Day 13: Tuesday, March 13 ~ Curacao

(Eddy’s pronunciation: kur – ACK – ow)

I have always wanted to visit Curacao on a cruise to see the famous colorful buildings along the water and walk across the floating pontoon bridge.  Needless to say, I was thrilled we would be visiting Curacao on this cruise!  When I researched tour companies for our day here, I read many wonderful reviews about Irie Tours.  Most people book the 3 hour East Side Tour to visit the Blue Curacao Factory, drive through the old Jewish neighborhood and the Spanish water area, and to spend an hour or two at Mambo Beach, but I wanted something a little more exciting.  Last May, I emailed Irie Tours to book the Short West Side Beach Hopping tour for $75 USD per person.  It was a 5 hour tour with stops at 3 beaches, included beer/soda/water on the bus, and would leave us plenty of time afterwards to walk around in town.  Then, sometime in the fall, I was looking at their website and noticed our tour description was no longer listed.  Hmmm, that’s weird!  I emailed them to ask what was going on, and they wrote back to explain that they did not have enough interest in separate short vs. long beach hopping tours, so they combined it.  We were automatically transferred to the new tour which would visit 4 or 5 beaches in 6 to 7 hours, and cost $65 USD per person.  Since they lowered the price, they said they would honor the new lower price for us.  This meant that we got a longer tour with more stops for less money! Winning!!  The only problem was that now we had less time for exploring the town, but that is okay and well worth the trade off. Originally, we were going to go back to the ship for lunch before returning to the town, but now we would just plant to eat lunch at the beach and go directly into town after the tour.  Sail away wasn’t until 8pm, so we were looking forward to a fun, long day in port.

This is the description of our tour from the Irie Tours website:

The west side of the island is known for its nature, history and incredible
beaches!  Along the way our professional guide will tell you all about our Island’s rich history.

Our first stop will be at National Park Shete Boka. We’ll stay here for 45 minutes while you can walk around and enjoy the spectacular scenery. You have the option to visit one of the 7 caves or just watch large, unpredictable waves crush against the rocky North coast.

We then head to Playa Forti for the ones who dare to go cliff jumping or else
enjoy the beautiful view and take some awesome pictures.

The next stop is at Kenepa Beach, which is one of the most popular and beautiful beaches on the Island.  Here you have the opportunity to enjoy the breathtaking view or dive into the crystal blue water. If you’re into snorkeling, Kenepa beach is the perfect spot to do this.  We stay at this beach for 1 hour.

Now it’s time for our last beach stop, which is Porto Marie Beach. Porto Marie is also known for its incredible snorkel sites. You can also grab something to eat & drink at the beach bar/restaurant. Here we stay for 1,5 hour.  On our way back to town, we drive by the salt lake at St. Willibrodus to see the Flamingo’s.

Today’s daily schedule:

We didn’t need to meet our guide this morning until 8:45am, and the meeting spot was right off the ship on the pier, so we got to sleep a little later today and ordered room service breakfast to be delivered in the 7:30-8:00am time slot.  I really liked that they always called us on the phone 5 minutes before delivering our food so I had time to throw on some clothing, clear off the coffee table, and grab some cash for a tip before they knocked on the door.  While eating on the balcony, we noticed that today was another sunny but windy day (see how the water is all choppy and churned up?)  We ordered a few extra goodies with breakfast today to keep us full long enough to make it to our lunch at the beach.

After breakfast, we ran upstairs to check out the views of Curacao from the port side of the ship (too bad our balcony was on the starboard side and facing nothing but ocean!).  The sun is at a funny angle in the morning, so I made a mental note to come back here later in the afternoon in hopes of getting better photos.

Notice how rough the water is and all the white water crashing against the shore?  It was WINDY today!

The white tents in this photo are where we needed to meet our tour guide…
conveniently located very close to the ship!

Ok, time to head off the ship and get our day started.  

Welcome to Curacao!

Wow, check out those waves!

As I approached this tent, I quickly spotted a man holding a sign for Irie
Tours.  

