Eric's First Cruise, Part 1: Days 1-4

Wednesday, September 19, 2012 0 comments

We had an idea that cruising with Eric was going to be different, but until getting aboard, we really had no idea of what to expect.  As seems to be the norm when traveling with Eric, he doesn’t nap at the times we expect him to nap.  So, while we expected him to nap on the car ride to Valencia after eating lunch, he didn’t actually fall asleep until we had almost arrived at the port.  That, of course, is worse because he wakes up feeling like he’s already taken a nap, but is actually completely exhausted. 
As luck would have it, though, embarkation in Valencia was the best we have ever experienced on a cruise- EVER!!!  It is likely because the majority of the people had embarked in Malaga, so we didn’t have to deal with as many other people trying to get checked in at the same time.  We arrived a bit early, which also probably helped quite a bit, and quickly sped right through the security points, check-in, and were soon on a shuttle bus on our way to the ship.  

Our stateroom
When we arrived, after Eric had locked himself in the cabin bathroom, and luckily unlocked it and got out, we decided to try to check out the ship a little bit, but with Eric, it was almost impossible.  He refused to go in his stroller, and wanted to be the one to decide where it is we will go.  He decided that the elevators and stairways were a lot of fun, and didn’t want to leave them to go and see anything.  We hadn’t had a chance to see much by the time we were scheduled to go to our muster station emergency drill.  That was actually also much better than usual because they didn’t make us go up to the stations with our uncomfortable life jackets on.  Instead we checked in and sat in a lounge while monitors showed us how to put our lifejackets on, and explained what to do in the case of an emergency.  After the short meeting, which didn’t seem quite as short because we were preoccupied with trying to keep Eric quiet and also because of the fact that we had to sit through the same meeting twice, once in English and once in Spanish, we were escorted to our muster stations from which we were then free to leave.
By that point it was actually almost our dinner time, 7PM.  We didn’t have our suitcases yet, though.  So, we headed to the reception desk to try to find out what we were supposed to do.  In theory, you are not supposed to wear shorts to dinner, but Mauri didn’t have a choice, having no other clothes to wear.  We told them that we didn’t think we were going to arrive to dinner on time, but they told us not to worry, and that we could go at any time up until 8PM.  So, since Mauri badly wanted to shower and change, we decided to wait for his suitcase.  Meanwhile, it seems that mine had been held up in security.  I was asked if I had attempted to bring in any of the prohibited items such a clothes irons, scissors, or alcohol.  I have to admit that I had been tempted to bring alcohol aboard, and in hindsight, I also have to admit that I wish I had because they really weren’t as psychotic in their screening as I had been led to believe, and it would have been very easy to get alcohol on board.  In the end, we had to go back down to the entrance of the ship, and mine had been tagged with having a metal item in it, which happened to be my curling iron.  They rescreened it with the x-ray machines, and told me there was no need to open the suitcase, and that we were free to take it.
Exploring the ship.  This is "Jesters."
The whole thing had only been a mild inconvenience up until now, but ended up getting more and more inconvenient.  It turns out that we don’t find this ship very well organized.  When we had first come aboard, we were able to immediately find our cabin which was only one floor up from the entrance.  Seeing as there was a huge line of people waiting to take the elevators up, I suggested we take the stairs up, seeing as it was only one flight of stairs, despite having to lug up our heaviest suitcase with us.
After managing to get up the flight of stairs with both Eric and the heavy suitcase, though, we were stuck in an area which was completely isolated from our cabin.  Interestingly enough, we asked a guy who was cleaning the ship how to get to our cabin, and he had no idea himself.  He started to call people on his walkie talkie to try to figure it out for us, and pointed us in the wrong direction.  It turns out that we were on the wrong side of the ship.  What do I mean by the wrong side of the ship?  Well, stupidly enough, the front side of the ship and the back side of the ship are separated by a small area, and there is absolutely no way to get around it on our floor.  So, you have to go to a different floor to be able to cross the ship, and then you can come back and go back around to the cabin.  The elevators are always very busy, and you are stuck waiting to go up, and once again to come back down if you want to travel to your room comfortably with either a stroller or a heavy suitcase. 
Here you can see the annoying separation between the forward part and aft part of the ship.
No big deal, you think, we have already gone up one flight of stairs; just go up one more to get across the ship.  Of course, that would be too logical, and you would be thinking wrong!!  On the third floor, you can’t get across the ship because it is separated by the ice skating rink, which, despite being highly publicized, seems to always be closed.  Tomorrow afternoon, it opens for the first time for a short show, but there were huge lines of people in the morning, fighting over the few seats available, and the tickets were all gone very quickly.  (They only have 400+ tickets for around 3,400 people aboard!!)  With Eric, we decided it wasn’t worth our time trying to get him to stay still long enough for us to make it through the long line, only for tickets to a show that we didn’t know if he would be able to sit still to watch.
