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LIVE - Couple's Blog from Quantum - Feb. 20, 2015

curryshake

By curryshake,
in Royal Caribbean International

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A&L_Ont "Live from...." Rare

A&L_Ont

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Curryshake, I can't wait to read this whole blog when we get back (actually I can wait!)

 

We are having a fantastic time so far and I will definitely do a full review next week at some point. Time to hit the Schooner Bar for a few pre-dinner drinks.

 

Glad to hear you are having a great time.

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curryshake

curryshake

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Tonight we saw Starwater, ate at Chic, and saw the guest entertainer. I want to review all of them now, but we're going to dance (maybe) and then off to bed for an early excursion tomorrow. So it may be a while before we post again. Patience, my dear friends.

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Merion_Mom

Merion_Mom

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Very enjoyable day here so far. After a serviceable breakfast at Windjammer (I had a made-to-order omelet from the station all the way aft; we sat outside and ate) we walked around topside on deck 15, enjoying the sun and breeze. Then we chilled in the Solarium before hitting up the spa for a wonderful couples massage. Then it was back to the Solarium for some hot tub/in-pool chair/lounge chair relaxation.

 

We don't eat (at Chic) until 9 tonight, so we checked out Michael's Genuine Pub for a late lunch. It was terrible, and Eduardo was the worst waiter ever.

 

[Or maybe that last bit was wrong. Better consult my wife's blog post, the one she is writing at the same time as me.]

 

Now we're chilling in Two70. Still absolutely love hanging in here. Nothing much to do until Starwater tonight at 7:30. That is definitely not a complaint.

 

The 75 minute couple's Swedish massage at the spa was great. I had Sujie and she asked how much pressure I liked and then applied just the right amount the entire time. It was one of the best massages I've had in a long time. I almost fell asleep once or twice because I was so relaxed.

 

After that we sat in some lounge-like chairs that are placed in a shallow pool in the solarium. Between the sun and the lapping water of the pool (the ship is still rocking, but not too bad), I almost fell asleep. I'm beginning to sense a pattern here.

 

We had a late lunch at Michael's Genuine Pub because we're having a very late dinner tonight at Chic. We ordered the pub board, and it's difficult to say which I enjoyed better - that board or the board from Jamie's. This one had three kinds of meat, including speck (one of my favorites!) americano; three cheeses, including a really good and creamy goat's milk cheese; fire grilled sour dough bread slices; dijon mustard and apricot jam; and a variety of Michael's bread and butter house pickles and olives. DH had the Michael's brown rice and sugar cane ale, which was not sweet, had a wonderful flavor, and paired perfectly with the board. I like beer, but I'm really into mixology (I have a large herb garden every year that I use, in part, for this hobby), so I had a Plantation, made from gin, agave, basil, lime, and grapefruit. It was excellent. We also got an order of deviled eggs. I thought they were too salty, but DH loved them.

 

Our waiter was Eduardo, and he was very attentive and informative. He brought us extra dijon and bread, at no extra charge, and had a great sense of humor.

 

I'll post some photos in a bit. We're getting quite near to St. Thomas. I hope that means we'll have calmer waters tonight than we did last night. Still, I'm not complaining.

 

You guys are HILARIOUS! :D

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curryshake

curryshake

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We're now docked at St. Thomas. We were surprised to see Disney's Fantasy right next to us. Hard to believe we were on her just seven months ago. Wish we could ride the water slide once more, just for old times sake. Now off to take a catamaran to St. John for some snorkeling and then champagne!

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ftn807

ftn807

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Just got back from a fantastic sail and snorkel outing. Honeymoon beach on St. John was perfect for the amount of time we had. The catamaran pulled up a couple hundred feet or so from the middle of the beach. We got in and found a few good spots with urchins, small fish, coral, the usual snorkeling goodies. Eventually, we landed on the beach, relaxed, and then walked to the other end of the beach, against the current. That way, when we got back in the water, we could let the current guide us back to our boat. The crew was great, probably the best excursion guides I can remember. Thanks to Joe, Susanna and Kenny!

 

Now we're back in the cabin, getting cleaned up before getting a late lunch.

