Anthem of the Seas to Bermuda Trip Report

Flowrider!

The kid decides she wants to try flowrider so we go up there and get in line. I read through the sign about what you should and shouldn't do and what the best position is to wipe out. I talk about it with her and then go sit down in the audience to make sure I have a good spot to record her. She waits in line for about 20 min and she gets to the front and the CM says something to her and the hubs and then they walk over to me....she needs a bracelet in order to do it. Hmmm, well it would have been nice if the sign or the CM who checked her height when we first walked up had told us that. So we went to where you check into to ifly to get the bracelet and we needed her seapass card. We had left it in the room. So she's crying and the hubs goes to get the card. He comes back, they get the bracelet and then she is allowed to go to the front of the line because she had to get her bracelet. (point Disney......communication about what or how to do anything is totally lacking on RCL. I feel like the signage should have told us that a bracelet and check in was necessary. I read the entire thing, it didn't say that anywhere. Information is just poor on several aspects of RCL....so point Disney).


We see the CM tell her what to do and we both take guesses on quick she'll wipe out. She gets on there and rocks it! She not only held on, but got on her knees and did a turn! You get 2 wipe outs before they move on to the next person and because she never wiped out they had to actually stop her. The crowd cheered her on! We were shocked!

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So of course, she loved it but she was cold and ready to get back to the indoor pool since it was such a dreary day. After an hour in the indoor pool, we went back down to the room to shower and I was going to head to Bingo. When I got there and realized it was $29 for the smallest package, I passed. I'm not a huge Bingo player anyway, but the idea of being able to win a suite for the rest of the cruise sounded like fun so I was going to try.

We realized it was bumper car time at the SeaPlex so the kid and hubs went there about 30 min early to get in line and I walked around to take some pictures. It was a good thing they got there that early because they were still only 3rd in line at 3:30 when it opened at 4 and the line got extremely long.
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If you look at this picture you can see the line forming around the outskirts of the arena...this picture was taken about 15 min prior to it starting. By the time 4:15 hit, the line wrapped almost full circle around the arena with the end of the line almost reaching the beginning. Now, what I learned while waiting for them to actually start and load up, that some people had just stopped to watch the bumper cars and were along the rail without actually wanting to be in line. So they wouldn't move down when the line moved because they didn't realize they were in line. I have a feeling it cause quite the backup later after we left but we didn't stick around to see it.

Here are a few pictures I took while walking around....

I thought this bench was cute in the seaplex

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Gaming area
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Arcade area right off the Seaplex
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Solarium
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Here are few more pictures....

Outdoor pool before any of the braves ones
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Bionic Bar

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Wonderland Entrance

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Inside Wonderland

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This light was on the 5th deck overlooking the Royal Esplanade. It was kind of cool because it had a spot where you could put your hands on it and the light would beat to your heartbeat.

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Some more....

Gigi!

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Walking from JO and the Tuba sculpture area into the Royal Esplanade

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On the 14th deck looking into the Glass Elevator area. This wall was gorgeous.

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Each floor in between the stairs (we attempt to take the stairs as much as possible to burn off all those extra calories we are eating!) they have fun little artwork, like Disney does. I saw some hidden mickeys on this one....

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Here is the 270 lounge area, its really a nice spot and we didn't spend a whole of time here. I wish I had.
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This is looking into the 270 cafe from the lounge. There are two entrances to the cafe, one from the lounge and one from the hallway. On embarkation day we couldn't get to the lounge so the only access was thru the hallway.
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These were the coffee offerings in 270. I don't drink coffee so I can speak for taste but I figured someone would want to know. :)

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Kid's Club

Mine never went...she's not a huge fan of them on DCL either, but she's more willing to go with the mouse than she was to even try it here.

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The kids area spans two floors and this stairway gets you from one to the other. I did find that they had this play area for the younger set that you could go in there with your kid and play. I thought that was a nice touch. I know DCL has open house times that serve the same purpose but then that room is closed off from being able to drop your kid off in that room to play independently and that's frustrating at times. This was its own separate room that didn't affect if your kid could go into their designated age group. I know that DCL always keeps one of the clubs closed during an open program time but mine always seemed to want to play in the one that was open instead of closed when it was time for us to drop her off. I think that's why she doesn't enjoy the DCL kids clubs as much.

