ShipShape

Posted Friday, July 06, 2007 1:43 AM

Back to the pre-Honeymoon write up -- I hope to finish the total recap before our actual honeymoon. I can't believe I ended a post without telling who was on the other side of the elevator doors when they opened.

In retrospect it wasn’t that important – what was important is that we ran into Ryan and Emily, our friends from the night before, when we went to the Windjammer for lunch. I don’t think you can ever have too much food when it comes to buffet – but despite the huge amount of choices, I still ended up taking a burger (it was make your own -- like at Fuddruckers).

Since we hadn’t been to our cabin yet, and Ryan and Emily had a balcony stateroom, we went to their place first, and then to our outside stateroom. The bed in our cabin looked so comfy, I couldn’t wait to take a nap.

The four of us then decided to poke around the rest of the megaship. I knew there was a climbing wall onboard, as there are on all RCCL ships – but the Splendour also had a golf course (something the Monarch, our usual ship, does not have). So after taking some fun photos of Barcelona from the pool deck (we even spotted Montjunic), we headed for the small 18-hole course where we laughingly played all 18 holes. It was overcast and we were the only people out there. RCCL should have paid us – we were a walking advertisement for them. It got even more interesting when an inebriated foursome started playing – they started at the 18^th hole and gave up at the 12th.

Since the weather turned a bit nasty (foreshadowing), we went inside to the Centrum where the cruise staff was going to be giving away prizes. I LOVE freebies, so the next 20 minutes was spent gathering raffle tickets at tables advertising the spa (I swear one of their workers had a double – she turned up everywhere and greeted me with “hi Shoshana!”), the art auction, the bars, the shops and the casino.

We didn’t win any of the raffle prizes – but we did pick up some bonus packs of what turned to out be very profitable Bingo cards (worth about $10-$15 each). The cards came courtesy of Luka from Brazil who kept motioning to us to take another card. She was so cute the whole week and would always say hi when she saw us.

But all fun must end and it was time for Adam and I to endure yet another lifeboat drill. As a Diamond member, I feel I should be exempt from life boat drills. It was hot, it was boring, it was redundant. We were told to put on our life jackets in our room before going up to our muster station. The lifeboat drill channel was playing over and over again in our cabin – personally I got more use out of the casino channel. Then, when we reached the station, they instructed us in putting on our life jackets. Huh?

We waited patiently while the instructions were given in English, French, Spanish and Italian. We’ll maybe not exactly patiently … we sort of cheated: I brought my Sudoku, Adam had his PSP.

Since we had dinner seating at 9 p.m. (we love second seating, but 9? Who eats dinner at 9?) we had time to unpack and wash up in our cabin and then went to relax in the Solarium before dinner.

Good thing we relaxed before dinner, because after dinner it was anything but relaxing.