Courtney GIf you’ve read the Day 1 post of the cruise, I’ll start off by saying that Day 2 doesn’t have nearly as many hiccups.
I’ll jump right into it, but again here’s a table of contents if you want to skip around.
The Morning “Stretch“
More Morning Activities
Selfie Scavenger Hunt
Early Morning
After a night of climbing up and down the ladder of the Pullman bed to use the restroom, I finally decided to stay awake around 5AM. I stayed on the couch to charge my phone. It was in the bed with me and there were no outlets up there. I put my wireless earbuds in to listen to music while I brushed my teeth. I didn’t disturb my friends and I hated being in silence. When I came out of the bathroom, I saw Celeste was already up.
“Why are you up?” she asked quietly, trying not to disturb Cali who slept next to her.
I shrugged and said, “Couldn’t sleep.”
Chatting quietly, I told her how I nearly fell off the ladder when it started moving while I climbed down. I swear I nearly peed myself.
While we talked, she let me borrow her premium Wi-Fi so I could continue Cali’s and my snap streak. We were very close to 1,000 and we weren’t going to lose it just because I didn’t get the internet package.
The alarms we set the night before went off at 6AM woke up Cali. The three of us started off with the Morning Stretch class that’s offered every morning of the cruise in the Vitality Fitness Center. I used the clothes I planned to work out in as pajamas so I just threw on a sports bra. This was a way for me to pack less.
The Morning “Stretch”
Even though we’d been up for an hour before the class, we still ended up getting there a few minutes late. They’d already started so we were forced to go to the front of everyone. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel slightly embarrassed. Like a kid who interrupted a class presentation.
Thankfully, it seemed like they were just getting started so we grabbed our mats and followed the instruction. However, we soon found out this was a little more than a stretch.
The instructor had us doing some intense poses. One of the poses I remember was particularly difficult for all three of us. Then, we ended the class by doing planks. I absolutely hate planks. My arm strength is too weak for that, okay? Even if I loathed doing them, I couldn’t stop laughing as the instructor taunted us. Playfully, of course.
Originally, after the stretch, I was going to walk on the treadmills. But, because it was more intense and active than I expected, I continued the morning with my friends.
When I’m at home I exercise for 30 minutes each weekday morning. We’d all talked about doing the morning stretch each morning but that was before we took the class. It made us feel so sore we collectively decided not to. Don’t let me discourage you, though. If you’re into yoga or if you’re just more flexible than us (which wouldn’t take much, haha), you’d probably like it!
After we put our mats up, we walked around the deck to finish watching the sunrise. It wasn’t as cold as the day before but the wind blowing chilled the air.
More Morning Activities
Working up our appetite, we went to the Windjammer for breakfast. I was extremely happy to find they had grits. I grabbed some salmon eggs – which were okay (they were soft scrambled and I like hard scrambled eggs) – corn beef hash, bacon, and a hash brown. The hashbrown crumbled in my mouth from how dry it was even with ketchup. For my beverage I just stuck with water and coffee. I thought I would go back to get more but I was already full.
Once we finished breakfast, we went back to the room to take a shower and change. At one point, Cali and I got separated from Celeste. It may have been when I tried to make reservations for the rest of cruise at the main dining room.
While walking back to the room, Cali and I actually walked past the captain (we didn’t realize he was the captain at the time). He asked why were up so early – it was about 8:30AM or so – and we told him we’d been up since 6am and just to enjoy more of the vacation.
After we’d been refreshed from our showers, we walked up the stairs back to deck 5 to do the raffle we missed. We didn’t win anything but it was still fun watching other people get excited.
The raffle led us all the way up to the port shopping presentation the shopping consultant talked us into going to. Essentially, the presentation was to help us know where to shop at each of the ports we’d be visiting. I’m not a huge shopper but there were nice deals/discounts for shops the cruise line recommends. At the end of the presentation, they told us to go to the Port Shopping desk later that night to get our coupons for the whole trip.
Afterwards, we decided to have lunch in the main dining room. There was no wait during lunch time and significantly less people compared to the night before. It did, however, take a while for each course to come out and our waiter made a few mix ups. The food good, even better than dinner the previous night. I was just sad the bread was still cold.
During lunch Celeste and I made a quick run back to The Shops to buy these sun hats we saw during the raffle. Cali was saving our table so we got her hat for her.
Not wanting to be in the dining room much longer, we got our desserts to go and went back to the room to prep for sunbathing. It was still a little cold out on the deck but as long as we were in the sun it was fine. I tried to wear my hat but the wind was whipping around. I was happy Celeste brought a pack of her towel clips so I could clip the hat to my chair.
