Today is the one and only sea day on this trip - when you leave from San Juan, you are already so far south that the islands are pretty close together - vs a series of 1 or 2 in a row when coming from Florida.
We got up about 830am, since there wasn't an early announcement about docking in the port at 8am. Got dressed and headed out to the pool.....WOW! The chair hogs were OUT IN FORCE! What is a chair hog you ask? Good question - these are the individuals that come out at the crack of dawn and place a single towel and some personal item (usually of inconsequential value) to "save" chairs while they go back to bed or eat or whatever it is they are doing that does NOT involve actually sitting in the chair by the pool. This is frowned upon by many, and yet, people still do it. On some ships, the Pool Butlers are out and about and quick to remove anything that remains for longer than 30 minutes with no one around. This ship, not so much - the pool staff seemed more interested in chatting with each other than making the rounds. Chris and I found a nice set of chairs, slightly away from the pool, and sat down. A few of the chairs were occupied, so I started chatting with one of the women and turned out they were from Rhode Island.
I have literally never met anyone actually FROM Rhode Island before, so that was quite a thrill. I also had a funny story about when we were kids we had this license plate game we played every year in the car - you had to see a plate from every one of the 50 states. The one we ALWAYS were missing? Rhode Island. So you knew it was going to be a good year if you saw a car with RI plates. The best was one year we were in Yellowstone Park, and saw an RV camper that had RI plates - we were so excited it was hilarious! Another funny story? One year when Abra and I were driving around CT checking things out, we actually drove into Rhode Island just to say we'd been there. I think we stopped and bought some Munchkins from Dunkin Donuts and then left. So there's my Rhode Island story.
Back to the chair hogs - there were 3 chairs across from us that literally had NO ONE sit in them until about 1pm (remember, we got there about 845am) - and they were prime sun chairs. These people hung around for about 20 minutes, then left and didn't come back for about 90 minutes. It was seriously crazy.
They had some pool games - volleyball, with the marine vs hotel for the crew (hotel won, which they said was unusual) and then they played the guest team, who also lost. Guess the hotel team was on a roll!!!!
Gave up about 4pm and went back to the room, since the pool band was loud enough to be heard through my headphones (they weren't bad, I just wasn't in the mood for it) and sat out on our balcony for a bit. The balcony was nice, but because the whole set of cabins were added during a retrofit, they don't have any overhang (ie shade!) if the sun is right on top of you, so it got very warm very quickly.
After getting out of our bathing attire (so NOT appropriate for formal night) we got dressed in our not formal clothes and headed for Blu about 545pm, where we met Pam and Michael and had another spectacular dinner, followed by the favorite ice cream!!!! Dinner took a little longer than normal, so we got up to the Martini bar about 730pm and BOY, the peoplewatching is fantastic on formal night. I think people were more dressed up for this night (probably because it was a sea day and they had more time to prepare) but who knows really. People do lots of things for no apparent reason. And as I've said multiple times, the definition of "formal night" varies from person to person, and it ran the whole spectrum this evening.
I think sitting in the sun all day must really take something out of you, because by the time 10pm crept around, we were ready for bed, that's for sure. So off we went, with dreams of more sunny pool time in St Thomas tomorrow!!!!
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