The narrow, awkward Royal Promenade, which we would have to cross the ship numerous times daily.
If you go up one more flight of stairs, you can finally cross the ship.  Well, you can, but we aren’t supposed to.  You see, the fourth floor is separated by the casino, and nobody under 18 is supposed to enter.  Of course that didn’t stop us from occasionally doing so to cut through when we were sick of having to go up and down 3 flights of stairs several times daily just to be able to get to our cabin.  Nobody ever said anything to us about it.  We ended up having to go up the 3 floors, cut across the heavily trafficked and narrow “Royal Promenade” with Eric and suitcase in hand, go back down the 3 floors, and cut back around to our cabin.  After our short adventure, we were finally there with Eric’s and my suitcase.
I started unpacking, but our 8PM limit time for dinner was quickly approaching, and Mauri still didn’t have his suitcase.  So, we headed back up to the desk to once again ask about the suitcase, and make sure that Mauri’s hadn’t been stopped by security.  We had arrived 4 hours earlier, and it made absolutely no sense that we shouldn’t have our luggage by now, especially considering that not that many people had embarked in Valencia with us.  They told us to they would check on the suitcase, but to head to dinner dressed as we were.  So, we made it to dinner an hour late and in our street clothes, feeling a bit grimy and underdressed.
Of course, the rest of our table was already full, and we had to interrupt the meal that had already started, but even more unnerving was the fact that we were surprised that Royal Caribbean had made absolutely no effort in trying to sit us at an “appropriate” table.  We had embarked as a family of Spanish citizens, and they give us all of our cruise information in Spanish each day, yet our table was full of what seemed to be non-Spanish speaking, British retirees.  Amongst us, Mauri and I always speak in Spanish, so you can imagine the dynamics of our table were uncomfortable and awkward, at least at first.  Mauri and I spent most of dinner trying to keep Eric from running around and screaming, and, if even luckier, to try to get him to try to eat something.  So, we were speaking amongst ourselves in Spanish, while the rest of the table was having their own separate conversation about something else.  They seemed to have no interest in sitting at a table with a young family with a crazy little toddler, and we really had little interest in their conversation.  Even if we had, they spoke so softly amongst themselves, that we didn't feel included.
Dining room
Casino
Despite all of that, dinner went quite smoothly.  The first night, though, I felt like the waiters seemed more interested in trying to get us to pay for expensive water, coffee or alcohol, than they were in introducing themselves or trying to get to know us.  To be fair, maybe it was because we came to dinner so late, when the waiters were swamped with work, and it made it impossible for them to give us the usual attention.  I remember past cruises where the waiters surprised us with napkins folded up like animals, and room stewards folded our towels like animals.  They got to know us and had the things we liked waiting for us from night to night.  So far, though, this cruise has had none of that.  Our room never actually had the crib in it that I had reserved with them when booking the cruise, and no room steward ever came to introduce themselves to us to see if we needed anything.  We didn’t even have a child sized life jacket.  I left dinner not even remembering who our waiters were.  I only remembered thinking how absolutely absent and busy they were the entire dinner, and how strange they had seemed when we arrived.
Solarium jacuzzi
Main pools and jacuzzis
You see, I don’t remember them even introducing themselves (although Mauri later on said they did.  Maybe I was distracted.) Nor did they bother to ask us if we needed a high chair, so Eric spent dinner time sitting on Mauri’s lap.  Then, when we asked for bread, they asked about each of us, but ended up putting my roll on a plate, Mauri’s (or Eric’s?) on the same plate, and never gave us the other roll for the third person.  Eric didn’t even get his own glass of water, and, before even asking what Eric wanted to eat, they brought him out a bowl of chicken soup.  Mauri proceeded to tell the waiter that he had asked for the ceaser salad, not soup, when the waiter told us that the soup was for Eric.  We knew Eric would never eat that, so we finally asked if there was a menu for kids.  We ordered some chicken fingers, but told them to make it very small because he wouldn’t eat much, and the plate of chicken fingers turned out to be bigger than our tiny portions of adult food.  For me the portions were fine, because I want to try a bit of everything without gaining too much weight on the cruise.  Mauri, on the other hand, was ready to head up to the buffet shortly after leaving the dinner table. J 
The cranberry mango soup that Eric ended up finishing
Eric ended up liking our food better, and he ate what was left of my fruit soup once he finally tried it, so I finished his less-tasty chicken soup that nobody had ordered.  Then, Eric ate all of Mauri’s mashed potatoes, so Mauri ended up eating most of his chicken fingers.  Once we finished the meal, the last to arrive were the first to leave, and I quickly excused us from the awkward table, and we were on our way back to the stateroom.
