab.

We woke up at 7am, got ready for the day, then headed up to the buffet for breakfast. We planned to eat a big breakfast so hopefully we wouldn’t need to buy lunch and could last until we got back on the ship before eating again. I had an omelet with smoked salmon, mushrooms, and cheese, blueberry pancakes, baked apples, and pineapple.

We left the ship at 8am when they announced the ship was cleared. It was a looooong walk past all the stores to get to the taxi stand, but luckily it was early enough in the day that most of the vendors had yet to arrive so no one was haggling us. There was no wait at the taxi stand, so we got in the next car and he quoted us $12 (USD) for the 15 minute ride.

The taxi dropped us off at the front entrance, so we paid our $19 each and they gave us wrist bands as a receipt. They also required a photo copy of my seapass card- I’m not sure why, maybe in case we caused any damage so they could identify us? They gave us a map because the park is huge, and we asked for directions towards the beach and snorkeling area.

By now it was only about 8:45am and there was hardly anyone else here. We had our pick of seats, so we picked 2 teak chairs under a large thatched umbrella. We were blown away at how beautiful it was here, with fine white sand and bright blue clear water. It was well worth the price of admission! The grounds were clean and well maintained, and it was so quiet. There weren’t any vendors bothering us every 5 minutes, although the staff did ask us many times if we wanted to order food or drinks. This place was truly a tropical paradise!

We purposely wanted to sit in this area so we would have easy access to go snorkeling. These are the stairs you take to get into the water, and there were 3 sets of stairs along the beach. You can also see that the beach is contained by a wall, so it’s not like most beaches where the water runs up to the sand. That was actually a good thing because it meant there were lots of rocks immediately after entering the water where there was coral and fish to observe.

Despite having 4 ships in port, Chankanaab never felt crowded all day, and there were always open seats and umbrellas. I think the admission charge helped to keep the crowds out, so it was $19 well spent for a serene and relaxing day at the beach! We did not get to walk around the grounds or see the free sea lion show, although I’m sure that would have added to the value of admission.

After about 2 hours of lounging in the shade, we noticed a few large groups entering the water to go snorkeling. It looked like an excursion through one of the cruise ships, and there were several of these groups throughout the day. We took that as a cue to start snorkeling before it got too crowded in the water. There are a few reefs just off the shore, and we just followed along behind some of the tour groups so we would know where the best spots were.

They placed these statues under water as a little something extra to observe. Later in the day, we realized that the location of these statues was marked by a buoy floating at the surface.

These are the stairs to go back up to the beach. Note how many fish are swimming here! If you aren’t a good swimmer, you could easily stay close to the retaining wall and see tons of fish!

There is a floating platform in the middle of the snorkeling area, so we climbed up on there to check out the views looking back towards the beach.

We could also see some of the cruise ships in the distance, so it was nice to know we weren’t that far from the port.

There are lockers nearby, but we opted to just leave our bags packed up on our lounge chairs while we went snorkeling. We put our seapass cards in the pocket of J’s swim suit, and there were enough tourists walking around that we felt safe leaving our towels, clothes, and books unattended. We spent about an hour in the water, then went back to our chairs for the rest of the afternoon.

There was a big restaurant near where we were seated, as well as a bar and
restrooms. The facilities were all very clean and nicely maintained, although we did not buy any food or drinks and cannot comment on that quality. The lifeguard stand remained unoccupied all day, so J took it upon himself to hop there and make sure the swimmers looked safe!

I just couldn’t get enough of this beautiful beach! I’m not sure if anyone else likes these edited photos, but I think it’s fun to play with the different effects!

At around 2pm, we packed up and headed towards the front entrance. We noticed signs for a tequila tasting, but they wanted $25 per person. Noooo thank you! J was able to negotiate down to just $5 for the 2 of us (I only planned to take little sips, and J would drink most of the samples.) We were lead into a private tasting room where Jorge served us tastings of 10 different flavors. It was a lot of fun, and there was no pressure at all to buy a bottle at the end. When we left, we noticed large groups of people having tastings, so it was great that we got our own private room, especially for only $5 haha

The whole thing only took about 15 minutes, and then we continued on to the front entrance where there were lots of taxis waiting to bring us back to the port. We spent some time looking around the stores, and J bought a new panama hat. Then we continued on to the pier to reboard the Equinox.

Our balcony was on the starboard side, but the pier was on the port side and we wanted to watch for pier runners. We went down to deck 5 in the outside section below the lifeboats that is designated for the smokers, but there weren’t any pier runners today. We waved goodbye to the Constellation as we sailed away from Mexico.

