Life on the boat

After we took a red eye flight to get to Ft. Lauderdale we headed to board the ship around 11am.

We headed straight to our stateroom for a VERY long nap.

Once we awoke from the haze we were in we made our way to the dining room for dinner.

The ship had set sail around 5pm and was in the open waters at this point.

We decided on open dining, meaning that we could eat at anytime and either sit by ourselves or join a table.

The first night we joined a table.

Now let me interject right here and tell you that this is the point that we started to notice that about 90% of our cruise passengers were 65 years and above. Of those 90% about 75% were about 80 years and above.

When we sat down to eat we were greeted by two “senior” couples.

Not too much in common, but we found things to talk about.

Everything was going well until I started to feel queasy.

You see the dining room is at the very back of the ship and you can really feel the sway.

The first cruise we took 4 years ago I wore the behind-the-ear patch for nausea and never had a problem, but didn’t know if I would have been okay without it.

This time I decided I didn’t need the patch, but apparently I thought wrong.

I went back to the stateroom, grabbed my seabands and took some medication and headed back to the dining room.

Still not feeling well so we took off and headed back to the room to lay down, take it easy, sip on a ginger ale and watch a movie.

The next day I was feeling much better.

It was a day at sea so we spent most the day lounging by the pool and eating.

Let me interject one more time by telling you Holland America’s food was fantastic.

Our first cruise’s food, not so good, so we were pleasantly surprised.

We ate and ate some more.

It almost made up for the fact that we were never told we would be joining a retiree community.

It took me back to this night.

The second night was formal night so my man dressed his best to impress the older ladies.

We decided to go solo for dinner this night.

While on board we hit up the entertainment each night.

Again we noticed that the entertainment catered to the older crowd.

5 out of the 7 nights were cruise ship performers singing and dancing to Aretha Franklin and Frank Sinatra.

The other two nights were much better with a comedian and magician.

They also had a dance club that we went to check out.

Our last cruise threw a lot of themed dance parties and we did a lot of dancing so we thought we would do the same here.

We showed up to dance the night away and not ONE SOUL was in there.

Not joking.

We did find a lot of dancers in the lounge though…

We found that this cruise was a great place to people watch and people watch we did.

Since there weren’t a whole lot of activities that catered to the younger crowd we went to the lounge quite often to play games.

One night while we were walking the ship (very slowly, picture lots of jazzy scooters and walkers) we spotted a young couple.

We stalked followed them a bit until Jared started talking to the guy about how we were the only young ones on here.

Come to find out they are from Utah and we have a lot in common with them.

We ended up going to dinner with them one night and saw them quite a bit throughout the cruise.

There was one more formal night and then a dessert night.

They had yummy breads, cakes, candies and a chocolate fondue fountain.

Very yummy!

They made the traditional towel animals on our bed every night.

We had to laugh a little though because they put these eyes on all the animals every night and it looked like the eyes were printed on a dot matrix.

Not that funny?

Maybe you had to be there.

We indulged ourselves in a few  (virgin) margaritas and pina coladas.

 

And once again ate until our hearts were content.

On the fourth night of our cruise as we were leaving St. Thomas and heading back where we were to make one more stop at Half Moon Cay, Bahamas before returning to Florida we got a wake up call at 3:30am.

They announced over the loud speaker that there was a passenger reported missing.

If we had any information about this person or we knew where he was to call immediately.

We were half out of it so we drifted back to sleep only to be awakened an hour later letting us know the passenger was still missing and they were afraid he had gone overboard. They were going to stop and circle the waters.

That next morning his picture was on the TV with his information and if we knew anything to call the front desk.

I guess they had found his hat on the deck and assumed he had gone overboard some time in the night.

The coast guard from Puerto Rico and Florida were called in and well as a helicopter search.

That day was spent hanging out outside watching the boat circle along with watching the helicopter and other boats circle.

You can read more of the story here.

After no luck searching the waters, that night our ship was released from searching and we continued on.

Since we had spent all day circling we were no longer going to make our stop at Half Moon Cay which meant no horseback riding in the ocean for us.

It was a bummer situation all the way around for everyone involved.

I do hope that his family will get the answers they are desperately seeking.

The day we were supposed to be at Half Moon Cay was turned into another day at sea as we made our way back to Florida.

Let me tell you, the seas were angry that day, my friends (name the show) and I started to get that nauseated feeling back.

So did Jared. The boat was seriously rocking so bad that I don’t know how some people could stand up after tossing a few back.

We both felt better after sipping on a coke.

Even though the tragic overboard situation happened and I joke about it being a 65 and older cruise, we had a lot of fun.

The three stops we did make we were able to do some really cool things.

More on those later, this is ridiculously long, thanks for making it all the way through.