Today was always supposed to be a sea day. Yesterday was an unpleasant bonus. Seas continue at 15 feet or so and the wind is only slightly down but blowing in our favor now. It is not as rough as it was leaving Jamaica! We are sailing along the coast of Cuba again but it is on the port side now. We just have open sea as our starboard view. We don't have the wind today so the balcony in the shade was quite pleasant. We saw flying fish and white-bellied seabirds trying to catch them.
We got checked in online for tomorrow's flight to Montego Bay, Jamaica and printed our boarding passes in the library. Breakfast and lunch we ate in the Windjammer buffet deck 11 aft. We received our departure information on the bed after breakfast. We are assigned group 23 at 9:05 am, but we'll leave earlier at 8:15 to 8:45 am in the group B self assistance departure group from deck 4 Royal Theater.
We looked at tonight's dinner menu on the Royal app and were not impressed. Cruise Compass says that Windjammer will feature a chocolate buffet, so we cancelled our MyTime Dining reservation and we'll eat upstairs at the buffet again.
This should be it for me on this cruise. It was no where near as bad as I'd expected based on prior research of mainstream cruising. It is too loud and crowded for me to enjoy. The entertainment is wasted on me. I don't like almost every encounter being a sales pitch. That said, our cabin steward knows us on sight as did our assigned waiter in the dining room. That was a nice surprise. I love the stability of the enormous ship in rough conditions! Fingers crossed that our upcoming month on the much smaller Oceania Riviera has much calmer winds and seas! $1859 for 5 days for the 2 of us compared to O at $6700 for 10 days = $3350 for 5 days which is almost double. You can see why the premium, niche and luxury cruises we frequent are a harder sell. Of course, when RCI charges $16 a day for a soda package to start upselling negotiations I expect many onboard here are spending nearly as much by trip's end.
I am pretty sure there are no photos today. Next stop Jamaica via Miami. Speaking of budgetary topics! Country #94 will be bought at a premium.
Little Bob hits the road
Little Bob hits the road