As we were getting ready for dinner, I noticed my souvenir from Mexico: a sunburn down my whole back side from my neck to my heels! I did wear suntan lotion and I reapplied throughout the day, but it must not be as waterproof as advertised and I guess it wore off while I was snorkeling. I have yet to take a Caribbean vacation and not get a sunburn, and this one was far from the worst I’ve seen, but at least it happened early in the cruise and was fully healed by the end of the vacation. That Caribbean sun is strong!!

And as usual, that strong sun took all of my energy and I fell asleep for a while. We totally lost track of time, so when we woke up, it was after our 7pm dinner time! Oops! We got down to the dining room 20 minutes late, and Gorica said it would be better if we could be on time in the future, but she was still able to seat us with our waiters from last night as we requested. We were extremely impressed with Gorica all week…. by the 4th or 5th night, she knew not only our cabin number, but also our preferred wait staff and our preferred table number! She was always super busy with people arriving for select dining both with and without reservations, yet she never looked overwhelmed and always had a smile on her face.

Tonight’s dinner menu featured the Top Chef selections. I wasn’t really in the mood for a heavy meat dinner, so we shared a few appetizers and entrees (J ate most of it), and skipped dessert so I could go upstairs for some sushi at the buffet.

Kale Pesto Beignet- these were delicious!

Seared Ahi Tuna

Braised Beef Cheek

Gingered Mushrooms

I really liked that we could get sushi every night at the Oceanview Cafe. They only had 3 or 4 types on any given night, but they types did change from night to night. Unfortunately for us, they served the sushi from 6-9:30pm, so we rarely got to enjoy it as it was too close to our dinner time. It was the perfect option for me tonight though!

Sampling of sushi from the buffet

Tonight’s show was Lou Gazarra, a former American Idol semi-finalist from season 2. I have watched every season of American Idol except season 1. Lou was on the season with Clay Aiken and Reuben Studdard, but I didn’t remember him at all! Oh well! Lou was a phenomenal singer, with lots of classics by Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., etc. Most people I spoke to after the show agreed that he was extremely talented and all enjoyed his performance.

I was completely exhausted from too much fun-in-the-sun today and we went straight back to the cabin after the show and went to bed early.

Up Next: Sea Day #2

Cruise

Celebrity Equinox ~ Day 3

April 5, 2016 deladane Leave a comment

Tuesday, March 15 ~ Sea Day

Last night, we had to set our clocks back one hour to align with the local time in Mexico. The good news was that we got an extra hour to sleep in on our first sea day… the bad news was that we woke up at 7am when our bodies thought it was an hour later. At least this view made waking up early a bit easier…

The MDR doesn’t start serving breakfast until 8am on sea days, so we went to the Oceanview Buffet instead. I knew I wanted one of those yummy Belgian waffles, and the sticky bun was really good too. My favorite treat was the smoked salmon- I really liked that they served smoked salmon every day at the buffet, as I am used to only seeing it from room service or the MDR on Carnival cruises.

J loves his morning cup of coffee, so we went up to Cafe al Bacio so he could get something a little nicer than what is served at the buffet. This became a frequent morning stop for us on both port days and sea days, and it was rarely crowded.

I don’t care for coffee (hence the reason I brought those cans of energy drinks in my carry-on bag yesterday!), but I did treat myself to the pastries or cakes in the display case. These are better quality than what is offered at the buffet, and they are complimentary even if you don’t order a drink.

Bistro on 5 is located right across the hall, so we walked over to look at the menu. It looked yummy, but we never made it here to eat. Guess I’ll add that to my to-do list for my next Celebrity cruise!

We continued our tour of deck 5 up to the photo gallery to see our boarding photo from yesterday. It was still so early that they weren’t open yet, but they had a machine where you can insert your sea pass card and it will pull up all of your photos. It uses facial recognition software so it automatically finds all the photos taken of you, and you can view them, order prints, or even make a photobook on the machine! This was way more convenient than searching through multiple walls of thousands of other photos to find ours (although I did like that they organized the printed photos by the deck of your cabin so it made it slightly easier to find ours once the photos were put on display later in the day).

The next stop on our tour of deck 5 brought us outside to check out the view. Looks like the Constellation was sailing along with us towards Cozumel.

The Cruise Critic meet and greet was scheduled for 10:15am today at the Sky Lounge. Luckily a few people mentioned it at the informal gathering yesterday as we never got an invitation sent to our cabin. We mentioned that to someone at guest services this morning, and she insisted that it must have been in our cabin but we didn’t see it. Not only did we know for sure that we did not get our invitation, we also never got yesterday’s daily schedule or our Captain’s Club coupons. Well by the time we got back to our cabin a few minutes later, all our embarkation day documents magically appeared on our bed. We were fairly sure that Rhonda forgot to give us the papers yesterday and just placed them on our bed when she made up the cabin this morning.