He said, “You must be Dana!”  I am always so impressed when the guides can greet me by name before I introduce myself.  His name was Eddy, and he said we would have 7 people in our group today, but only the 2 of us were from the cruise ship.  That explains how he knew who we were!  

He was holding this sign with a list of all of our stops for today, perhaps in an attempt to recruit others to book our tour? That didn’t happen though.

We walked over to the parking area and hopped on one of the colorful open-air school buses to ride around the corner to pick up the 5 other people from the Renaissance Hotel.  The bus was a full sized school bus with a few of the rows at the back removed to make space for the speaker system and the giant cooler of drinks.  There was plenty of space for the 7 of us to spread out and have our own row, with a separate row for our beach bags.  We drove over to the Irie Tours office to pick up some snorkel equipment for the others on our tour.  While we were waiting, I noticed this neat painting depicting the scene across the water…

By 9:15am, we were on our way to start a fun day exploring Curacao!

Yrad was our bus driver so that Eddy could narrate as we traveled to our first site.  Unfortunately, Eddy had a fairly thick accent so it was hard to understand half of what he said, but he started the tour by explaining a brief history of Curacao and running through the day’s itinerary.  He said the bar is always open so we should help ourselves to the water, soda, and beer from the big cooler at the back of the bus.  Whenever Eddy wasn’t talking, they played fun loud music as we drove to our next stop.  The bus had no windows, and as usual, it was a very windy day, so it was quite breezy, but that added to the fun!

After 15 minutes, we pulled up to our first stop: a lake filled with flamingos! Today we were much closer to the flamingos as compared to yesterday.  We had about 10 minutes to get off the bus and take photos.  The water in this lake was shallow so we had an unobstructed view of the flamingos!

We even saw a few of them fly away.  I had no idea that flamingos could fly!

This was our bus for the day… pretty hard to miss it!

We made several brief stops along the road to see some of the sites from inside the bus.  Up first, we saw the smallest church in the Caribbean.  It was basically just a hut on the side of the highway, but Eddy said that lots of people love to pray here because of a miracle that happened in the 50’s or 60’s where a woman was able to get pregnant after praying here and she had been trying for 12 or 14 years, or something like that.  

I’ll bet those windmills in the distance are collecting a lot of energy on a windy day like today!

Our next stop is called Kunuku House, and it is a museum of restored slave houses.

I thought the fences made out of cacti were pretty neat.  Eddy said these are to keep the animals out.

Driving along the highway, we passed a few small towns with houses for the locals, but mostly, we just saw lots of bushes and clear skies ahead.

Eddy pointed out this church because they do not bury people underground in Curacao.  Instead, they use mausoleums like you can see here behind the yellow wall.

The church looked quite large.

At 10:15am, one hour and 15 minutes after starting the tour, we arrived at our first beach.  

Shete Boka National Park is located on the rugged north coast and offers an incredible view of the waves crashing against the shore.  It was mesmerizing to watch it!  It was very rough and definitely not safe to swim in the water here, so this was more of a photo opportunity than a real beach stop.  Eddy told us to walk along the path out to the water, and then to climb up some stone steps to reach the trail that goes around the edge of the cliff to get the best views of the waves, which crashed several feet high.

This not-so-little iguana was there to greet us as we got off the bus.

Walking along the “trail” towards the water…

The “beach”… I use that term lightly haha

We turned back towards these steps to climb up to the top

The trail was well defined and totally flat, so if you didn’t want to climb on the slippery, uneven rocks, you could easily just walk along this path instead.

I made excellent use of the burst mode in my camera to take photos at this point.  I have never really used the burst mode before because I just never think of it, so I got a little carried away and ended up with over 1000 photos that I then had to delete off my memory card! LOL  oops!!  It is kind of hard to pick which photos to share with you, so pardon me while I overload you with just a small sampling of the photos I took here!

I call this photo “A rainbow in the mist”

Notice that we are wearing our aqua socks.  I wasn’t sure how safe it would be to do this “hike” in flip flops, so we put these on before leaving the bus.  We probably would have been okay in flip flops, but better safe than sorry!

