I woke up a number of times, but not because I was bothered by being in a bed that was moving at 25-30 knots and occasionally swaying. A curse of being A.D.D. is that the brain just doesn’t want to shut down much, and I sometimes have to almost exhaust myself to get a decent night’s sleep. Silly me, I went to bed relatively early the previous night, and I found myself awake for good around 5:30. The silver lining was that I was able to see my first cruise sunrise (which wasn’t scheduled to happen for nearly an hour and a half).
Around 6:30, I hopped out of bed and start preparing to check out the photo op. I opened up the door to the verandah and listened to…nothing. All I heard was the ocean.
Ahhhhhhh.
Sheri hopped out of bed too and headed out while I grabbed the camera.
Sunrise:
Rain behind us
Don't assume that your verandah is completely private
After a few minutes, I noticed that the lens was fogging up. It was so humid outside, relative to the stateroom, that condensation was going to be a problem. I went in and swapped our smaller lens for the 55-200 mm zoom lens and then repeated as each lens fogged up.
Sheri was especially happy that a lifeboat was within jumping distance of our verandah
With sunrise done, I had a new mission in life: find a decent cup of coffee! I headed out (armed with my camera, because I was guessing it would be quiet) and made my way up to Deck 11. After waving to Nigel (still perched in the same spot by the elevators), I went through Cabanas and into the pool area:
…then into the Cove area…
…and up to Decks 12/13 to look around.
The view from the far forward area was breath-taking…
…no, seriously, it took my breath away! We were steaming towards Nassau, which was just barely starting to come into view in the distant horizon. We were probably doing a good 25 knots, which equates to a lot of wind up there! I had the camera slung around my neck, and the wind was so powerful that it blew the strap up and over my head several times. It was really neat, but it wasn’t something that I thought Sheri would like. The boys…yeah, they’d get a kick out of it.
I headed back down to Deck 11 to the Cove Café, perused their coffee menu, and selected a mocha for Sheri and a cappuccino for me. While they were making them, I asked if the crew/cast members if they were okay with me taking pictures. Yep!
Coffee obtained and paid for, I made my way back to our stateroom to present the ambrosia to Sheri. The verdict? MUCH better than yesterday’s! Yeah, Vista Cafe (Deck 4, mid-ship) was a lot closer, but I wanted to get some more outside pics :) .
We decided to just lounge around for a while instead of grabbing breakfast immediately. I took advantage of Disney’s free on-demand movies through the television. Our selection? The Emperor’s New Groove (Love that movie!). I moved back and forth between watching the movie and looking out on the balcony to see how close we were getting to Nassau (the Atlantis resort was coming into full view now, and at least one of the other ships calling on Nassau this day was ahead of us and off of our port side. Around 8:30 or so, we decided to head out for breakfast. I had a feeling that Cabanas was going to be packed, so I suggested we try dining at Enchanted Garden, since we didn’t dine there the previous night (that was our rotational restaurant when we opted for Remy). Sheri agreed, and, sure enough, as we exited our stateroom, Reuben was there, all smiles, asking how we slept! We headed forward to the atrium and then down to Deck 2. There was no wait at all to get a seat, and, after our server got our drink orders, he recommended that we sneak over to the far side of the buffet as there was no wait.
That was a pretty good spread for breakfast! Fresh fruit (honeydew, pineapple, watermelon), standard breakfast meats, Mickey waffles (you’re darn right I grabbed one!), eggs, cereal, granola, apples, bananas, oranges, biscuits and gravy, grits, etc…and it all looked good!
While we ate, I took notice what was going on outside the windows. The Dream had arrived into Nassau and was doing the closest thing to a pirouette that a 130,000 gross ton ship can attempt. We were swinging around to back in to dock. As we talked to our server about whether or not he would be able to head into town for a bit today, we started backing in, and the ships that had already arrived ahead of us started coming into view. We took our time; we decided that, with 6 ships joining us in Nassau, the entire town was going to be packed. Carnival Fantasy, Carnival Ecstasy, and Norwegian Sky were already docked, and we were expecting Enchantment of the Seas and Carnival Conquest over the next few hours. Because of this, we decided to take the opportunity to check out what the Dream had to offer and skip Nassau.
After thanking our server, we walked around the Enchanted Garden dining room a little bit. This room was prettier than I had anticipated.
After leaving Deck 2, we decided to tour the ship a little. Deck 3 was jammed with the Princess Meet-and-greet, so we couldn’t get around much there. While tooling around Deck 4 by the mid-level staircase/elevators, I saw Peter Pan hopping up the stairs and bolting around the corner. A family’s kids saw him and tore off to meet him, while the parents simply looked at us with a “what the heck just happened” expression on their faces. We got a good laugh as the parents scratched their heads and went after the kids. I was just about to comment on how I love the spontaneity of the characters when Peter ran up to us with the perfect child-like expression.
“Hi! Have you seen Tink? I’m looking for her!”
“Nope, but we’ll look, too!”
He smiled, sensing that we could role play well.
“So, what adventures are you planning on doing today?”
“Well, we have a mixology class this afternoon that we’re going to over in Skyl...”
“What’s mixology? Is it a class? Is it like school?
I tried not to laugh. Peter Pan is awesome!
Sheri and I looked at each other for a second…
“Well, it’s where you learn to make adult beverages” (keeping in mind that we’re talking to a boy who would not grow up).
“What’s ‘Adult Beverage’”?
Uh oh…
Pause
Pause
“Ya know what Captain Hook drinks? Rum? It’s like that.”
Not even blinking, Pan fired back with “That stuff? I don’t like it at all! Oh well…gotta go!!”
And, with that, Peter Pan bounded off for his next adventure.
Awesome, awesome…AWESOME!!
With that encounter done, we started checking out the art on Deck 5. The Midship Detective Agency kiosk only had one person in line, so I hopped in to get set up.
Hey…it’s for research, okay?! (that’s what I keep telling myself).
For those who might not get that joke, the Midship Detective Agency is somewhat akin to the Magic Kingdom’s Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom game, where you hold up a card that is read by cameras at certain places, and you interact with the screens to try accomplishing a task. For me, I chose the 101 Dalmatians game. Sheri donned the camera and grabbed a few pics while I "researched".
Mosaic, Deck 3
We poked our heads into the Vista Gallery to look around, and I dreamed about which pieces of art we'd purchase if we hit the lottery. While looking round, I found the artwork that I thought many of my Lodgeboard/Moose friends would appreciate the most:
That’s for you, Squid, Buz, Ed, RMD, Zurg, Bris, Pat, Brian S., TVT, Loubon, Klombar, etc.
Since we were heading aft, we continued through the District and hopped up the aft stairwells to check out some more of the various pieces of art.
I’d strongly recommend you take the time to slow down and tour the ship…some of the artwork is simply awe-inspiring!
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