Well over 100 people attended the Cruise Critic meet and greet. The cruise director John briefly introduced himself, and then handed the floor over to the hotel director Jamie for a Q&A. He answered lots of questions about the upcoming Edge class ships, TV stations available on board, and a few other topics. Unfortunately, we had to duck out a few minutes early as we had a scheduling conflict today. We felt badly about not staying until the end to chat more with our roll call members, but the Galley tour started at 10:45am and we did not want to be late.

I really appreciated that Celebrity offered this free Galley tour as it was a rare glimpse at the behind-the-scenes action. We arrived at the MDR promptly at 10:45am and it was PACKED! I wonder what time people arrived to be seated up front?? The hostess gave us each a mimosa and a sticker for group number 18, and escorted us to a table at the back of the room.

A few minutes later, the Executive Chef Josh Becker came out to introduce himself and all the other head chefs from around the ship (one for the buffet, one for the specialty restaurants, one for the pastries, etc).

They called 2 groups at a time to start their tours of the galley, while Josh answered our questions about food services onboard. At first, I was annoyed about having to wait a long time for our galley tour to start, but I actually found this Q&A session to be extremely interesting and a valuable use of our time.

Our group was called in for the tour at around 11:15am, and our guide was another chef named Sam. The tour was very brief, maybe 10-15 minutes max, but it was interesting to see the lay out and flow of the galley, and to watch as they prepared for today’s lunch and dinners.

We finished our tour by 11:30 and went up to deck 4 to check out the specialty restaurants on display. Sam told us that if we booked a specialty restaurant for dinner tonight, we should mention his name for a 20% discount. We knew we wanted to go to the Tuscan Grill for my birthday dinner next Monday, and luckily they were willing to honor that 20% discount for a future date. We requested a 7pm reservation, but they said they only had 6:30pm available so we agreed to that and finalized our booking.

All this talk about food was making us hungry, so we went back up to deck 14 for the day’s second round at the buffet. I loved the antipasto salad with fresh artichokes, mushrooms, and sundried tomatoes. Only in the buffet on a cruise ship is it acceptable to pair that with macaroni salad and battered fish! haha Probably not the most logical combination of foods, but it hit the spot!

After lunch, we went outside to the pool area to check out the action (how did we manage to spend nearly all of our first 5 hours today indoors??). The pool was quite crowded, and nearly all the loungers were occupied. We noticed the Slush bar was open so we each asked for a virgin version of a drink to stay within our classic beverage package.

I loved that the Slush drinks were served in these plastic cups so we could take them in the pool or walk with them around the ship.

Insider tip: While it would have been above the price maximum price allowance of our package to order the Slush drinks with alcohol, there was nothing to stop us from ordering a virgin drink, then walking around the corner and ordering a shot of rum at the pool bar, and dumping that in our slushie!

With such beautiful clear skies, we wanted to spend some time outdoors, but didn’t want to bother with the crowds near the pool. We wandered upstairs to deck 15 and found that the lawn was nearly deserted! Having a live grass lawn on a cruise ship was so unique, and it was so beautiful to see the bright green grass contrast against the cobalt blue ocean and light turquoise skies. We felt like we were having a picnic in a park, while drifting out to sea.

While we did want to be outdoors, we did not want to burn in the bright Caribbean sun, so we sat under the shade of the overhead canvas. We spent a few hours laying out on a towel and enjoying some more drinks from the Sunset Bar.

At 3pm, we shifted over to the seating for the Hot Glass Show. This is another unique feature of the Equinox. They have a contract with the Corning Museum of Glass where they have 3 gaffers on board who perform 2-hour shows and make 3-4 pieces each show. It seems kind of random as an activity on a cruise ship, but I really enjoyed watching the process of making each project. We only stayed for an hour because it was getting hot sitting so close to the ovens, but in that time they made one vase and one cup. Unfortunately, we never made it back to observe any other shows during the cruise, but I wish we would have because it must be a different experience each time. They even had shows at night and I imagine the glass glowing brightly against the dark night sky would make for an unforgettable evening.

At 4pm, we left the show so we could spend about an hour on our balcony before getting ready for dinner. Tonight was the first “Elegant Chic” night, and we treated it like a “formal” night on any other cruise. I noticed many men wearing tuxedos and women in long formal dresses, but there were also many men in suits or just slacks, and women in cocktail dresses and sundresses. Maybe it will just take a while for people to adjust to the revised dress codes, but at least for this sailing, it seemed as if people still get very dressed up.

We arrived at the Silhouette Dining Room at 7pm, and Gorica was able to seat us at a table next to a window again, but this time with a different wait staff. We really liked our waiters this night- they took our orders and served our food at a good pace, and they were chatty and had a great personality. We actually requested to sit in Arsapha and Fredys’s section for the remainder of the cruise, and Gorica was able to accommodate us.