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After bumper cars and taking pictures, we went to the family science experiment they were doing in the kids club. It was a cute 30 min program where we made a volcano erupt.

We headed downstairs to meet Puss in boots. This was kind of funny. So we are all used to meeting characters, right? Everything you know about how to meet a character is thrown out the window for RCL. We headed downstairs to the Royal Esplanade to meet him. We are used to getting in line about 15 min before a character meeting so that's what we did. However, there was no line forming, no indication as to where he'd actually be (the area is large so we didn't know what end to be in) (again, communication, not their strong suit), no switchback line or anything. I go over to guest services to ask where in the RE he would be and was told usually in front of Michael's pub. So we walk closer to that area...5 min before he's suppose to come out.....and nothing. No line, no cast member, no camera, nothing. We kind of laughed at the whole thing because it was so different! Finally about 4 min late (which we found almost everything RCL did was 5-10 min late...scavenger hunts, character meetings, trivia, etc) he comes out with a little song and its us and 2 other families watching some kind of dance and then we take pictures and go on. The whole thing was very nonchalant compared to Disney.

We went to WJ for dinner that night since we didn't care to dress up for formal night and we had some good food and it wasn't all that crowded. After dinner, we met Alex the Lion with a similar setup of barely a line and no one waiting. We went back to the room to get ready for bed so we could be ready for Bermuda the next day!

Up next....will the weather get better for our first day in Bermuda?
 
LOVE your report so far!

Do you remember how long they got to spend on the bumper cars? Is there any chance of going on more than once during that session?
 


LOVE your report so far!

Do you remember how long they got to spend on the bumper cars? Is there any chance of going on more than once during that session?

It's funny you asked because my husband actually timed it....you are on for 3 minutes. The afternoon session...yes, its possible to go twice but you might have to wait an hour between each time for the line to die down. However, the kid and Husband did it the last sea day too and it was a morning session and went 3 times in about an hour because no one was up at 9am to do it except a handful of people. :)
 
This is funny, because we must have followed you on the first sea day... we did North Star at 9:30 am, then my kid went to roller skating too ;)
We were in the outdoor pool until about 2, after that it wasn't sunny anymore, but it was sunny until then. I would say it was low 70's outside temps, but the pools were all heated - my kid loved the one that moved the water in the circle... Then after that we mostly did the indoor pool too, not sure if you noticed they often had the windows open to let in the breeze.
We also went to the first bumper cars session and saw the line up wrapped around the corner. So we left, then went back in the last 40 min and there were less than 15 people waiting. We were able to ride about 5 times in a row with no wait. We actually went at the end of the session more than once and didn't wait.
 
Love your trip report so far! I'm doing more of a comparison of Royal/Disney than a traditional trip report like this but I always enjoy reading them. Especially since we were there with you :)
If your daughter was the one that wore the long colored striped dress at the roller skating then I saw you guys there :) I remember thinking her dress was cute ;)
 
Love your trip report so far! I'm doing more of a comparison of Royal/Disney than a traditional trip report like this but I always enjoy reading them. Especially since we were there with you :)
If your daughter was the one that wore the long colored striped dress at the roller skating then I saw you guys there :) I remember thinking her dress was cute ;)


Oh my gosh, we were in the same spots so many times and had no idea we were all together!! Yes, that was her in the stripe dress...thanks!!

That's good to know that the end of the session was a lot better. I'm guessing since it was closer to dinner time maybe since it ended at 7....by then everyone had waited in the super long line and went to dinner. Glad it was easy at the end for you. I wonder how many other times we ran into each other and didn't know it!?
 
So did the weather get better.....not really. I mean it was in the 70's so that was nice but we still took our jackets when we got off the ship. We disembarked about 9:30 or so that morning, along with a lot of other people, got our bus passes which were in the same little building you have to walk thru to go thru Bermuda's security ($49 for the 1 day pass for the 3 of us) and then we walked out to the pier area where we were greeted with Bermuda Tourism employees there to help you with all your questions so that was a nice touch. We asked one of them where to go to get on the bus and she gave us directions and off we went. It wasn't a super long walk but note that it isn't just right off the pier. So if you have someone with mobility issues it might take just a hair longer than if you grabbed a taxi or minibus. More on the minibus later.