As luck would have it, Mauri’s suitcase had finally arrived, so he decided to shower and change while I braved my way through the ship to hunt down some milk for Eric’s night bottle before the buffet was going to shortly close.  The only milk I could find was warm, low-fat milk in a pitcher for coffee.  So I filled him up a bottle, and headed back downstairs and across the busy promenade.  By that time, the only place to get something to drink for free seems to be a little café on the promenade, so it was almost impossible to cut through and get past that area.  Everyone was fighting over watered down coffee, to avoid having to pay for $3 or more coffees +%15 gratuities + %10 VAT on top of all of it (meaning the coffees are really over $4).  I kept thinking how maybe we should have done what I had wanted to do in the first place, and take the flight to La Coruna to get on the cruise from Pullmantur that ended in Valencia later this month.  Royal Caribbean seems to have become very greedy, and all about trying to milk you for every last cent they can throughout the entire vacation.  They make you feel like an intruder, in a way, when going to the bars and lounges when you don’t want to buy their $8-$10 cocktails.  They keep coming around to offer them to you.  No matter where you are (even in your stateroom on the tv or in the expensive mini fridge), they are always trying to sell you something or other.
I got to the room, and we decided to go for a walk.  By this point, we were surprised to find that Eric was going to let us bring him around in his stroller.  (He even called out "carro.")  Mauri couldn’t find what he had done with Eric’s card, which is his identification on board, so we had to head up to guest services, yet again, and ask about that.  They made it very easy to get a new card and cancel the old one, and didn’t make us feel at all guilty about it.  The girls at guest services, by this point, also already had gotten to know Eric and flirt with him a bit.  One of them even came out with chocolates for him.  So, while we were there, we asked about some other things like maybe being able to change our dinner table, and about the activities for toddlers because they aren’t advertised at all anywhere on the agendas each day despite being advertised on the Royal Caribbean website.  They instructed us to go up to Adventure Ocean in the morning to get the information with the schedule for kids, and told us to go to the dining room the next morning to ask about a new table.
After going for more of a walk around the ship with Eric in the stroller, Eric ended up falling asleep.  We figured we had the ideal situation for doing something onboard in peace.  After looking through the ship’s activities, though, it didn’t seem like there was much to do.  The scheduled activities were in the promenade and tiny Jesters night club.  We already knew not to try to go into the night club with a stroller, but the promenade was packed with people (they were holding a 70's night party there), and with it being so narrow and packed, it isn’t the ideal place for a sleeping baby with a stroller.  If this had been a Pullmantur cruise, we would have looked for a quiet lounge to get a drink before heading off to bed, but with the annoyance of the overpriced drinks with lots of hidden charges on them, we decided it just wasn’t worth it.  So, we strolled Eric back to the room, and all went to bed.
Yes, it probably sounds like we went to bed a bit frustrated with the cruise, and you wouldn’t be wrong to think that.  That first night we were a little bit disappointed with how things were going.  We weren’t impressed with the layout of the ship (well, we still aren’t), and we thought that the service had greatly deteriorated on Royal Caribbean.  I went to bed even more upset after banging my already broken big toenail on a chair in the stateroom, and almost completely ripping it off.

So, with each not-so-great thing that would happen or that we would find, we would notice it more than we normally would.  I noticed that in one corner, the carpet of our stateroom wasn’t cut to fit into its place, and Eric went automatically to that area to play with it.  I lifted it up and found a piece of x-acto knife blade right where Eric was playing!!  We pushed the blade underneath the carpet as far as we could so that Eric couldn’t reach it again, thinking how security wouldn’t let us bring scissors aboard, but they could leave blades in the room for kids to play with.  One closet door hinge in the stateroom was also broken, and it would keep falling so far into the center that it was impossible to close the doors well without pushing the broken door out of the way each time.  These things were only mildly annoying, but surprising to find on a ship of this supposed caliber.
The next day, we woke up with a bit of the same attitude, and it didn’t help that when we went to possibly try to get tickets for the ice skating show, we realized there were huge lines of people waiting to get them.  We were going to go eat breakfast in the dining room, but once again it seems like whoever plans things aboard didn’t think things through very well, and instead of opening any of the other levels, they only opened the level where everyone was waiting in line for the ice show.  The line went all the way from the ice skating rink to cover the entire entrance to the dining room, so, to avoid the hassle of braving the crowd, we turned around and decided to just go up to the breakfast buffet upstairs.