Chicken Liver Parfait

Salmon Tartare

Seared Duck

Celebrity Signature Beef Tournedo

Dessert Menu

Phyllo Dough Tulip

Warm Apple Crumble a la Mode

The Equinox is such a beautiful ship- there were interesting wall hangings and decorations everywhere we went to make a nice background for a photo.

We posed for the ship’s formal photos at a few different backgrounds but we were ultimately unimpressed and did not purchase any of the photos. I guess the other guests on the ship were more talented than the professional photographers on board!

Looked like there was some fun dancing in the Grand Foyer as we made our way forward to the theater.

Tonight’s show was Life, the first of 3 large production numbers featuring the singers, dancers, and aerialists. The singers and dancers were good, but the truly phenomenal talent came from the aerialists. I was extremely impressed every time they were on the stage, or should I say hovering above the stage! All of the songs in this show were contemporary songs from the last 5 years or so (Just Give A Reason by Pink, I Lived by One Republic, Story Of My Life by One Direction, and Heartbeat Song by Kelly Clarkson, to name a few). I personally really enjoyed the music selection, but that is because I like that style of music. It seemed like Celebrity was gearing this show towards a younger, trendier demographic as compared to the traditional cruise line production shows, but that was fine by me! Another evidence of this was that they announced before the show that they encourage us to take non-flash photography and video of the shows to share on social media. I guess they wanted to use us for free advertising of their fancy new production shows haha

The show ended at around 9:45pm, just in time for karaoke! J loves karaoke and always wants to participate when we are on cruises. Unfortunately, we felt this was a bit of a miss from Celebrity. They host it at the Quasar night club, but the set up is terrible for karaoke. The words are projected onto the far wall of the room, and the singer stands on the dance floor, but most of the people watching are on the other side of the room. The singer is forced to either have their back to the audience, or to stand sideways and keep looking left to see the lyrics and then right to perform for those in the room. It was just extremely awkward, and I think that was part of the reason the karaoke was poorly attended.

J sang one song, then we left to get one last drink at the Gastrobar before going to sleep around 10:30pm to rest up for Cozumel.

Cruise

Celebrity Equinox ~ Day 2

April 5, 2016 deladane Leave a comment

Monday, March 14 ~ Embarkation Day

After 10 months of planning and anticipation, it was finally embarkation day! We woke up around 8:30am, finished packing our suitcases, and went out to the lobby for breakfast. The hotel puts out a nice spread, including cereal, pastries, bagels, eggs, meats, and a make your own Belgian waffles machine. They also had a similar machine for pancakes! I have never seen that before, but we both agreed the normal waffles tasted better than these pancakes as they were too dense.

By 9:45am, we checked out of the hotel and ordered an Uber to pick us up to go to the port. This was way more convenient and less expensive than using the hotel shuttle. The Uber driver arrived in 10 minutes, we loaded in our suitcases and we were on our way. The ride was short and we were at the port within about 10 minutes. We were surprised to have to go through a security check point and show our photo ID to enter the port. It looked like the people in front of us had to pay a toll but we did not.

There were 5 ships in port today and the Equinox was docked at pier 18.

There was a bit of confusion about where exactly to park to drop us off, and our driver had only been to the port a few times before, so we had to ask a few security guards to direct us. Overall, they could use a few more signs for directions around Port Everglades! The ride cost $10, and we handed our big suitcase to a porter by 10:30am.

There were still tons of people getting off the prior sailing, but only a handful of people had arrived for our sailing. There were 4 or 5 lines for the x-ray machines, but none of them had a wait. I packed 4 cans of Monster energy drink (the ship only stocks Redbull, but I think that tastes like cough syrup!), and a bottle of champagne in my bag. The security lady said they needed to check my bags because it is spring break week and they needed to make sure I wasn’t smuggling anything! I guess I should be flattered that she thought I was a college student?!

Once we were in the clear, we proceeded to the check in counters, where again, there was no wait at all. Unfortunately, we encountered a bit of a mess up here. They had pre-printed everyone’s sea pass cards, but for some reason, they printed 2 copies with J’s name and none with my name. They said it would take about 20 minutes to reprint my card so I sent J upstairs to get in line for boarding, and I waited in a seating area in the back corner of the downstairs check in room. It was quite deserted back there!

Once my card was finally ready, I went upstairs to look for J. The seating area is huge as this terminal is used for the Oasis and Allure on the weekends and those ships hold twice as many passengers as the Equinox. They split us up into sections based on both Captain’s Club status and category of our stateroom. We were booked in a category 2A veranda and are both Classic Captain’s Club members, so we are very low down in the hierarchy and were seated in the back corner of the waiting area.

