Day 6 – At Sea

And a gloriuos day it was.  The weather remains perfect and yesterday was the best day of the cruise for me.  I just love days at sea.  They are so peaceful and relaxing.  One is free to do what they want on the ship.  I like to spend time just staring at the ocean of the Mexico coast as we pass by approximately 15 NM offshore.

We actually slept in until about 9:00 in the morning and just plain skipped breakfast.  It felt pretty good to skip a meal as we have eaten lots of good food already.  The kids spent most of the day in the Kids Club doing a lot of fun activities.  They had a ship building contest, pirate fun and other stuff.  Suzanne spent the whole afternoon in the cabin sleeping.  That’s not my idea of fun, but thats what is great about sea days – do what you want.  I walked some laps on the exercise track, stared at the ocean and had a couple of beers at the sky bar.  All in all, it was a very nice day.

Prior to dinner, we went to the Captain’s Club Reception.  They provided some munchies and champagne.  With all the concern about Norovirus on cruise ships these days, this was the first time you couldnt shake the Captains hand as you entered the room.  The kids and I still had our picture taken with the Captain.  Suzanne wasnt in the picture as she wasnt quite ready in time.

I sound like a broken record, but dinner was again fabulous.  Everyone but me started with Frog Legs.  For the main entree, Savannah had Rigatoni Amatricianna as did Sean.  I actually had them bring me a small plate of that as my appetizer as it was my second or third favorite pasta dish when visiting Rome on business.  Suzanne ordered the quail for dinner and I went with the filet mignon.

So, being a day at sea and not a lot of activity to report on, I thought I would pass along a few other tidbits that may have flown under the radar in previous posts about the cruise thus far:

• Mercury is scheduled for 2 weeks of dry dock in April.  We have gotten conflicting reports on the extent of the dry dock.  We are curious because we will be sailing her again in June to Alaska.  We do know that all the interior public areas are going to be redone.  A couple of Celebrity folks told us that the back public areas behind the aft cabins will be converted to balconies for the aft cabins.  We like that since we have booked the exact same cabin for the June cruise.  However, the cruise director said no cabins will be touched in this dry dock or balconies added.  He says that will occur about 15 months later.
• While in Mazatlan, the Carnival Pride and a Princess ship were also docked there.  Lots of discussion about cruise line comparisons between various folks from the ships.  Celebrity was the hands down winner from the folks that had sailed on multiply lines.  Lots of complaints about the food on Carnival and Princess.  Well, to be fair, not really complaints, just statements that Celebrity had better food.  We also got into discussions about the number of kids/families on the cruise ships.  Here is where I talk out of both sides of my mouth.  One of the reasons we like Celebrity is because there are less kids running around on the cruise ship, yet we take our kids with us.  On our cruise, there are 103 kids on the cruise.  On the Carnival Pride, there was over 700 kids on the ship. Wow, thats a lot of kids.
• At the Captains Club reception, they awarded certificates to frequent cruisers.  The most cruised couple was this old lady and man from Japan.  This was their 250th cruise.  Another couple was given a certificate as they had sailed on Celebrity more than 25 times since 2003.  Wow, thats are a lot of cruises.  This cruise will count as our 5th on Celebrity and will get us to the next Captains Club level.

Tomorrow our port of call is Acapulco.  Its an all day affair with arrival at 7:00 am and departure at 11:00 pm with a wonderful sail away party Mexican style.