We woke up early and Nancy went to Sunrise Thai Chi and Katie went to the gym to use the treadmills. We met at 8:30am for breakfast on the Lido deck. After breakfast we went off for a last walk around beautiful Venice. It was much hotter than was comfortable, so we cut the walk short, found an internet café to launch are blog, hit the Bancomat (ATM), and picked up some masks for festivities. The Lido was packed during lunch, as there was a short window before the 1:30pm passenger emergency “life boat” drill. The buffet is normally self serve, but for the first 48 hours it is served by the staff until they are sure there are no passengers with an illness, which further impacted on the meal speed.
We had the life boat drill which was uneventful, after which we had the grand sail away, with Italian music playing throughout the ship. It was amazing to watch the Crown Princess, and our ship, the Nieuw Amsterdam, sail down the widest, but still narrow canals of Venice. The ships towered over the city. most of the canals are amazingly only 3-6 feet deep the canals that the cruise ships traverse are dredged to a depth of 46 feet! We then had a meet and greet with about 30 passengers we had meet online before the cruise on Cruise Critic dot com, some of whom we will share shore excursions.
At 3:00pm Katie went to a movie with the other teens (Transformers II), and Nancy and I checked our eyelids for leaks. We had our first formal dinner this evening, there are three on this trip. Pictured is a shrimp cocktail appetizer, Katie’s lobster thermador and steak, and my rack of lamb.
After dinner we went to the excellent musical in the big show room, the Garage Band, with lots of songs from the 70’s and 80’s. The cast were great, with constant singing and dancing. The Captain (pictured) gave us a welcome, introduced the key staff, and we all enjoyed a champagne toast. After the show we went to the Masked Ball (for which Venice is famous).
At 9:30pm we headed to our cabin, with Nancy and I getting ready for bed and Katie heading off to be with the Teens at the Loft. Every night, we have been greeted in our cabin by a little towel creature – tonight a stingray.
Katie finished the night… I (Katie) got to the Loft a little late because of the masquerade ball, and I came into a them creating teams for the games for the night. We played trivia and mental games, physical challenges, and food challenges. I had to do a hula hoop challenge, and was the first one out because I suck at hula hooping x) then we played food challenges, where I just watched people try to eat a cookie by placing it on their forehead and trying to eat it without using their hands. After that, we had to do the “Egg Drop” which is where you create a way to make a egg fall without making it crack by placing it into some contraption you make to put the egg in. Only one team one, ours only had a slight crack in it and we got disqualified : ( Afterwards everyone just chilled out then returned to their staterooms, or at least I did. It was another fun night for me!
Katie returned just before midnight. There was a lot of star gazing and talk between Nancy and Katie. Finally at 1pm they decided they wanted to go for a walk, and of course they would hate to see me getting any sleep, so the took me along with them. We walked the promenade a little bit, and then went up to see if the pizza place was still open, it wasn’t. We finally crashed about 1:30am.
1 comment:
:-) good times.
Post a Comment