MAR 21

2024

Thursday: port day. 945 Great Bay Beach Experience.

(The next day) 1250 - Solarium deck chairs at the forward edge of the ship: after waking up and eating breakfast yesterday, we got our towels and disembarked to Sint Maarten for our excursion. Felt like we had to stand in the heat for a long time, but we did eventually walk to a water taxi across the bay to the Philipsburg beach. Our group was situated at blue and green umbrellas, but we spent most of our time in the ocean. Our sunblock proved insufficient because we both got burns on our shoulders and back. Our excursion seemed to be run by the Blue Bitch Bar, as they were clearly the ones running the little exterior bar where we had lunch. It was a pretty good burger and fries. Once she was done photographing a dog sleeping on the sand, Julie lead us to a souvenir shop to buy a magnet, and she picked up t-shirt as well. We got a taxi back across the bay to the ship, and since we were still in our swimsuits, we went up to the Solarium to do the King of the World balconies before the ship left port. We thought to watch the departure from the hot Infinity pool on the ship's forward starboard edge, but an ambulance was pulled up to take somebody away, so it was going to be too long of a wait. Instead, we got ice cream again and went to the aft for departure, and as soon as the ship was well away from the pier, we returned to the Solarium. We spent an hour or two in the pools (first the little ankle-deep seating area, where I just sprawled out on my back, then to the plunge pool). Once that got old, we returned to Sprinkles again before going to our room to clean up and break into the first bottle of wine. We had our Caribbean dinner on the bottom level of the MDR, and the younger couple next to us would feature prominently in the Crazy Quest later in the evening. First, we had Pete Matthews, the Crazy Juggler to get through. Once we finished with both, we returned to our room and promptly crashed. Thanks, wine!

2023

Tuesday: another typical workday trying to get my project closer to completion. The cats were anxious to get into the basement all day after we shut them out yesterday. Julie and I spent a fair bit of time continuing to investigate our cruise options, and I spent the evening watching some folks on Twitch and Youtube before doing a bit of light MMO play. Not sure I'll stay up very late tonight, as my energy levels were low for too long today.