Walking back to the bus, you can see the rest of the grounds here are baron.  Not much to see except for all the excitement by the shore.  

Once back at the parking lot, Eddy showed us where to find the restrooms.  They were clean and free, which was more than we could say for most beach stops, so we took advantage of it.  There was also a small café if you wanted to buy something to eat, including their specialty, iguana soup!

We stayed at Shete Boka for about 30 minutes, then drove 10 minutes to our next stop.  Along the way, Eddy pointed out this funky house up on the hillside:

Do you see it?  How about now…

I’m not sure what the deal is with this display, but it was at the entrance to our next stop…

Play Piskado is a fisherman’s wharf where there are often sea turtles in the water trying to eat the scraps thrown in from the fisherman.  Eddy said we had 30 minutes to snorkel or just relax on the beach.  We were thrilled as this stop was not originally on the tour, and it gave us a chance to swim with the sea turtles after missing out in Barbados!

To enter the water, you need to walk down this ramp that the cars use to lower their boats into the water.  It was covered in moss, so I was glad to have something protecting my feet!

DH is ready to search for turtles!

Eddy told us to swim out towards the boats for the best chance at spotting the turtles.  It didn’t take long before I spotted this little guy!

Yay!  I was so excited that we got to see turtles!!

All of a sudden, I noticed this huge school of fish swimming below me!  I have never seen anything like that while snorkeling, but it reminded me of the Monterey Bay Aquarium where they have this round circular tank mounted overhead as you enter one of the exhibits and there are thousands of sardines in there, constantly swimming in circles.  I got this image off Google Images to show you what I mean because it’s a very impressive exhibit…

Anyway, back to Curacao… I looked down to see this swimming below me!  So cool!!

I just love the shape of their formation and how they all know to stay in line and follow the pack.

There wasn’t much in the way of coral or other fish, but I did spot this bright purple coral.

Oh look, another turtle!  I thanked him for swimming in a good direction for the sun to shine on his shell… he must have been a model in a former life!

I stayed out in the water to snorkel for only about 15 minutes so I could have some time to check out the rest of the beach. It looks like a tour group was here to observe from standing on the pier.

The area wasn’t all that big, but it was perfect as a spot to observe the
turtles.  The water was such a pretty shade of turquoise!

The sand was very course with sharp pieces of shells, so I wouldn’t recommend walking around barefoot.

Eddy pointed out the building in the distance up on the cliff with the red roof and yellow wall… that would be our next destination.

I walked down to the end of the pier and then I understood why all those people were standing out here… there were pelicans!

 This was a much more up-close encounter with them as compared to when we were in Antigua and could see them from our boat.  

Timing is everything… I was just clicking away, taking lots of photos, and I happened to snap a photo just as this guy was receiving his lunch!

Every time I encounter a pelican, I am so impressed at how tame they are and how they don’t seem to mind when humans come too close. This photo was taken on New Years Eve 2011 in Half Moon Bay, CA.  I had a brief chat with the pelican, and once we were friends, he posed for a photo with me!

What is it about this spot in Curacao that keeps reminding me of life back in California? Haha

Ok, I’m sorry, I’ll try to stay more focused…

It was nearly time to leave, so I started walking back towards the bus and came across this guy…

I didn’t expect to see all these birds at this stop, but it was so fun!  Whoever left their shoes on the beach might need to spend the rest of the day barefoot if she doesn’t come back soon!

Once everyone was back on the bus, we drove just a few minutes up to the top of the hill to Playa Forti.

From here, we had a beautiful overlook of the coast, and could see back towards Playa Piskado.

Just look at the color of that water!  So pretty!!