They started boarding the ship at around 11:20am, but our section was called closer to 11:45am. Once we were called to board, we “dinged” our sea pass cards, walked up the ramp, and voila! Our cruise officially began as we stepped foot onto deck 5! Even though we had a beverage package, we still appreciated the complimentary champagne and mimosas as we boarded the ship.

After a quick trip to guest services to ask a few questions, we spent some time wandering around the ship. We picked up a few cocktails from the Mast Bar and initiated the first swipe for our classic beverage package. Prior to the cruise, J had the idea that we should try to drink every drink sold on the ship. We figured it would be possible considering we had 11 days and J and I like different drinks- I drink white wines and sweet/fruity cocktails while J prefers red wines and bolder cocktails where you can taste the liquor. I did a bunch of research and located all of the different drink
menus from all over the ship: the buffet, main dining room, martini bar,
gastrobar, world class bar, etc. I compiled them all onto one page so we
could bring a check list with us around the ship. The beverage package is
a great opportunity to try out new drinks and see what we do and don’t like, and with little risk knowing we didn’t directly pay for the drink and could abandon it if we really didn’t like it (Note that we did not want to be wasteful so we did finish most of the drinks we ordered, and agreed that if one of us ordered a drink, then both of us had to truly hate it before we would abandon it.).

Here is a copy of the complete list we used on board.

With our drinks in hand, we spent a little more time walking around the ship. We took advantage of seeing the hammock unused, knowing it was likely to be continuously occupied once everyone boarded the ship! Looking back, we were only partially right… These lovely hammocks were indeed occupied, but not by people. We never once saw a human being in the hammocks all week. We did, however, see towels, books, hats, flip flops, etc. strewn across the hammocks every time we passed by! It was always so tempting to remove those items and enjoy a few minutes of relaxation, but I never did for fear of confrontation if/when the hammock hogs eventually returned. What a waste!

Moving on, we found some loungers outside on deck 14 in the shade and called our parents before we lost phone contact for nearly 2 weeks. I loved how many shaded spots they had around the pool deck so you only had to roast in the direct sunlight if you really wanted to!

Eventually, we made our way up to the Oceanview Cafe around 1pm for lunch. I don’t know if it was all the planning and anticipation, or too much hype, or what, but I found the buffet on the Equinox to be a little small. I liked how it was broken up into stations as opposed to one long line, but I felt that it felt very closed in and crowded. All of the stations were in the same general square of space, so people were walking in circles and crossing paths a lot and there was no clear order to walk in. Even when I cruised on the Summit, I appreciated that they had some food served in another section at the very back, and other food on the sides near the buffet entrances, etc. Carnival buffets offer a similar set up which helps spread out the flow of traffic.

Aside from the condensed layout, I loved the quality and variety of the food at the buffet. They served unique dishes with fresh ingredients and I was always able to find something to eat. Granted, by the end of the 11-day cruise, we were both sick of it and noticed a lot of repetition day to day, but that has been the same on every cruise I have taken. Another nice feature was that everything was clearly labeled with what the food was, and they used symbols to indicate if the food was gluten free, lactose free, vegetarian, or no sugar added.

Today, I had a small piece of pizza (I intended just to try it but I actually
really enjoyed it- especially the thin crust! This would be my first of MANY pieces of pizza over the next 11 days haha). I also tried the pasta bar with whole wheat penne, sundried tomatoes, mushrooms, zucchini, garlic, and pomodoro sauce. I am picky about vegetables, but they had tons of options and you could have as much or as little as you wanted. There is a man working behind the counter who scoops all your ingredients into a bowl, along with your choice of pasta, and he cooks it with your choice of meat.

My food was ready by about 1:15pm, but it took several more minutes to find somewhere to eat it! Every table was occupied by people waiting for their cabins to be ready, and most were long-finished with their meals. The tables all have little signs asking people to please get up when they finish eating so others can sit down, but I guess everyone thought that
was optional?

Eventually we gave up and sat down at 2 empty seats in a large long table for 10. About 5 minutes later, the cruise director John announced that the cabins were ready and people left to finally free up some tables. Go figure!

After we finished our lunch, we went down to explore our cabin. We were in 7222- a 2A veranda cabin on deck 7. We found this location to be extremely convenient, approximately midway between the 2 elevator banks, and sandwiched between 2 passenger cabin decks above and below us to minimize noise. We were able to come and go from our cabin fairly quickly from anywhere on the ship.

