Day 2 - Sunday, 10/1/17 - Lunch time!
Yahoo, we were finally boarding the ship!!! Of course, they were doing the "Welcome 'so and so' family!" thingy… where they pretend like you are some distinguished guest as you enter the atrium. We played along as they clapped…
For some reason, I didn't get any photos of this process, or of the atrium at the time. I guess they were sending people in pretty quickly and I got caught up in the rush. Don't worry, I have gazillions of photos of it from later in the trip. But yeah, first impressions were, well… impressive!
It was now about 12:45 PM. The rooms were supposed to be ready around 1:30 or 2pm. So we decided to head to lunch first. So we headed up to the buffet restaurant, Cabanas on deck 9.
This was new... hand washing stations just outside the entrance to Cabanas.
This was actually quite nice, and certainly more effective than those hand wipes that they normally give you. I guess this is better than the wipes since we're all sharing the same serving utensils to help ourselves to the buffet food...
Pardon the next batch of poor quality photos, but here a few snapshots of the food offerings. I just sort of walked and snapped… hoping for the best. I didn't actually compose the pictures or look at the screen while I snapped them. It gives you an idea of the style in which the buffet is set up, but it only covers a fraction of the offerings.
So the restaurant is on the aft/back of the ship with both inside and outside seating (all the way in the back). It was such a pleasant day, we decided to sit outside. Walking out, you could see pretty much the whole bay!
Here's my plate of food…
I went back for some more shrimp and some crab claws, but that's about all I ate. The asparagus was pretty good. The steamed broccoli and carrots, were about what you'd expect. The shrimp was fine. The fries were good. And the fried fish was a bit bland. Funny… we went on a Royal Caribbean cruise in June and at the time, I remember thinking that their buffet was mediocre at best. And that it wasn't as good as Disney's. Well, I'd have to say that this time Cabana's was mediocre at best too. I mean, it wasn't bad. Just not as good as I remembered it… we had high expectations (and weren't let down) for the rest of the meals, so I didn't really give it another thought...
After we ate, we still had some time before our stateroom was ready, so we decided to explore the ship some more. Just behind our table, there were stairs leading up to deck 10... so we followed them. What a view!
Here's one of those 360 degree photos. You'll want to click on the thumbnail to get the full effect.... the view is absolutely amazing.
We decided to explore a bit more, so we headed towards the front of the ship… It was just too cool to see San Diego in the background!!!
I love that they added the new slide. So cool! (But I never did get around to giving it a try.)
Stephanie found a chair to relax in while I fiddled with my cameras and took photos for a few minutes…
And here's another 360 degree photo for you to click on…
We eventually made out way up to the front/bow and spent a fair amount of time soaking in the views of the city skyline. Just amazing!
This is a repeat 360 degree photo from earlier, but still awesome!
And a little while later, we were ready to head down and explore the ship a bit more, as the room still wasn't quite ready.
The Azure lounge…
Lots of "Halloween on the High Seas" decorations throughout the ship…
I love how they dressed up these port holes…
Around 1:45 PM, we decided to head to our stateroom…