Freestyle ramblings from Pearl Cruise

[Tanless]

It’s Wednesday, 10:15pm, on the Pearl. I’m at the desk in the Horizon Garden Villa looking down at the pool area where a Caribbean party is starting to commence. Our concierge Anoop, the concierge, has just left after having the wife create her own dishes for tomorrow’s supper. Anoop wanted something challenging to really make the chef work; the weird sounding Indian things she came up with were new even to Anoop, but apparently chef knows them. It should make for a very interesting Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. Tonight’s dinner was from Asian Fusion – I had various appetizers, fried rice and a spicy lobster tail dish.

It had been a long day. It started at midnight with me still at the bowling tournament in the Bliss lounge. I wasn’t selected, by the drawing of names, as one of the eight pax to participate by teaming with members of crew, but I had hung around as a cheering section. Julie, the Cruise Director, who was competing in the tournament, noticed me and invited me to sit with her and bought me a drink (a Shirley Temple- another whole story how Julie came up with that joke). She is extremely gorgeous in the ways that matter, in addition to all those superficial ones. She promised to do a split if one of the competitors pulled off 3 strikes in a row. He did and she did (it was a GREAT split). She then promised to do a back spin if he could stretch his strike streak to five. He did and she did (who else has gotten to see a Cruise Director spinning on the floor on her back??). She then promised to do a back spin into a split for 7 strikes in a row. Unfortunately, the competitor was not able to keep his strike streak alive, and she got off the hook.

After crashing hard for too few hours, it was time for my 8:15 am horseback riding/swim in Ochs Rios. I survived the ordeal (“Sweet Boy” did not live up to his name and kept trying to chomp another horse, and was successful). The operators are very capable, the horse are very fit and overall, if you don’t mind wading through a little horse poo, very fun. I got back to the ship in time for a quick Cagney’s lunch my wife had waiting for me in the suite and another couple games of bowling before another 4 hands massage. Next up was the Sharkbait show, which was as great as advertised, and then back for a late in suite dinner at 8:45pm from Asian Fusion.

It’s 11:00 pm Wednesday and I’m going to bed.

It’s 3:00 am Thursday and I’m up again. I remember that embarkation had gone smooth as silk. We met Cruise Critic folk Jim and his crew, Deb and John with their twins in the VIP area. JoJit, our butler for the week, took us up to our villa to drop off our bags before taking us to Cagney’s for lunch. After lunch and a more thorough survey our gi-normous villa until time for the ship drill, I went to the spa to order some pamperings. I went with a 4 hands massage that afternoon, a Shave of Shaves on Monday, a stone massage on Tuesday, another 4 hands massage Wednesday, a Bamboo massage and Shave of Shaves on Saturday. I felt a little indulgent about my spa bookings needing a second card until I later saw my wife had three full cards of spa bookings. We got to be very chummy with the Spa team over the cruise.

Its 3:30 am and I feel like taking another nap. Its freesyle, so that is exactly what I am now going to do.

Its 8:20 am. I just escorted the wife to a Spa treatment. On the way back I ran into a pax we had met at the La Quinta (a shoe string operation with an absolutely wonderful lady at the front desk) pre-cruise. He was not a happy camper/cruiser. Apparently, his kids had discovered the game room and ran up over three hundred dollars in charges. He revoked their charging privileges for the rest of cruise. Cruise Critic has discussions on this; another repeat of a common pitfall that a little quality time on Cruise Critic could have prevented. The plan for today is for us to have Cagney’s breakfast in suite, call Anoop to escort us to a tender, go do our submarine excursion, take a nap, have the wife’s made to order Indian fare in suite, burp a few times, go to the Second Comedy Show, take a nap, go to the White Hot Party. Oh, I almost forgot; today’s Thanksgiving. All the dining rooms are serving turkey and dressing today. There are pictures of turkeys and pilgrim up all over, even in our garden villa. Looking out, the pool deck is practically deserted – no chair hogs to dork with. A LOT of pax tendered over to Grand Cayman.

Its 4:30 am after setting the clock up an hour for the new time zone. Everything went almost as planned yesterday; I got some really cool underwater video of the denizens of the Grand Cayman depths, had CC “visitors” instead of a nap, had the most fabulous Indian cuisine ever (kudos to Pearl’s chef!), went to the Second Comedy Show (they should bribe Sharkbait to not be so funny – Second City pales in comparison), went bowling before my first ever pub crawl and shook my bootie like it was 1979 (only dances I know) at the white hot party. I was amazed that the pub crawl had no effect on me whatsoever. Until I missed my mouth with the mimosa I was attempting to drink while nibbling brownies and watching a Smurf movie on my return to the suite after the white hot party. I decided I should call it a night.

I think it’s 3:30 on Saturday morning; hard to tell with all the time changing going on. Hotel Director Santa Klaus (even though he claims he isn’t) had said yesterday that we are now members of their crew family (I thought he was about to get me to swab the decks) and treated us to another complimentary dinner and wine at the resturant of our choice. We selected Mambo’s; it wasn’t Cagney’s, but it was good. Anoop popped up during the meal (I declare that man must live in a lamp or bottle) to let us know he had arranged for a private tour of the bridge. It would be for us and our GV and DOS neighbors Saturday morning as soon as I completed my bamboo massage and shave of shaves. The day’s plan is to, after the bridge tour, to have the Mambo’s Indian buffet for lunch, get in some final bowling, learn how to juggle my dirty socks at Sharkbait’s workshop, have our last custom ordered dinner (wife asked for clam chowder with a pasta dish of chef’s choice incorporating lobster, shrimp, and sea scallops,) watch the crew talent show and get to bed at a decent hour.

It’s 5:30 pm and I’m just back from the Sharkbait juggling workshop. I definitely will not be giving up my day job. I did get to use balls being sold by Sharkbait instead of my socks. It didn’t make a difference. I was late for the bridge tour this morning – my bamboo massage ran long and Rose the shaver refused to rush her beautification project (Shave of shaves). I got to the bridge in time for the last of the tour which was very interesting. The Indian buffet lunch was awesome – the crew went out of their way to make it smell, look, sound, taste and just feel authentic.

Did I say the Indian Buffet was awesome? Well whatever is on the other side of awesome is the only way to describe dinner. The chef made us some world class clam chowder, buttery grilled lobster, supremely seasoned shrimp, and tender tasty bay scallops with a light cheesy pasta dish. Ambrosia. We did go to the show, but decided to spend the time packing (and eating the dinner leftovers) instead. We ran into our friend Julie who even on this busy night of getting ready for the finale took time to shake hands and make sure that things were going well with us. The woman is just fabulous.

Many other activities and adventures occurred (Herbie at the CC Meet and Greet, attack of the killer brownies, towel animals gone wild, snipe hunting 101, customs laughing at our spa products declaration) but this is enough I think to give you an idea of the wonderful time we had.

[SuiteCruiser]

Sounds absolutely fantastic! So glad you had such a great time!

[roger001]

Sound like you are sure taking advantage of the wonders available on that cruise..and the Pearl...and yes, isn't Julie and Sharkbait great. It sounds like you are like me....a non stop smile on my face the whole time...well, until time to get off the ship. Thanks for the review.