The cabin itself was lovely, with nice furniture and decor and a comfortable
mattress. The one problem we did have was that storage was a bit tight for an 11-night cruise. I prefer for each of us to have separate closets, so one large closet to share wasn’t as convenient, but we made it work. There were more than enough hangers, both with and without clips, and there was enough space on the bar for all of our clothes, but the floor space (where I usually store my shoes) was limited. Also, we could have used more drawer space as the 5 dresser drawers are very small. We did make use of the overhead storage space. I bought us each a collapsible bin from Dollar Tree to place in the overhead bin, and that was helpful to get stuff up and down easier.

I loved the bathroom set up! It was probably the largest bathroom I’ve had on a cruise, with lots of storage shelves behind both a glass door on top and a wood door below- 7 shelves in total, plus 2 tiny drawers under the sink. The sliding glass doors on the shower were fabulous- no more being attacked by the shower curtain, and it allowed more light to come in to the shower through the clear glass. It also meant the water didn’t flood the bathroom floor! I also loved that they added a little bar at the bottom of the shower to rest my foot while shaving my legs.

These little bottles were restocked as soon as we used them!

We started to unpack our carry-on bags, and our cabin stewards Rhonda and Kevin stopped by to say hi and see if there was anything they could do for us. I had read on Cruise Critic that sometimes you can get foot stools for the balcony if you ask your cabin steward, so we figured it was worth a shot and we asked. Rhonda said she would see what she could do. We received our big suitcase outside our door by 3pm, and tried to unpack as much as possible until they called the muster drill at 3:15.

Muster was held in the Equinox Theater, which was a nice change from all the cruises when I had to stand on outdoor decks in the humidity, packed in like sardines, and unable to hear or see what was happening. We really liked how the drill was displayed on a large video screen so we could clearly hear all the instructions. The drill is always fairly boring, but at least it was over in about 20 minutes. Unfortunately, our group was seated very close to the stage, so we were the last to be dismissed from the drill.

Our roll call planned an informal meet and greet and sail away party at the Sunset Bar all the way aft on deck 15 for immediately after the muster drill. We had a huge turn out and it was so great to finally put faces to the names we chatted with while planning for the cruise. As is typical for late afternoons in Florida, it was raining (or rather pouring!) during the first 20 minutes of sail away, so it was quite crowded under the overhang as we all avoided getting soaked. Luckily the bartenders kept the drinks flowing and we made good use of our beverage packages.

We stayed and chatted with our new friends until 6pm, when we left to get ready for dinner. When we got back to our cabin, Rhonda left us a little surprise… foot stools on our balcony!! We were thrilled and definitely took advantage of having the extra comfort all week!

When we booked the cruise, we opted for Select Dining because we thought 6pm would be too early for dinner, but 8:30pm was definitely too late. We wanted to have some time to get cleaned up after long days in port and to have a pre-dinner drink, but also wanted to eat early enough that we could digest and enjoy some evening entertainment on the ship before going to sleep. Select Dining seemed perfect for us, but we had a somewhat bad experience with it on our Carnival cruise last year. To avoid any long wait times, we pre-booked 7pm dinner reservations online for the whole length of our cruise. We loved that Celebrity gave us this option to make reservations, and it felt like we created our own fixed dining time. Each night at 7pm, we were greeted by Gorica at the deck 4 hostess stand for the Silhouette dining room, and she promptly seated us at a table for 2. Tonight, we were seated at table 518- a table next to the window with a beautiful view of the sunset over the southern Florida skyline.

Each night, the bread basket was accompanied by 3 different spreads. We rarely opted for the plain butter as the hummus, cream cheese spread, and other varieties were delicious.

Crispy Thai Beef Spring Rolls

Belgian Endive Arugula Salad

Aged Prime Rib of Beef

Beef and Veal Spaghetti Bolognese

Incredible sunset on our first night at sea

Dessert Menu

Chocolate Cake

Our wait staff was thorough and served our meals correctly and promptly, but they were not very talkative. We finished dinner by 8:30pm, then headed over to the theater for the 9pm show. Tonight’s show was a comedian named Dean Austin. He had some great jokes for the first 15 minutes, but then spent the next half hour making fun of people in the audience. We nearly walked out several times, but did stay for the whole show. It just seemed like he didn’t have enough material prepared for a 40 minute show, and everyone we spoke to about him throughout the week said he was the worst show of the entire cruise! Needless to say, I would not see him again if he performs on another one of my cruises.

When we were finally released from that torture, we made our first visit to the Martini bar. We knew that the $12 martinis sold at this bar would not qualify for our classic beverage package, but we asked if they could make us a smaller version of any of the drinks for a lower cost. Unfortunately, they said this was not possible (we also asked the following night to a different bartender and were again denied the smaller martinis). Perhaps they don’t stock smaller martini glasses? We instead opted for 2 glasses of wine, and took them up to the Sky Lounge to see if anything exciting was happening up there. The DJ was playing fun dance music for about 50 guests, so we stayed for a few songs before retiring to our cabin for the night.

