Colon, Panama

We didn’t wake up all night until we heard doors slamming around us indicating we had arrived in Colon, Panama! The Vision of the Seas is here also. We again had a leisurely breakfast then decided we would get off and walk the shopping area outside the ship. It is a very seedy area and we didn’t spend much time but did walk through the shops. It didn’t feel very safe here though and security even near the ship was not anywhere near as tight as it is at other ports. Again it is oppressively hot here. This port is also very industrial and the area surrounding it are ships at anchor waiting their turn to transit the canal.

We are back now and since our balcony is now in the shade, Kay is out there reading and I will join her as soon as I finish the blog. We are not going to the show tonight as it is a production show we have seen before and tomorrow is our first excursion in Costa Rica and it is also Kay’s birthday so she wants me to go out on the balcony and sing happy birthday to her in the morning…….I don’t think so.

Exiting the ship you enter a building with shops then climb the stairs
to this bridge the takes you to shopping "mall" on the other side of
the street.  The bridge was full of vendors as well.

This mosaic was the prettiest thing we saw in Colon!

 

Shopping area across the bridge from the ship.

Kay and I laughed at this spelling of coffee....cooofee?
 

 

Day 5 Cartagena

Good morning Cartagena! Everything is covered in salt spray from the rough seas last night. The tours were up and out early so we took our time and went to Lido for breakfast. It is nice when everyone is off the ship. At 9 AM it was already hot and hazy. We had turned in our tour tickets a couple days ago for both here and Colon since Kay has been a bit weak which is fine with me. We have taken our time and enjoyed the ship with just a few people on board. We got off and took the shuttle to the terminal. This is a very industrial port much like Buenos Aires. They don’t let you walk around to the terminal since there are cranes and trucks running everywhere. Debbie, you would have been in paradise. There is a tropical garden by the terminal building with peacocks, black swans, flamingos, monkeys, iguanas that were huge, and an owl, lots of parrots, bambi and Juan Valdez! I will post photos when I get home but I searched the entire Panama Canal cruise for Juan Valdez and he was here! I feel so much better now that I have found him, his burro and his coffee. He hasn’t heard about Keurig yet. It was stiflingly hot so we came back to rest and cool off. Our dinner was good but we have found that Mary of the pair of Mary and Richard does not have a sense of humor. The performers tonight were advertised as Emile and Marie-Claude who have performed around the world with their unique talents combining several different forms of entertainment into one amazing show! We couldn’t miss this show so we came back to the cabin and got our books and went to our usual seats in the showroom and read while we waited. Our table mates Mary and Richard were also there across the isle and chose to ignore our presence…that’s ok. The show begins and it is mildly amusing with the woman singing opera in this old fashioned hoop skirted dress.. You soon find that Emile is under her dress and it goes downhill from there. Kay said it was like a train wreck you just couldn't keep from watching. I kept looking at others thinking I was the only one who thought this whole thing was stupid and not even funny. It sat through it thinking it would get better but sadly it never did. It was so bad we needed a cocktail after the show. Yikes is all I can say. The captain had said we would have moderate to rough seas again tonight but it wasn’t bad at all….or maybe I was just exhausted from hanging onto the mattress the night before because we both fell asleep quickly.

Just another day at sea.....

Our sea day was spent thinking of lies to tell Mary and Joe. We ran into them while walking through the area where they were playing trivia and Kay had to stop to tell them we had a late lunch and probably wouldn’t be coming to dinner. That gives us yet another day to think of something. We even meditated and did our workout. We went to the Bistro on 5 for lunch. We had ordered many things to taste and had a little bit of everything. We also realized as we watched officers eating with us that we should not be drinking the ship’s water at all since they we drinking Evian. So hence forth we too shall refuse to drink ship’s water. We enjoyed our dinner with our new table mates…Margaret and Carlisle, Mary and Richard and Laurell and Warren. Dinner was very good but I was tired from the meditating and exercising so Kay went to the show and I read. It started to get a bit bumpy after dinner but by the time Kay came back from the show, it was rolling pretty good. Kay said the singer was very good. It got even worse through the night. Although I like the rocking, most of the night was spent hanging on to the mattress so that I didn’t wind up on the floor.

Day 3--Grand Cayman

Move the clocks back an hour and we wake up in Grand Cayman. I have to say so far if you didn’t look out occasionally you would never know you were on a ship. It has been smooth as glass..not even an occasional speed bump! It was a beautiful day so we went to Lido to breakfast since most everyone was off the ship you have room to move around. We took our books and found a shady place on the deck above the pool to read. Soon we needed a festive drink and we had not seen any waiters. Lo and behold we see this guy walking toward us and we flag him down. He takes our order or rather agrees to make us something special himself. We go back to reading. We look at each other and say, he has been gone a long time and about that time he comes back with the drinks. We find out that he isn’t a waiter but was on his way to open the Sky bar which is top deck at the back of the ship. No wonder it took him so long. We felt bad then for making him do that so our quest now is to find him and give him a tip….don’t stop when old women wave at you!!! We had lunch on Lido then walked up to the Sky bar to try to redeem ourselves with Alexander but couldn’t find him. We read by the lawn and then got ready to head to the martini bar for our pre dinner cocktails. We again saw Janet and John. We had “French martini’s” tonight and I wasn’t into the Chambord…too sweet. Dinner was again exhausting with Mary asking us trivia questions and Joe (who is a portly Italian guy from NJ) giving us advice on everything and telling us dumb stories from his “trucking days”…OMG! They left the table before we did and Kay said she couldn’t take it another night and we had to speak to someone and get out of this. So we did and they have now put us at a table for 8 on the other side of the dining room. Good yes? No because now Kay feels bad and wants me to make up a lie about meeting someone I know that has invited us to dine with them. We head to the show which is this lady named Analisa Ching who won the UK Idol show playing the violin. We decided her father was a child abuser since she said he bought her a violin for her 4^th birthday and she had to practice 7 to 8 hours everyday. OMG she was amazing but watching her fling her head around was giving me a headache. During the show the ship hit a few speed bumps and we slept good last night. It is quite bumpy today but sunny. I decided to catch up the blog today and Kay is reading on the verandah where I will join her shortly. We must think up the lie now for Joe and Mary….hmmmm.

