Florida-Bahamas Cruise 2023 - Day 7 - Sea Day

 

Florida-Bahamas Cruise - Day 7 - Sea Day - 12/15/23

It is the last day on the ship, and part of me wishes it wouldn’t end.  Hopefully, I didn’t gain that much weight on the ship, as it will take some time to get it off without the average of 2-3 miles of walking every day.  Luckily, we have a clear sky today (a rarity on this cruise) and a smooth sea.  

The only reason I got up this morning was to go to the buffet for breakfast, and later for lunch.  While out for breakfast, I turned on the light to tell the steward that he could make up the room.  However, he was delayed, and I had to kill some time.  So I went to buy a couple of pictures from the photo lab - and they tried to upsell me a package of 5 photos when I was only interested in 3.  Instead of buying 3, I bought the 2 I really wanted and went back to my room. The steward was cleaning my room when I arrived with his supervisor discussing work with him.  He asked for another couple of minutes and I gave it to him.

After lunch, I found the disembarkation instructions in my cabin.  Looks like I’ll be one of the last people off the ship, as I have been assigned debarkation group #21.  This is fine with me, as it makes it easier to connect with RQS and travel to Croton together.  The only thing that concerns me is getting back to Manhattan and then to Grand Central. Today, I’ll have the luxury of time on my side.  But I won’t be sure of when I will get there.  So I’ll call RQS when I get on the ferry, to give her an idea of how long I’ll be waiting at Grand Central for her.

Just before I went to dinner, I packed everything into my large suitcase, and prepared to set it outside the door for pickup and delivery to the pier the next morning.  This would be the last of my specialty restaurants on the package, and I was underwhelmed by the seafood joint.  Few of the dishes on my package were worth the price, and I chose the spaghetti with clam sauce - which was very good.  After dinner, I had time to go back to the room and put some more dirty laundry into the suitcase before it was picked up by the stewards.  By doing so, I lightened what I’d be carrying with me in the morning, and committed myself to staying in the room for the rest of the evening.  So I called it a night, though I wasn’t sleepy yet.

Second Cruise - Day 1: Embarkation Day.

 

 

Day 1: Embarkation Day.

I had installed and set up both Uber and Lyft applications on my cell phone, but couldn’t summon a driver.  So, I left this task up to RQS.  Unlike our last trek to the cruise terminal, this ride was pleasant - even though we went through the bowels of Maspeth before reaching the Midtown Tunnel.

Unlike our last cruise, the embarkation process went more smoothly than expected.  There were no long lines.  Instead, after a brief delay at security (which I expected), it was over to the check in counter, where we picked up our cruise cards within 5 minutes of passing the security checkpoint.  At this time, they had just opened up the 3rd gangway to the ship, and we got onboard without waiting on any line.  Once onboard, I looked to my left, and there was the muster station.  We checked in before even proceeding to our room.

We got to our room a few minutes early, and were greeted by our steward, Ed.  He is an overly nice fellow who aimed to please. However, he misinterpreted a request of ours, an easy thing to do when English is not one’s native language.  We wanted our mini bar emptied of all items, so that we could keep our water containers cold until we disembarked.  Instead, he put those items that NCL charges for on the desk, not realizing that we wanted them removed from the room.  This was taken care of when we returned from lunch.

Our cruise package included 2 specialty meals.  However, because of my loyalty status, we were to receive 2 extra specialty meals. But I didn’t know how that would be done.  This was question was resolved when we looked at a card left on the desk.  It had the coupons for 2 specialty meals.  So we hoofed it down to the reservations desk, where we set up specialty restaurant reservations for the week.

After a little rest, it was time for dinner.  And off to the seafood restaurant we went.  By the time we got out of there, we were both stuffed.  I was glad that we didn’t go for steak today, or we’d see our stomachs explode before we hit the bed.