the last day of the cruise has come to an end. and i must say, i think i am ready to get off the boat. ready to get to work and school and life? no, but i am ready to put my two feet on solid ground and get comfortable at home with my husband. although we technically deboard the ship tomorrow, it feels like we are leaving tonight as we have to have everything packed and ready by midnight.
but the day itself, you ask? ah, i guess i should follow suit of our past entries and give you a narrative of the day….after a regular morning of me dinking around and ordering room service breakfast while wil slept, we decided to get on top of our packing and get most of it out of the way, so we wouldn’t be stuck with everything tonight after the show. we surprisingly have lots of space in all of our suitcases…but i guess that’s what happens when you don’t buy anything. : )
around 11:30 we made our way to an early lunch to catch nothing else but “towel folding.” yep, we actually went to a towel folding demonstration. but let me explain: just like the fancy napkins at dinner time (which we learned yesterday), our room attendants leave us a different animal every night made with towels on our bed. it was more fun than you’d think, being able to twist and fold a towel into animals like a monkey, dog or elephant.
we didn’t have anything on our schedule after folding towels, but on our way to the elevators, we walked through the casino. wil, with his eagle eye caught something interesting on one of the 25ยข slot machines. there was an unplayed credit left on one of the machines! since no one was nearby, we pulled the crank and what?! we won 5 quarters! completely taken by surprise by our unexpected win, we decided to cash out and just use the quarters one by one in different machines just for the heck of it. 4 quarters lost later, on our last quarter we won again! we couldn’t stop laughing at our mini bits of luck, and every time we won we’d just keep playing one quarter in a different machine, seeing what would happen. we ended up playing for almost ten minutes, going down the number of slot machine rows, always winning 2 or 5 more quarters when we got down to the last few in our hand. even though we won about only $5 over the course of our casino adventure, and left empty handed, we were in good spirits and entertained, as it didn’t cost us anything to begin with.
when we finally made it to the elevator, we headed upstairs and chilled out in the room for a couple hours until our next activity. and i mean chilled out…we tried to sit on the veranda, but it was very obvious that we were not in the caribbean anymore. the atlantic waters were dark and choppy and the wind had quite a nip to it! i plopped on the bed to finish my book instead while wil hung around inside.
next stop: bingo! after an hour or so in the room, we walked down to the theatre for the final jackpot bingo. as we grabbed our seats we caught the end of the “karaoke idol” finals (which we did not stay the previous night due to lameness and poor vocals). there was definitely some talent, young and old in the final few that we saw. but the theatre soon thinned out once idol was over and prepared for the huge upcoming game. this was the bingo of all bingos…a jackpot that had rolled over everyday from the first day on this boat, with a pot totaling over $11,000!!!! while i didn’t want to get my hopes up, i still secretly thought ‘maybe it could be us!’ well, no cliffhanger here: we didn’t win. i was actually only 2 numbers away when the guy a couple rows in front of us started jumping up and down. the butterflies in my stomach from our potential win immediately fell flat, and wil and i were bummed. we left with our heads hung low and stuffed our loser bingo cards in the trash.
so what was the best remedy for sad faces? ice cream! two cones of soft serve later we were back in our rooms with high spirits again. with another spell of time between then and our next event, we practiced our napkin folding. can you tell we are running out of things to do on the boat?
dinner approached a lot faster than we thought (my fault: i read my watch an hour off last time we checked), so we made a quick change and dash to the dining hall. dinner was good as usual; it was a full meal of shrimp, hummus, spinach dip, french onion soup, ny strip and mahi mahi tempura (plus dessert). we were completely stuffed by the end, but we enjoyed our last meal. we took the chance to reminisce and share our favorite ports, meals, days, etc of the whole trip, as well as admire the amazing ocean and sky right outside of our window. i know we won’t forget this honeymoon forever!
after dinner it was back to the theatre for our headline show. tonight was the crew of singers and dancers performing the premiere of their new show “vibeology.” a runthrough of some legendary periods and artists (elvis, motown, janet/michael jackson, mtv/radio, etc), this show was the best by far, with some good songs, great dancing, and some neat stunts with dancers swinging over the audience from cloth with their own strength. i was glad to see this show and not skip out on it like we had some of the other nights.
anyways, we are back in our room again and wil is cracking up behind me as he watches the crock hunter on tv. i think i will wrap up and get him to help me finish packing since we only have an hour to get the luggage outside our door. goodnight!