Up Next: the first of four sea days!

Cruise

Celebrity Equinox ~ Day 1

April 3, 2016 deladane Leave a comment

After months of planning and anticipation, it was finally Saturday, March 12 and time for our flight to FLL.

It was a rainy Saturday night… Actually, it was a rainy last 2 weeks before we left for our cruise, but that just made us more excited to escape to the Caribbean sunshine! We went out to dinner then headed up to the airport. We made incredible timing and ended up arriving at the airport at 7:45pm for our 11:40pm flight- 2 hours before we planned to arrive. We checked our big suitcase and got through security fairly quickly, only to find out that our flight was delayed. At first it was only a 15 minute delay, and then it was increased to 30 minutes. With noting else to do but wait, we found a seat at our gate and made ourselves comfortable. As our updated departure time of 12:10am neared, we found out that we would have another 30 minute delay. Apparently our flight crew was delayed on their arrive in a different plane, and we couldn’t go anywhere without them! Finally, at 12:50am, over an hour late, we were cleared for departure.

It was an otherwise uneventful flight. As usual, I didn’t sleep a wink. I even got to watch my iPad clock skip 2:00am to adjust for daylight savings time! I watched a few movies as I watched the sunrise out my window.

Sunrise over the wing of the plane

Before we knew it, it was 10am and we were landing in Fort Lauderdale. We had a reservation at the Sleep Inn in Dania Beach for the one night before the cruise. Our rate included breakfast, free wifi, and the free shuttle between the hotel and the airport. They also offer a shuttle from the hotel to the cruise port for an additional fee of $10 per person.

After collecting our checked suitcase, we called our hotel for the free shuttle
to pick us up. The driver directed us to walk to the hotel pick up point and he pulled up right as we got there. This was one of our few negative experiences at the hotel. The driver picked up our luggage and literally threw it into the van. As in he swung it back and forth a few times, then said “Just like a meat packing plant!” and tossed our large suitcase into the van. J and I immediately asked him to please be more careful with our bags and not to throw them. Well then the driver proceeds to do the same thing to my carry-on rolling bag! Presumably, the airport employees are rough with the checked luggage, and we have a hard-sided bag, so it wasn’t a huge deal the first time (although it was definitely disrespectful!), but my rolling carry-on is always in my possession and contains breakable items so I was really annoyed that he threw it! Especially after we asked him to be more careful!! We asked him another time to please not throw our bags when he reached for J’s carry-on, and I guess he finally took the hint because he just picked it up and placed it in the van normally.

Once our bags were loaded and we got in the van, we noticed the driver was talking to another couple standing in the hotel shuttle area. It looked like they got off the rental car shuttle at the wrong terminal, so our driver offered to take them around the airport to the correct terminal. After that 10-minute detour, we were finally enroute to the hotel.

We pulled up to the hotel at exactly 11am, and WOW was it a madhouse! I guess 11am is check out time, so there were tons of people and even more suitcases all over the lobby. We soon realized that they were all waiting for the $10 per person shuttle to their various cruise ships. J and I had already decided to take Uber to the ship on Monday, but this fiasco sealed the deal. A word of advice if you stay at this hotel, especially with a cruise starting on a Sunday (and probably a Saturday too): do NOT bother with the hotel shuttle! Those people looked like they had been waiting a while, and we overheard that one of the ships wasn’t getting picked up until noon!

Anyway, once we finally made our way to the front desk, we were told there are 6 people ahead of us online to check in and our room probably wouldn’t be ready until 2pm. No worries, we had some shopping to do anyway. I had called the hotel a few weeks prior and they confirmed that they could hold our suitcases until our room was ready. When I asked where to put our suitcase, the front desk employee said he did not have room to store our bags. What?!? But the other day you said that wouldn’t be a problem! After some convincing, he agreed to store our bags behind the front desk. Minor problem #2 with this hotel: there is no dedicated luggage storage room and they seem to expect people who arrive early to keep their suitcases with them while they wait in the lobby breakfast area. That would not work for our plan so I am glad he agreed to h or our bags in the small front desk area. It is something to keep in mind if your flight lands early in the morning like ours did, or if you plan to stay here post-cruise and have an early debarkation zone.

We quickly used the lobby restroom to change into shorts and placed our luggage in the makeshift storage area, then headed out for some shopping. One of the reasons I picked this hotel was because it was within walking distance of several things we needed. There is a Walgreens right next door, although we found it to be overpriced. Across the street there is a shopping center with several abandoned stores, but the one store we wanted was open: Dollar Tree! As we approached the store, we weren’t sure if it was still in business, but luckily it was open and we bought a few last minute items. They are also building a new Walmart Neighborhood Market in the same shopping center, so that will be very convenient whenever it opens (there was no indication of when that will be).