This is what it looked like after we had walked to the bus stop and we were waiting for the bus. It's just a popup tent but it does the job.
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This is what the bus looked like:

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And then something strange happened.....the bus showed up, we all lined up to get on the bus and we were maybe the third family to get on. Keep in mind, at this stop its all tourists and we also had the NCL Dawn in port with us. In front of us was a nice middle aged Asian couple who spoke broken English and was saying something to the bus driver. At first I wasn't paying much attention just trying to figure out where I wanted to stop and getting our passes out and then I start to realize the bus driver is starting to yell at the Asian couple. Then they start to try to get their what I assume were their parents to the front of the line with them (they were maybe 5 families behind us) and they were pushing forward and the bus driver then stands up, yells "NO, you stay at the back of the line! Everyone will get on, you don't push!" Then she looks at me and the kid and says "Don't let people push you around...they can wait!". So awkward! But we handed her our bus passes, found our seats and went on our way. She asked where we were all going so she could make sure to tell us when to get off and we threw her for a loop when we said Gibbs Lighthouse. She says "But you have beach towels". When I told her we were going to do both she said, "That's smart!" So after about 40 minutes on the bus we were told that Gibbs was the next stop.

Gibbs Lighthouse....the path there was interesting. The bus drop is at a bar/restaurant and then you have to walk around it and up a hill to the lighthouse. There is no sidewalk and the cars drive on the left so we made sure we stayed on the correct side of the street so we could see the cars coming at us. 2017-05-22 (17).JPG

At the top of the hill, we saw the sign.

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The walk was maybe 1/2 mile uphill...not horrible but not the best walking conditions since there isn't a sidewalk and its curvy. Once we got to the top a tour bus was about to leave. We went into the lighthouse, bought our tickets (2.50 each....cash only) in the gift shop area and then started up the stairs.
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The kid counted and there are 189 twisting stairs like this one. About every 20-25 steps there was a landing spot with a little educational plaque like this one.
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It was helpful since two people walking different directions was doable but not the best on that staircase. Once at the top, its super tight. The light casing is very large and when we got up there, another pair was already there. 5 was tight in that space. I don't have any pictures because it was so tight that you can't tell what I took a picture of. There is a small ladder to see out the window but they were dirty and the pictures out of that were awful. There is also a tiny door that you can open and step out into a tiny balcony to take pictures.
**Note this is not my picture but I found it on the internet so you could see what it looked like**


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Being scared of heights I didn't venture out but the hubs stepped one foot out and took a couple of pictures.
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Then we walked back down the stairs and saw a lot more people on our way down than on our way up and headed back down the road to the bus stop.
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That red building is the bar/restaurant we had to walk around to get to the bus stop. We waited about 15 min for the bus and then got back on, told the driver we wanted to go to Horseshoe Bay Beach and went on our merry way. Two stops later, we were dropped off at Horseshoe Bay........
 
I didn't really know what to expect for Horseshoe Bay Beach because I had read for months leading up to us getting to Bermuda, they were renovating the beach for the America's Cup. I wasn't sure if it would even be open when we got there but it opened about a week before we arrived so yay! We wanted to see some pink sand!

The bus dropped us off and we saw the sign!
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After maybe 50 ft of grass/sand, we see the deck walk way to the beach. Its a little hike down hill.
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This is looking back up after walking down about 1/2 way.

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There are a couple of stops along the deck for lookout points and benches if you need a spot to rest.

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Then at the end of the decking is the sidewalk and parking lot for the scooters. Just past that is a tiny parking lot for cars and then several spots for minibuses and taxis to do their drop offs. If you take the public bus, you gotta walk up and down the hill.

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Around the corner and to the left of this picture is the beach. The first thing you come to is the restroom/changing rooms. The two days we were there the men's restroom was either broken or they were still working on it because there was a sign over the women's restroom that said "unisex" bathrooms. Umm, ok!
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The blue house is the restroom/changing rooms. The first part of the facility has about 6 changing stalls. A nice touch to not have to use a toilet stall. But still not the cleanest place ever. It did the job. Past those are the actual bathrooms. Surprisingly enough, we didn't use the toilets so I don't know what they are like but I assume they were only kind of clean. The yellow building is the quick service restaurant type place and a tiny gift shop with sunscreen, googles, snorkel equipment, etc. All of the seating is outdoors and to the left of the yellow building was an outdoor bar and the tables.