Debbie, Kay never got her Dining credit...just FYI.

Nice padded deck chairs...very comfortable!

Kay found this cookie to be nondiscriminatory!

We watched as they stocked the lifeboats...should this be comforting or scary?

Tuesday....at Sea

Today was a sea day and we went to the coffee shop and watched dance lesson being held in the lobby, walked through the shops, I waited in line 40 minutes to get the internet package. On Celebrity you can’t just get a password and sign on to their wifi, you have to take your computer to them and they have to set it up.  I waited in line 45 minutes to get the package?   Celebrity is all things iPad and yet it took him forever setting up the iPads of those in line before me and all of 2 minutes to do mine…..irritating when you can just log on to Carnival’s and pick your plan and you are done. We had lunch at the grill on the level above the pool. We still had not been up to check out the lawn to see if it was awake or resting. We have made the martini bar our stop prior to dinner. In order to tolerate Joe and Mary we have been having two before we go, two during dinner. Even this numbing has not helped. We met a lovely couple from UK at the martini bar who were a delight to talk to..Janet and John. Dinners have been much better on this ship than on the Solstice so we are not complaining about the food or our wait staff either. Our room steward is Pedro and he is not wearing red shoes so we guessed he was not the groom we saw at the wedding. He has given us all the ice, towels and newspapers we told him on embarkation day. We went to the production show which was a broadway themed show with arcrobatics. The positions were mind boggling. Kay and I decided we were going to stretch in the morning so we too could do those things. We didn’t.  Ha ha

Day 1..Monday 3-24-14

We got a taxi and arrived in 5 minutes at the dock. The Equinox was docked where the Oasis of the Seas docks. Neither of us had ever been in that terminal before. Needless to say it was built for the Oasis because the number of check in desks was amazing. Only a few were open for us but we still we through and on the ship in 30 minutes from leaving the hotel. Welcomed aboard with champagne or mimosas and we went to the cabin directly and dropped our hand luggage. Quite simple really with no hassles. Our tablemates are quite the interesting couple. We were supposed to be at a table for 6 but instead are at 4 with Joe and Mary. Joe brings a safety pin in his pocket each night so he can pin his napkin under his chin and not get his dinner on his shirt. Wonderful. Mary is of Chinese decent and is a champion ship trivia player and bargain shopper. They are top tier cruisers with almost all cruise lines as they cruise 20 times a year on average. They exhausted both Kay and I so much that we didn’t even go to the show…we went back to the cabin and slept! Good news so far…we have menus, salt and pepper on the tables and we can get our own food in the buffet! Woot, woot.

I will skip the photos for now since they are slow to upload.

Getting there....

Where to begin….the Embassy Suites in Ft. Lauderdale starts….no let’s back up to text messages prior to boarding the plane. Kay says here plane is not yet in Greenville and therefore she may not be the one to arrive first as we had previously thought. My Delta flight was at the gate when I arrived and we left the gate early. I was in the bulkhead seat in first class and the seat next to me was empty. Just before we backed away from the gate this little girl sits down about Paige’s age. Her mother got the upgrade and sent her to take the seat and stayed in back with her brother. She was in 5^th grade like the twins. Very cute and polite little girl. We arrived FLL early by 10 minutes and Kay’s plane had just landed too. Good timing since she was supposed to have waited about an hour for me to arrive. We met outside between terminals and got a taxi to the hotel. The girl at the desk tells us that our room is not ready and so we go to the restaurant and get some lunch by the pool. A bellhop took our luggage when we found we couldn’t check in. After lunch we go back and our room is still not ready. Everyone else seems to be getting their room but of course not us. The bellhop finally came over to us and asked what was going on and he said he would be right back. He came back and handed us the keys to a room he managed to find that was ready…amazing! We were in the room looking at the ships for 15 minutes when the front desk called Kay’s cell and said our room was ready. Duh! It was on the 11^th floor and we could see the ships from our balcony. We watched some of the ships leave then were going to go to the manager reception to have a couple free drinks and some appetizers. While heading there we came upon a wedding of Democrats being held in the atrium. The grooms name was Pedro and he also wore all white but was fashionably clad in a red tie and red shoes. After having our quota of free alcohol, we decided to choose a restaurant and walk to dinner. The hotel restaurant as we found at lunch was not that good and was very pricey. We headed out the door and started to walk to an Irish pub across the street. While walking to the corner we had a near death experience as a car (obviously texting or otherwise not paying attention to driving) did not realize the light had turned red. With smoking tires and locked brakes he slid halfway through the intersection where we were standing. Embarrassed by his action he decided to turn right to get out of the intersection. We decided maybe it wasn’t a good idea to cross this busy street after all and walked around behind the hotel. There is a large shopping center back there with a Publix, Total Wine and several places to eat. We ate at a place called Duffy’s Sports Bar. The number of flat screen TV’s in that place put us both on stimulation overload but the food was really good and we enjoyed it. Kay is still suffering the residual effects of shingles and tires easily so we went back to the room and went to bed rather early. I had no excuse for being tired but went to bed too. That is not true really because I didn’t sleep at all the night before. We took our time getting dressed the next morning and didn’t get packed up and ready to head to the ship until noon. Since they didn’t let us into the room until check in time, we weren’t going to check out until we had to…so there!