Ever since I booked this tour nearly a year ago, I was looking forward to this stop because it offers a very unique experience… cliff jumping!  There is a small platform where you can jump from, with a 40ft drop before you reach the 14 foot deep pool of water.  All along, DH and I both planned to jump from here, but now that I was standing up here, I got scared.  Eddy explained that you have to stay stick straight in a vertical position, and to hit the water with your feet first in order to avoid injury.  After that, you need to swim back to the shore to reach the stairs and climb back up to the top of the cliff.  I am not the best swimmer and I was worried about getting back to shore, especially without my goggles.  In the end, I chickened out, as did everyone else on our tour, except for DH. He was the only person brave enough to make the jump, although it did take him a few seconds of standing up on the platform, plotting his technique and gaining the courage to take the jump. Again, this was a great opportunity to use the burst mode on my camera.  I got some really cool photos, but I didn’t have the right angle to see when he actually hit the water.

Judging by the splash, he was not perfectly straight when he hit the water.  If there is anything I have learned by watching competitive diving on the summer Olympics, it’s that the bigger the splash, the more of an angle your body had when hitting the water.

It took him a few seconds to swim back up to the surface.  I was glad to see that he was still breathing and that he survived the jump, but I could tell he wasn’t feeling quite right.

He took a few minutes to swim back to the shore and climb up the stairs.  There he is, walking to the stairs on the beach.

When he got back up to the top of the cliff, he said his neck and shoulder were hurting and we think he may have given himself whiplash.  As the day went on, the muscles in his neck got very tight and it hurt him to turn his head to the side.  I used my Physical Therapy skills to try to work out the knots in his muscles and one of the ladies on the tour offered him some Advil.  The soreness continued for a few more days, getting gradually better, and he was back to normal by the end of the cruise.  Looking back, DH said he was glad he jumped because he would have regretted not doing it, but I was very happy that I skipped it!!  

After all of that excitement, we were ready for some time to relax at a beach.  We drove about 10 minutes to our next stop, and along the way, we passed this monument to freedom from slavery.

Our next stop was Playa Kenepa Grandi, and we had just over 1 hour to enjoy this beautiful beach with stunning views and to go snorkeling.  If we wanted to rent lounge chairs and an umbrella, it would cost $18, and it was $1 to use the bathroom, but it was free to put your towel down on the sand.  Eddy said we were free to stock up on some drinks from the cooler to bring down to the beach with us.  Yrad parked the bus at the back of the parking lot so we could come back for refills if we wanted to.

This is often rated as one of the most beautiful beaches in the Caribbean, and I can see why!

Looking straight down, I made a note of these rocks under the water because it probably has some good snorkeling over here.

We climbed down the stone steps to reach the beach below.

Restrooms and the restaurant is to the right

There was lots of shade on the closer side of the beach, just as we got off the
steps.  DH was really sore, so he opted to drink a beer from the bus on his towel in the sand while I went snorkeling.  I started on the left side of the beach (facing the water), heading towards those rocks I saw from above.  The snorkeling was okay… nothing spectacular, but I did see a puffer fish and a few other interesting fish.  There wasn’t much coral though, mostly just sand and rocks.

White Spotted Puffer Fish!

I stayed out there for about 15 minutes, then swam back to the beach to walk over to the far right side and see what the snorkeling was like over there.

It didn’t take long to realize the snorkeling over here was even more
impressive.  I stayed close to the rocks and found lots of interesting fish.

Tiny bright blue fish

I looked down and check out what I found…

Squid!!!  I am always super excited when I spot something I’ve never seen before, and this was my first time seeing squid!  They moved really quickly and they were small and stayed close to the ocean floor, so it was hard to get a clear photo, but I did my best.

Of course, that was my highlight of snorkeling here!  There was still a little more to explore though.

Our time here passed quickly, so with 15 minutes to go, I made my way back to where DH was sitting so I could get dried off and help him walk back to the bus.  It was now after 1pm and we were starting to get hungry, so I was ready to move along to our final stop.  On the way, we passed this sign for Williwood, but I don’t remember what Eddy said was the reason for it.

Another huge church

The last stop on our tour was Playa Porto Mari, where we would have 2 hours to spend at the beach.  They have a beach bar and restaurant where we could buy lunch, they have good snorkeling, and they also have bathrooms with showers that we could use for free.  They charged to rent lounge chairs on the beach, but there were some Adirondack chairs that were free to use if we could find one that was available.  