We walked down the beach a bit to rent our lounge chair....I didn't need an umbrella because as you can see it was cloudy. Here is that setup:
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As I'm sure you can guess, it wasn't super crowded.

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This was taken at about 10:45 am. We stayed for about an hour or so because it was just so chilly and windy that even though the kid and hubs got in the ocean, it was just so windy that she got too cold to last too long. It was fine, we decided we'd go back to the ship instead of eating there and eat some pizza at Sorrento's.

More pictures next post.....
 
More beach pictures......

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Pictures of the menu at Horseshoe Bay Beach (Rum Bum Restaurant) if anyone wanted to know....

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So we make the trek back up the hill to the bus stop and find that another couple is already waiting. We chat with them for a bit and learn that they are on the Dawn and its a 7 day cruise that has 3 days in Bermuda. They said this was their 3rd time doing that same cruise since it ports out of Boston and that's where they live and this was the first time they'd had a bad dreary day in Bermuda. Oh lucky us! The bus came about 10-15 min later and we all got on. About an hour later, we made it back to the port. With all the stops it takes a bit to get back to the port so keep that in mind if you are trying to get back on the day the ship leaves. We went back on the ship, dropped our stuff off at the room and headed downstairs to eat some pizza. It was really good the whole cruise...actually a little bit better than DCL. :duck:

We headed back off the ship to do a bit of shopping and DH wanted to get an America's cup tshirt really bad. The first place we come to is a small shop in the middle of the port that is the official store of America's cup. He finds a tshirt ($30) and we realize they only take mastercard...no Visa. We only have Visa. Luckily we had enough cash on us but good for those reading this to know. We go in a few more shops, I get my usual Christmas ornament, the kid finds a necklace and we get back on the ship.

I should note that the beach chair at Horseshoe bay does take credit cards normally(they did day 2) but that first day we were there it was down "because of the weather" and we had to pay in cash. So keep that in mind...make sure you bring plenty of cash with you to the island. They don't always get a credit card signal apparently.

The kid wanted to go back to the indoor pool so we did that for a while until it was time to clean up for dinner. We had reservations for the Solarium Bistro. This is a free dining location and kids are welcome to the dining room, just not the pool. You are seated at a table with a server but the salad and apps are buffet style. We ordered our food, the kid had lemon pepper chicken, the adults had haddock with a tropical salsa. Everyone enjoyed their meals. They had a dessert table but none of it met our desires so we ended up going to WJ for dessert! The kid did some more Roller skating then we walked around a bit and back to the room for the night. Before bed, we said a little prayer that maybe tomorrow's weather would be better......

Up Next....Day 2 in Bermuda!
 
This was from our balcony but it kind of shows how the port works. The long concrete path closest to the ship was what you walked after walking through a little building with Bermuda Security. That same building held the bus passes. Then you can see the white tents in the middle of the picture and that's where you wait for taxi's or minibuses. If you walk past those and past the large stone wall a bit then you will get to the bus stop. You can kind of see a red building in the top right corner, that's where the shopping started and it wrapped around to the other side where there is a stone building and all the boats are at in the middle top of the picture.

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A note about the pool towels.....

You had to check them in and out each time you used them. You would give them your seapass card or swipe your wowband and then you would get how many towels you would ask for. Then you would do the same to turn them back in. Luckily the longest line we had was about 2 people deep. It was free but if you didn't turn them back in by 10(maybe 11) then you would be charged $25 a towel. So it was a minor pain to have to take them back after you brought them back to the room or used them on the beach. (Point Disney).

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Day 2 in Bermuda!

After breakfast and packing the beach backpack, we decided to try the minibuses today. The public bus was fine but did take a little longer than we'd liked and it picked up and dropped off closer to the pier and the beach. The public bus pass for 1 day was $49 and roundtrip for all 3 of us was $42 plus some tips. So roughly the same price. But the public bus passes can be paid with a credit card, the mini buses were cash only. With the public bus it does stop several places but since we only wanted to go to Horseshoe bay again, this was perfect. We caught the bus there at the pier super easy, got a few more passengers from the Dawn and headed out to the beach. A short 30 min later, they dropped us off down the hill and right at the beach. We got the chair and umbrella this day since it was sunny and much prettier than our day before. AND much more crowded. But we expected that. When you rent the chair and umbrella, the guys actually drag it to a spot on the beach you like and then they dig the hole for your umbrella. Nice touch! We of course, tipped him for that.