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gaylemh

gaylemh

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Just got back from a fantastic sail and snorkel outing. Honeymoon beach on St. John was perfect for the amount of time we had. The catamaran pulled up a couple hundred feet or so from the middle of the beach. We got in and found a few good spots with urchins, small fish, coral, the usual snorkeling goodies. Eventually, we landed on the beach, relaxed, and then walked to the other end of the beach, against the current. That way, when we got back in the water, we could let the current guide us back to our boat. The crew was great, probably the best excursion guides I can remember. Thanks to Joe, Susanna and Kenny!

 

Now we're back in the cabin, getting cleaned up before getting a late lunch.

 

I was thinking of doing this excursion on my cruise in October. How far off the beach do they let you off? Can you walk? I'm traveling with some that don't snorkel, or swim, but like to get in the water. How much beach time do you get? Are there restrooms on the catamaran?

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curryshake

curryshake

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I was thinking of doing this excursion on my cruise in October. How far off the beach do they let you off? Can you walk? I'm traveling with some that don't snorkel, or swim, but like to get in the water. How much beach time do you get? Are there restrooms on the catamaran?

 

They have a dinghy to take people who don't want to swim ashore. You have a little over an hour at the beach. There is a bathroom on the catamaran.

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curryshake

curryshake

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Back in 270 with a lovely view of St. Thomas. Some crew members are on a scaffolding outside cleaning the massive windows.

 

Before I forget, if you get cold easily, you'll want to pack a sweater or extra long sleeve shirts for lounging in the ship because they keep it pretty cold in here, even when it's nice and warm outside.

 

Okay, back to last night. We saw Starwater in 270. Only people who like to watch half naked men and women gyrating on stage and doing contortion acts in the air would enjoy something like this. Luckily for us, we love that kind of thing!

 

Seriously, to say I found the show impressive would be an understatement. The gowns and costumes were stunningly beautiful, the dancing and acrobatics were great, the lighting and video backgrounds were amazing (except for one brief campy part during the 1920s segment). The vocals were outstanding - and I have sung in my share of choirs over the years. But my favorite part was the music itself. I lost count of how many sampled songs I recognized. Just the first piece blended sampled segments from Madonna, Peter Gabrielle, Deee Lite, and a couple other artists I can't remember right now. Whoever found a way to combine such disparate music into a beautiful and coherent whole and then put new vocals and a modern sound over them is an absolute genius. Other pieces had bits from The Police and Cab Calloway, among many others. I'm going to try to see it again before the end of the cruise.

 

Dinner was at Chic. It was our worst dining experience yet. So far service has been pretty good or great everywhere, but it was terrible last night. Perhaps it was because our reservations were very late and the staff was tired. We never saw the assistant waiter, and our head waiter was rude even though we went out of our way to be polite to him (I grew up in Texas and DH grew up in the Midwest, so being polite to others is in our blood). Even though most of the tables around us were empty, we had to wait a long time to make our order and even longer to get our food. The food was not good. I had a tomato and onion salad, which was exactly that with a little dill. The waiter realized he had forgotten the herb dressing that should have come with it until I was almost finished. I also had the crispy salmon, which was a bland piece of salmon with phyllo dough strips stuck on top of it. These were neither crispy, nor flavorful. The asparagus and carrots that came with the fish were good. DH had the baby greens salad with goat cheese and thought it was okay. He also had the snapper with crushed potatoes and creamed spinach. He didn't care for it at first, but decided it was good by the end of the meal.

 

The strangest part of the experience at Chic was the end of the meal. The waiter came to our table, asked for our stateroom number three or four times as he fought with his iPad (you would think he would have it already, since we had reservations), and then he just walked away while mumbling to himself. We sat there for a couple more minutes and then got up and left. We knew we didn't owe anything since the wine we had was under $12. Needless to say, we won't be going back to Chic.