We stayed there for a couple hours before going to do the selfie scavenger.
Selfie Scavenger Hunt
I was not expecting to run up and down the ship in 20 minutes but that’s what the scavenger hunt had us do. We had to run around taking selfies with items or doing activities on the list. Some fellow cruisers who weren’t playing saw us searching for different things to capture and would be kind enough to help us out.
Some of the things we had to find were:
- A cruise ship officer with three stripes
- Chef’s Table
- Reading a book from the library
- Playing table tennis
- A black jaguar
- People rock climbing
- A Marilyn Monroe statue
- A pastry
- A brown piano
- Jumping in mid-air
to name a few.
We were tired but had a great time. There were some people who were extremely competitive and not in the friendly way (they were kind of rude, actually) but that didn’t kill our vibe. We lost two points because we were late but it was fun.
Dinner and Beyond
Wanting to rest up after running around, we went back to the room. We ended up looking at the music video channel, trying to figure out how they had all of these random artists. A little later we got dressed for formal night.
Tip: For Royal Caribbean, no matter how long your cruise is, there will always be at least one formal night usually on the second night of the cruise. You don’t have to dress up but you’ll find majority of the people on the ship will be. It’s fun to get dolled up for a night.
We got our coupons and things from the shopping expert on the cruise before dinner but planned to come back after so my friends could look at inch of gold table.
The plan was to eat in the main dining room but since we couldn’t eat until 8pm we decided to see what the Windjammer Café had for dinner. Most things that were on the main dining menu were in an endless supply in the Windjammer. It was Italian night. Seeing as we wouldn’t have to wait, we decided to eat there for dinner.
This time of day had the least amount of people in the Windjammer. Probably because most people were at dinner in the main dining room, taking pictures in front of the set up backgrounds, or attending some form of entertainment. There was barely a line for the custom pasta so I decided to advantage and make an Alfredo. I also finally got some soft serve ice cream (I’d talking about wanting soft serve to my friend since before the cruise started)!
While walking around, I saw a few people we ate dinner with the night before. I guess they didn’t want to wait either.
We went back down to the shops after dinner. There was a deal at the Inch of Gold table that my friends wanted to look into. They surprised me with all of us getting a matching bracelet for my birthday! I thought it was very sweet especially because I wasn’t expecting anything. They also bought necklaces for themselves and for family.
The sales woman at the Inch of Gold table was so sweet. We were asking her about her experience on cruise ships and what was her favorite and least favorite stops. If I remember correctly, she said her favorite place was Argentina and she always loved visiting there. We were sad to hear that the places she visited in the U.S. were her least favorite because people would treat her rudely because of her accent.
While talking to her she told us there was another opportunity win a prize in the shops so of course we jumped on it. We had to guess how many carats were in a jewel. This is where I learned I didn’t exactly know what a carat was. I put an extremely too high number down but changed it after seeing what other people put. We had to go back at 10PM for that drawing. None of our guesses were picked; we didn’t guess right anyway. It was still a good time.
When we got back to the room, I was still let down that there were no towel animals when I room was cleaned. Celeste went out the room to find Kresdee, who we passed on the way in. When she came back, she told us that he said he’d doing something with the towel animals for my birthday.
“You probably shouldn’t have told me so I could be surprised,” I said, laughing, “but I appreciate it.”
A Long Elevator Ride
With next morning bringing us to our first port of call, Cozumel, we all took showers at night. Once we finished, the three of us tried staying up to watch the crew change the day in the elevator. Celeste explained how she saw people doing it on TikTok so she wanted to do it too. I normally go to be right at 10PM so it was hard for me to stay up. I ended up falling asleep but they woke me up around 11:50PM.
We rode up and down the elevators for a while, coming across various fellow cruisers. I’m pretty sure at least one of them thought we were on something because my friends couldn’t stop giggling. Sleep deprivation at its finest?
When midnight hit, my friend play Happy Birthday in Spanish for me off her phone. Both of them also told people that it was my birthday as they got on.
There were two men who were coming from the Starquest Night Club event who wished me a happy birthday. I never saw them any other time on the trip but I thought they were so nice compared to other passengers we’d come across.
We rode a few more minutes after midnight before the elevator doors opened to the cleaning crew who told us they probably wouldn’t change the day in the elevator until 1:30AM. We all groaned and decided to end our quest and go back to the room.
The third day of the trip was our first day in port and my birthday! Check it out next week!
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