We were hungry, so we went over to the restaurant to buy something to eat for lunch.  The menu offered typical beach food with burgers and sandwiches, so we got 2 cheeseburgers with fries for $10 USD per person.  

We took a seat at the bar to wait for our food. It was nice to sit in the shade, and the view was beautiful.

Unfortunately, there were a lot of smokers at this restaurant. They weren’t there when we took our seats or we would have opted to sit somewhere else, but lucky us… 2 parties showed up and sat on either side of us, and then proceeded to smoke a bunch of cigarettes, one after the other.  It was really unpleasant and ruined the beautiful atmosphere for us, and it didn’t help that it took 45 minutes for our food to be ready.  Had I known the food would take that long, I probably would have gone snorkeling right after placing my order to use the time better.  There weren’t that many dishes coming out of the kitchen, so I guess the cook works on “island time.”

When the food finally arrived, it was good. Nothing special, but basically what we expected it to be.  I have never seen this before, but they served the burger with a slice of cucumber instead of a pickle.

The food came at 2:15pm, so by then we were starving and scarfed it down
really quickly.  We paid our bill (after taking 10 minutes to hunt down the waitress), and then left to go check out the beach.  It was really pretty here, but more crowded than our last beach.  

We went towards the left side of the beach as there wasn’t anyone over here and we spotted some rocks that would make a safe spot to stash our beach bags.

Just as we were about to go in the water, I noticed this man walking his pet… pig!  Kinda bizarre, but I guess pigs like going for long walks on the beach?

Ok, time to go snorkeling… There’s a smooth sandy entrance to the water here so no need for water shoes.

From the shore, we could see a bunch of snorkelers out in the water, and the water was a slightly darker shade of blue out that way, so we knew that’s the direction in which we should swim.  At first, it was sort of barren with just a handful of fish and some coral here and there.

We went out a little further and that’s when things got interesting!  They sunk these giant hollow concrete spheres in the water, and they had big holes in them to allow the fish to swim in and out and to give a place for coral to grow. It was so much fun to float above them and peek inside to see which fish were lurking in the shadows.

It kinda looks like the big fish is kissing the smaller fish… either that, or he’s
sizing up the smaller fish to eat for lunch!

Peek a boo, I see you!

I really enjoyed snorkeling at this beach, but I only stayed out there for about 20 minutes so I would have time to get showered and changed before it was time to meet back at the bus.  Unfortunately, it was nearly impossible to use these showers! There were 2 outdoor showers, which would have been fine but the handle was mounted at least 7 feet off the ground, and you had to keep holding it to keep the water flowing.  Who thought that was a good idea?  It must have been installed by a very tall person!  I gave up quickly and just went into one of the toilet stalls to get toweled off and changed.  You’d be surprised at the balancing act involved with getting changed in a fairly small stall when you don’t want anything to touch the wet ground or the toilet, and when there are no hooks to hang your bag and the door to the stall is over 10 feet high so you can’t throw stuff over the top of the door haha It was an interesting experience, but I succeeded (even if it took me over 20 minutes!).

Now that I was all cleaned off and in dry shorts and a tshirt, I met up with DH again and he said he found something to show me.  There is this wood lookout tower in the back of the parking lot, which looks fairly new.

We climbed up to the top to see beautiful panoramic views over the beach!  I didn’t stay up here too long because it was extremely windy, but it was worth it to take a few photos.  Possibly the only complaint I have about the TG-5 is the way it takes panoramic photos. It stitches them together, but you can always see an ugly seam between each section of the photo and I just think it’s not worth the effort to try and take the photos because they never come out good.  I usually carry my old Sony underwater camera specifically to use for panoramic photos because those always come out perfectly, but I didn’t have it with me today. Instead, I just took 3 separate photos of each part of the beach.