After breakfast, in which Eric decided he didn’t want to eat anything, we brought him up to check out the kids’ center.  I couldn’t find much information, and the only thing that appeared to be open was the club for kids between 9-11 years old.  We waited to speak to the monitor there, and she gave us the schedule with the activities for kids Eric’s age.  Basically, I already knew what to expect for the mornings.  Fisher Price has a program in which they have an hour for each baby/toddler age group to play with their toys aboard each morning.  Eric fell into the 18month-24 month age group which was scheduled for play time at 11:00 AM.  
The whole playtime experience was a little strange.  They picked a very tiny little room onboard (with a grand piano somewhat in the way), and basically threw a bunch of toys on the floor and let the kids have at it.  There was one guy there to watch what was going on, but he didn’t have much to say.  I think he was basically just there to see that you didn’t walk off with the toys, although apparently they do give you the option of a toy lending program for the cruise.
Mauri got tired of the playtime, so we left after Eric played for awhile and had thrown a few tantrums when other kids tried to play with “his” toys.  That said, the tantrum that had surprised people most had occurred when Mauri took Eric’s shoes off to play on the matt, and Eric kept screaming out “shoes, shoes!!!!!”
The ship was absolutely packed!!  There were no seats available by the pool (well, they were unoccupied, but were reserved with towels despite the numerous signs prohibiting reserving chairs by the pool), and when we tried to fix our dinner seating arrangement, we were told that all of the tables were full, but that in the evening we could try again to get a different, more comfortable table.  We stopped by the guest relations desk, once again, to ask for a bandaid so that my nail wouldn’t get caught on things anymore and completely rip off.  While there, we decided to ask about getting a child-size life jacket.  The girl at the desk seemed surprised that we didn’t have one, and told us to talk to our room steward.  I said that we didn’t know who he or she was yet, and the girl seemed even more surprised.  She seemed to remember our stateroom number by that point (really!!!).  I said are we really here that often?!?!?  She responded that, no, it was because she was in love with our son, and that she had already told her husband that he should be worried.  J Every time we go past guest relations, which is often because we have to cross the ship to get to our stateroom, the girls are always yelling out “Eric,” and trying to get his attention.  They also seem to like trying to give him little gifts like chocolate and Royal Caribbean luggage tags.
Eric loved the floor at the entrance of the casino, despite being afraid to step on it at first.
From that point of the day, things seemed to get a little better.  We had a bit of an awkward lunch after being seated at a table with people who knew each other and were speaking to each other in English the entire time.  Then, we were a bit annoyed when we went to the buffet to get something for Eric to eat because he hadn’t liked what was available for lunch in the dining room.  We were told there were around 600 people waiting for a table, and that it would be a 25 minute wait.  We decided to just get him some chicken and mashed potatoes, and head outside for him to eat.  
Eric ate some mashed potatoes from the buffet by the pool
It was frustrating how many people were everywhere, but once all of that was over, and after Eric took a long nap, things started to go more our way.  Our room stewardess came to the room and introduced herself.  She told us that she had placed a child sized life jacket in the closet, and I thanked her and said I hadn’t noticed it.  (I was thinking that she had likely placed it there this morning when she had made up our room, and it had likely been there already when we had gone to ask about it.)  We felt a little bad, because it seemed like she was really going out of her way to make sure we were happy and comfortable, and we were hoping that it wasn’t because they had yelled at her about the whole life jacket situation.  She had moved our suitcases under the beds and out of the way, and had moved the side tables to one side and placed pillows on them because she had noticed that we had placed pillows against the suitcases the night before, and had thought that it was probably so that we could sleep without Eric falling out of the bed.  She was right, we had ended up sleeping together since the bed really is wide enough for us to comfortably sleep that way.  She offered us a crib, but by that point we had decided that we didn’t want one anymore because the staterooms are just too small for another big object in the way.  We were comfortable enough sleeping as we were.
Mauri was grumbling about having to dress for formal night, but I was excited about seeing my two guys looking all distinguished and handsome.  I had brought a floor length formal dress, and found myself to be one of the only girls dressed that way.  It seems that even Royal Caribbean cruises are less formal here in Europe, or maybe it is just that things have gotten less formal over the years.  I loved seeing all of the tuxes and formal gowns on my first cruise, now over twenty years ago.  By our honeymoon cruise, things were already much less formal, though.  I thought that was because of the whole freestyle cruising style of Norwegian Cruise lines, but apparently there is more to it than that.