Much nicer day(thanks for the answered prayer!)....and look at that sea of umbrellas. This was taken at about 11.

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At the same lookout point from the day before....yes, I walked up the decking to get the picture.

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We spent about 2 hours here. Got a chip snack in the Rum Bum bar area and then caught the minibuses back. Since I had a chair and umbrella already, I didn't want it to go to waste. So I looked around for a family with a small child who was just sitting on the beach with a towel and no chair or umbrella. I went over to the mom, said "hi, I bought a chair and an umbrella and I'm leaving. Would you like to use it?" She was excited and said yes! So as we gathered our things, she brought over her stuff and we left.

The minibuses were there waiting for people when we were ready to leave about 12:30-1pm. Got back to the ship in about 30 min again and ate lunch at Sorrento's yet again. It was really that good!

We again, went back to the indoor pool. (yes, we used it a lot!) (it was also near the ice cream so that helped too) I took some pictures of the America's Cup ships practicing.

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Below is the entire America's Cup Village. The far left is where the grandstands and food and racing will take place and to the right of the picture is where many of those who come by boat have paid to park the boats while they are there. In other words, those with some decent money. Or so we've been told. The celebrity ones are in a different area of the port.

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Then back to the room for our cruise tradition. We love to sit on our balcony and watch the slackers come back to the ship really close to all aboard time and see if they make it. In 6 cruises, we've seen 2 different sets of people left on the pier.... While we waited, I took some pictures of the dockyard from our room.

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After watching a few run back to the ship, we went to Izumi for our reservation. However, the kid doesn't eat sushi so we wanted to know if we could just get it to go. They said yes, so we put in our order and was told to come back in 30 min. After we walked around and took some more pictures, we grabbed our sushi to go and went to WJ to eat and get the kid some food. They were offering chocolate covered strawberries that night which were excellent.

You may have noticed that we had my time dining and have not once went to a dining room at this point. We love the dining rooms on Disney but we knew that after two days in Bermuda we'd want quick service not 2 hour dinners and that first night we went to JO's and the second night we went to the Solarium Bistro. So we had made a ressie for the last night in the dining room. It worked for us but I wish I had tried to go one other night as well. Oh well, next time.....

It was our night for Spectra's Cabaret. I had read so many varying things about this show I wasn't sure what to expect. Some say its strange, other say its a technology marvel. Since the Gift and We will rock you aren't 8 yo friendly, we thought we'd try SC. We did really miss the shows on this cruise as we love the Disney ones so what did we think of the show? That's up next......
 
I think one of the things that surprised me the most was how small the restaurants actually were. The ship is so huge so I assumed they would be like DCL but I was wrong. I guess because there are more of them, they had to be smaller. Sorrento's, Wonderland, Izumi, 270, Chops(we had our muster here, didn't eat), etc....all the restaurants were quite small in real life.

I also haven't talked much about our room. We had a balcony, cabin 10574. It was midship but a little forward and I found it to be a good location. No hallway noise at all really and good proximity to elevators. I didn't take a bunch of pictures because you can google the pictures easily.

For those that care about lifeboats in view of room, here is what you see if you look straight down...which I rarely do.
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And here this is what you see if you look out on a sea day....

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Our room slept 3 obviously so that meant that the couch "turned" into a bed. I have " " around it because all they did was take the regular couch and put a comforter type bedding over it with another comforter over that to create a bed. She was suppose to use the couch's decorative pillow for a pillow but we gave her one of the 5 pillows on our bed. It was actually quite disappointing. (point Disney). At least on DCL you get a mattress type thing that flips down on the couch and our stateroom attendant never unmade the bed. Not sure if that's just our attendant or if all of them do that. So it was a bed the entire cruise. IF that was an adult that had to sleep there or even a teenager, that would have sucked for them. RCL really doesn't want more than 2 people in a room after what they give as the additional bed.

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Another look at the room from the balcony doors....
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