 

One note here - DH and I have both designed and managed the development of websites and user interfaces professionally over the years, and RCI really needs to fix both their customer website and the interfaces on the crew members' iPads. The user experience provided by their commercial website is bad, as I don't have to tell anyone who has used it. And I have watched several crew members fight with counter-intuitive screens and workflows that require them to ask for the same information more than once. They also need to beef up their servers and/or bandwidth because at boarding the lady who was helping us had to wait one or two minutes for each new screen to load. It's not as if RCI doesn't know how many people will be boarding at the same time. I'm sure crew members find these issues frustrating, and that feeling can't help but get passed on to the passengers in one way or another.

 

After dinner at Chic, we went to see the guest entertainer - Finis Henderson. You can look him up on Wikipedia, I'm sure, but his dad performed with and was friends with the Rat Pack, and Finis grew up with them. His godfather was Sammy Davis Jr.. The show was outstanding. Finis impersonated famous singers, complete with costumes and dance moves. And his voice sounded exactly like each of them - Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Johnny Mathis, Paul McCartney, Michael Jackson, Roy Orbison, Elvis, and more. It was unbelievable. In between numbers, he did a little bit of comedy stand up, mostly making fun of old and grumpy people in the audience (as a whole, not any specific person). We sat on one side of the theater and I couldn't tell how well his act was going over with the audience because they did look so sour and grumpy. As for our section, we got in a with a great group and we all sang, clapped, and danced in our seats the entire time. It was such a blast. At the end, he got two standing ovations and I heard many people talking about how amazing the performance was. I guess some people just have an odd way of showing it during the program. :)

 

Today we went to St. Thomas and took the champagne half-day catamaran excursion to St. John. My whole life, I've carried a mental image of an archetypal tropical island and beach in my mind, but had yet to find it. I was disappointed last summer in Cozumel, Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and Castaway Cay (not that I didn't love those places - they just weren't my Bali Hai or Fantasy Island). We actually did a very similar excursion to the one we did today when we were in Grand Cayman, and the beach we sailed to was not very nice at all. But today I finally found my long sought after island in St. John and my beach in Honeymoon Beach. We have also tried to snorkel repeatedly over the past few years with no success (including a week of solid summer rain in the Florida Keys). Today we snorkeled in crystal blue waters over white sands and coral reefs, and saw all kinds of beautiful and brilliant fish. And giant black sea urchins. The crew of our catamaran, Joe, Susanna, and Kenny, were awesome and made even the required instructional portions of the trip fun and entertaining. The trip also involved a 20-25 minute ride in an open shuttle to the dock over harrowing and narrow mountain roads. We were told that if the police in St. Thomas pull you over, they will hold your open can of beer while checking to see if you're still under the legal blood alcohol level, but if you're caught driving without a shirt or bathing suit cover, it's a guaranteed $100 fine. That probably explained some of the crazy driving we saw. Still, I was glad to get more of a view of St. Thomas.

 

After a brief stop at the shops near the port to get t-shirts for our sons, we came back on the Quantum and had a quick lunch at Cafe 270. Now, time for a cocktail and some reading, methinks.

 

Tonight is Grande and maybe a virtual concert back here in 270.

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ftn807

ftn807

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We have front row (balcony) seats for Santa Fe &The Fat City Horns, a virtual concert starting in Two70 shortly.

 

I've been meaning for a while to mention some thoughts on the crew on board. We have met quite an assortment of very friendly, hardworking and competent crew during the last five days. Whether it's a recommendation for a wine pairing, a smile and acknowledgement in the passageways, or simply good, solid service, we have had a lot of good interactions so far. Even when service has been lacking, it's mostly been because they have been overwhelmed, and not uncaring.

 

I think Ken Rush has done a good job keeping us entertained. The captain has quite a sense of humor - playing the Hallelujah Chorus when all the passengers made it back to the ship at departure time, and informing us that we would get underway as soon as he found the keys.

 

Three nights ago in Vintages, I noticed the Hotel Director walk through, and he was very friendly toward the bartenders and other staff. The following night I saw him pick up an empty cup off the floor and take it to a service counter. As he walked by I stopped him to tell him how much my wife and I have enjoyed our cabin and the restaurants. We ended up talking to him for a while, and he's a genuinely nice guy.

 

Speaking of Ken Rush, he's introducing the band now.

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