By 3:30pm, we were all back on the bus and ready for the 30 minute drive back to the port.  I liked how they structured the tour in that we drove out to the furthest spot first, then gradually worked our way back towards the port so we didn’t have a super long ride at the end of the day.  It wasn’t much of an issue for us with an 8pm sail away time, but for people on cruises that leave earlier than that, it is nice to know you don’t have very far to travel at the end of the tour to minimize the risk of traffic or other delays making you miss the ship.  Eddy asked us if we wanted to be dropped off at the cruise port or closer to the floating bridge, and we opted for the latter so we’d have a shorter walk to get downtown.  Overall, we really loved this tour and both agreed it was one of our favorite days of the 17-day vacation.  Eddy really knows how to keep his guests happy and entertained, and the itinerary was a lot of fun!

The walk towards downtown is very easy and all on flat roads.  We walked down to the end of the street to the Rif Fort.  This is an old fort that has been converted into a shopping and dining plaza.

It’s hard to get lost with signs like this!

It was really pretty inside the Rif Fort area, with tall palm trees and lots of bright colors!

Of course, you can buy all the different flavors of Curacao Liquor at many of the shops here- no need to visit the factory if you don’t want to.

There was a young woman who lived in a shoe…

We kept walking passed all the shops and exited the Rif Fort at a sidewalk along the water.  The current was so strong and the water was so rough that it kept crashing up along the walls and I got splashed a few times!  It’s a good thing I was using my waterproof camera!!

We walked further along the water, passed a few vendors in tents selling touristy souvenirs, to reach the base of the pontoon bridge.  This was that iconic view that I have been eager to see in person!

The bridge is officially called the Queen Emma Bridge, and was built in 1888.  It is designed to open laterally, floating along the water creating an angle against this side of the wall so boats can pass through.  It was closed now so we could walk across the bridge, taking our time and admiring the beautiful views.

This is the Queen Juliana Bridge, and is obviously much larger to allow cars to drive over the St. Anna Bay.

I just loved how bright and colorful all the buildings were!

When we reached the other end of the bridge, we just wondered around the streets of the downtown area.  Many of the buildings had an interesting outer façade, and there were lots of interesting stores to check out.  You could easily spend a whole day exploring here, with no need to book a formal excursion if you don’t want to.

I’ll bet you mis-read the name of this store at first glance!

Don’t you just want to run up and give her a hug? She matches the statue we saw when we first exited the ship this morning.

We meandered through the streets until we reached the Mikve Israel Emanuel Synagogue, which is the oldest synagogue in continuous use in the Western Hemisphere.  Unfortunately, we arrived just a few minutes after they closed at 4pm so we couldn’t go inside to see the famous sand floors, so a few photos from the outside will have to do.

It was late enough in the afternoon that most people had come and gone so there weren’t many tourists walking around.  I imagine it looked very different a few hours earlier!

We spent about 30 minutes walking around and checking out the shops, and then tried to walk back across the bridge to get back to the cruise ship but we arrived just as it was opening.  They open the bridge as needed for either 10 minutes when it opens halfway, or 30-40 minutes when it opens fully to allow larger ships to pass.  Luckily this was only a 10 minute time, so we got to see the whole process but it didn’t delay us too long.  There is also a ferry to take you across the water if you don’t want to wait for the bridge, but it is not worth it when the bridge is only open for 10 minutes.

If you happen to be on the bridge when it starts to open, then you get to go for a little ride!  I wonder if they will let people off at the other end or if they are trapped there and have to wait for the gates to open?  

The bridge opened just enough to allow this boat to pass through, then it swung back the other way to close.

While we were waiting, I noticed this heart next to the bridge.  Many bridges around the world have had trouble with people hanging locks and then tossing the keys into the water for good luck or romance or whatever, and it is causing damage to those bridges.  I thought it was clever that they had this giant heart sculpture for people to safely place their locks without damaging the bridge.  It even makes for some pretty urban art!

After about 10 minutes, the gates lifted back up and we were allowed to walk across the bridge.  It was very interesting to watch the whole process so I’m glad we happened to be there at that time.