Next, we walked about a half mile up Sheridan Street to Publix. We went straight to the deli counter to buy some lunch since we hadn’t eaten a full meal since dinner the night before and we were starving! After we ate our sandwiches, we bought a few more things for the cruise, including Cliff Bars to bring as snacks on our excursions, energy drinks, and champagne to keep in the cabin so we could enjoy mimosas on our balcony without schlepping to a bar first. We also bought some of the delicious key lime pie to enjoy as a special dessert!

It has been several years since I had some and it was just as good as I remembered. By the time we got back to the hotel, it was around 1:30pm and our room was ready. We checked in quickly and retrieved our bags from behind the front desk.

Our room was lovely! It looked newly renovated and very clean, with a comfortable king-sized bed, mini fridge, coffee maker, and hair dryer in the bathroom, and a small desk area. The best part was that the air conditioning was already o so the room felt so very cool after walking around in the heat and humidity!

We spent about 2 hours relaxing in the room, then headed out to the beach. Another great part of this hotel’s location is that it is just over a mile to walk to the beach. The walk is easy- just go left onto Sheridan Street and walk all the way down until you see the ocean!

We walked around along the beach for a while. At first, we turned left (North), but our view of the beach and ocean was blocked by the tall bushes. Luckily, the paved path ended fairly quickly and we turned back from the way we came. It turns out that we should have turned right (South) from Sheridan Street. Once we reached that part of the sidewalk, the tall bushes were gone and replaced with beautiful tall palm trees. There were fancy high rise condos on the right and perfect peach and ocean views on the left. Now THIS is what we had in mind!

Unfortunately, just as we got to the beach, dark grey clouds rolled in and the wind picked up. It even started raining a bit, but nothing could rain on our parade (sorry! I couldn’t resist!). We were on vacation and ready to get the party started! We found an outdoor bar with a thatched roof and lots of teak furniture under beach umbrellas. They had frozen margaritas on special, so we ordered a few and camped out for some great people watching along the beach.

By now, it was about 4:15pm and we were in for a treat as the cruise ships embarking today at Port Everglades drifted out to sea in a parade of ships! We were too far away to identify most by anything other than their cruise line, but it was still fun to anticipate our ship making the same journey this time tomorrow!

Once we finished our margaritas and the cruise ships faded into the horizon, we went in search of dinner. It was only around 5:30pm, but we were exhausted and just wanted to eat early and head back to the hotel. I had looked on Google Maps before arriving in Florida and there were limited dinner restaurant options on the ocean. Had we wanted fast food, there were lots of options back near Publix this afternoon, but we wanted something with a fun view and atmosphere. The only restaurant I found was called Oceans 13 Sports Bar and Grill. It was a few blocks south of Sheridan Street on the ocean and offered a varied menu of salads, burgers, and sandwiches. When we arrived, there was a fun cover band playing outside on their patio, so we were off to a good start. J ordered a chicken philly sandwich and I ordered a grilled mahi reuben. The waitress said that had just the mahi fish and a mango pineapple slaw on top. It sounded light and tropical- a perfect dinner for tonight. Imagine my surprise and disappointment when my dinner arrived with fried fish (I was given the choice of fried, blackened, or grilled and I choice grilled), covered in thousand island dressing, melted cheese and regular mayonnaisey coleslaw! The waitress took it back to give me the grilled fish I had ordered, but the sandwich still was not as the menu and waitress described, and had I known what it was, I would have ordered differently. I was just too tired to complain about it, but that was definitely regular mayonnaise-based coleslaw and not the fruit slaw I envisioned. J said his sandwich was just okay, nothing great.

Overall, I would recommend Oceans 13 for drinks, especially if the weather is nice and there is a fun band playing on the patio, but we were not impressed with their dinner and would not return. Unfortunately, I don’t even know where else we could have eaten because we didn’t see any other dinner restaurants. Maybe we would have needed to look further south along the strip, but that was already a mile and a half walk each way from the hotel so we didn’t want to venture too much more.

After dinner, we walked back to the hotel, reorganized our suitcases, and went to bed early, excited to board the Equinox when we awoke the next morning!

Up Next: Embarkation Day!

Dana's Destination Diary

Monthly Archives: April 2016

Celebrity Equinox ~ Day 7

Celebrity Equinox ~ Day 6

Celebrity Equinox ~ Day 5

Celebrity Equinox ~ Day 4

Celebrity Equinox ~ Day 3

Celebrity Equinox ~ Day 2

Celebrity Equinox ~ Day 1

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