We walked around the Rif Fort for a few minutes, looked in a few of the shops, then walked back to the ship.  We were back onboard by 5pm, so we went upstairs to deck 14 so I could try to take some better photos.  As predicted, the sun was at a much better angle and I was able to take some beautiful photos of the port area and all of Willemstad.

Wow! Look at those waves crashing up against the sea wall!!  The strong winds from the last 2 weeks continued today, and I heard a few people had their snorkeling tours cancelled.  I was glad we booked a land-based tour today and not a boat tour so at least we were not impacted as much.

When I was planning our dinner reservations for the cruise, I debated about what to do for tonight.  All aboard was at 7:30pm with an 8pm sail away time, so I considered pushing back our dinner reservation to maximize our time in Curacao.  While it may have been nice to spend a little more time walking around the town, I decided it was better to keep with our consistent 7pm dinner reservation to increase our chances of always sitting with the same wait staff.  As it turned out, I think I made the right choice because Pinto and Jose only have 6 tables in their section, and it was always roughly the same group of people seated in their section each night.  Each night, we all arrived between 6:45 and 7:15pm, and we finished eating between 8:15 and 8:45pm, so had I made us 8pm dinner reservations for tonight, there wouldn’t have been a table in that section for us.  I think the hostess seats people as they arrive into a section with the same wait staff so the waiters can keep all the tables on the same courses at the same time to minimize how many times they need to run down to the galley.  Showing up for dinner at an off time would probably mean we would be seated with a different wait staff whose tables are synced with that later dining time, whereas a random couple who did not make reservations would be seated at our normal table.  

Anyway, after taking photos of the cruise port area from upstairs on the outer decks, we went back to the cabin to quickly shower and change for dinner.  Tonight’s dinner menu was another new one for us, and I loved all of the seafood options!

Creamy Spinach and Artichoke Dip

Bay Scallop and Shrimp Ceviche

Seafood and Lobster Pappardelle

This was one of my favorite meals of the week! We skipped dessert (so I don’t have a photo of that menu for tonight) because there was a special show happening in the lobby at 8pm that we didn’t want to miss.  I really liked how the production cast performed these little shows in the Grand Foyer throughout the week, like a bonus show in addition to the bigger productions in the main theater.  Tonight’s theme party was called Reigning Rocks, and featured songs by British rock bands.  

It’s hard to see, but one of the dancers was swinging around inside of the neon guitar.

The costumes for this show were really fun, but be sure to show up early as it’s a popular event but it is standing room only and the best spots are taken
quickly!  We saw some people riding up and down in the glass elevators to watch the show, so they may have had the best ‘seats’ in the house!

Tonight’s show in the main theater was a singer named Jesse Hamilton.  Like several other solo performers on this cruise, he has performed on Broadway, most notably as Simba in the Lion King and the Tin Man in The Wiz.  For tonight’s show, Jesse performed a mix of soul and pop hits, with a little comedy thrown in for entertainment.

After that, we went back to the Grand Foyer for the Silent Disco at 10:15pm.  I have never done this before and we missed a few opportunity to participate in other Silent Discos earlier during the cruise, so I made sure to stay up late enough tonight that we wouldn’t miss out again.  They provide you with a set of wireless headphones which can be tuned to one of 3 stations (hence the 3 colors- red, green, and blue).  

Each station has its own theme with one of the ship staff acting as DJ.  Cruise Director Eddy played songs from the 50’s and 60’s, Activities Manager Kristine played songs from the 70’s and 80s, and DJ Mace played songs from the last 30 years.  You can control your own headphones so you can either stick with one station the whole time, or switch around to hear different songs.  It was such a fun event and very well attended, with tons of people dancing and singing along to their favorite songs.  It was even fun for people just watching but not wearing the headphones or participating because the DJ’s encouraged us to sing along to the chorus, which created a cacophony of voices singing 3 different songs at the same time!  

I only planned to stay for a few minutes but we ended up staying until 11pm!  This was the view from the glass elevators as we went back to our cabin.

Step Tracker Daily Total:  16,486 steps; 6.711 miles