Everyone seemed to love seeing Eric all dressed up, though.  People everywhere were pointing him out and telling us how cute he looked.  I had ordered a suit for him, over a month ago, from an obnoxious ebay seller who likely never even bothered to send it to me, but had luckily found a cute blazer on sale at the mall (only 10 euros!!), so it wasn’t a problem that it never arrived.  The blazer I bought was very comfortable because it’s made of a jersey stretch material, but it actually looks quite dressy.  At first Eric didn’t want to put it on, but once on, at dinner, he threw a fit when Mauri tried to take it off of him. 
We spoke to the head waiter outside the dining room, and he said there was a table available just for us!!  Great!!  The only problem was that it was right next to our original table, and Mauri noticed that just as we were approaching it.  He told the Maitre that he felt bad about sitting at a different table right in front of our old table mates.  I would have also been seriously embarrassed by that, so we decided to just go back to our original table.  
Mauri tries to get Eric to take the cloth shoe that the waiter made him.
Our table was much better that night, and not only did we have a high chair waiting for us, but Eric even sat in it for most of the dinner!!!  The people at our table spoke to us a lot more that night too.  The waiters even asked us what we wanted for Eric to eat, and they made Eric a napkin shoe.  The head waiter was also constantly stopping by to check on us and Eric, and asked to make sure that our waiter had given him his "surprise".  Eric refused to take it, but I did get a quick (bad) picture of Mauri trying to give it to him.  The maitre told us on the way out that he would look for another table for us the next day, but we told him that the dinner had been much better that night, and that he shouldn’t worry about it.  By the second night, we were much more impressed with our room stewardess and our waiters.  Little by little over the course of the cruise, we grew to really like all of them, and they constantly went out of their way to help us out.
At the captain's reception
So, we got a few pictures taken by the photographers on board, and started to wander around in our formal attire.  We went to the captain's reception, but someone had the stupid idea of holding it on the uncomfortable Royal Promenade, a place which can't hold the more than 3,000 passengers aboard by any stretch of the imagination.  So, we squeezed in and got our glasses of complimentary cava, and ran away so that we could begin to breathe again.  
Eric drinks his cava (aka. water) ;)
On the second night, we had a towel person waiting for us in bed.
Without much more to do onboard, we decided to try to brave a show with Eric.  We made our way to the back of the theater, but it turns out that those back seats are reserved for people with wheelchairs and canes.  One of the staff members pointed us to some other chairs, but as soon as we sat there, another staff member told us not to sit there because if somebody with a wheelchair or cane wanted to sit there, he would have to ask us to get up and move!  We were about to give up, especially after seeing another couple able to sit in the original chairs because they had come with their small child sleeping in the stroller. 
Waiting for the show to begin
We decided to head back to the stateroom to get Eric’s stroller, seeing as there were still 15 minutes before the show was to start, and there was no way that Eric was going to sit still for that long.  When we came back with Eric in the stroller, we headed towards the upper deck of the theater, and were lucky to find some seats in the very back there.  Eric actually behaved quite well throughout the show, probably because he loves music and dancing, and he even started to quietly fall asleep by the end.
We brought him back to the room, and decided to give him his night bath using the 2 euro small inflatable pool that I had brought with me for this very purpose.  I think the very best thing that I brought on the trip for Eric was just that, the inflatable pool.  It served as a basket for his inflatable ball during the day.  It let him play in the water on the pool deck, despite not being able to use the big pools because he isn’t potty trained yet.  (That said, we did notice numerous other parents bringing kids in the pool who were obviously wearing diapers under their swimsuits.)  And, like now, it served as the perfect baby bathtub, which fit perfectly in the stateroom shower.
We went to bed, and the next morning we were happy to find that the ship was already quite a bit emptier.  Most people had gotten up as early as they could to get to Rome as quickly as possible, to see everything they wanted to see.  We took our time to get to breakfast, and didn’t have to wait to sit down and eat.  
After a leisurely breakfast, we decided to explore Civitavecchia a little bit.  There wasn’t much to see there, but we let Eric run around a little bit, and got some cheaper-and-probably-better-than-onboard cappuccinos.  A cappuccino in a nice place in a plaza in Livorno, Italy –where we were able to sit, and the nice waitress brought it to us-cost us 2 Euros a piece.  That is quite a bit more than a café con leche in Spain.  That said, it is still much cheaper than the $2.75 for the smallest cappuccino onboard at the place on the Promenade where you have to stand in line and get it yourself.  Then, even though you get it yourself, you have to add the 15% gratuity and then another 10% VAT charge on top of the price + the gratuity.  After all of that is done, you have to pay another 3% for them to exchange your Euros into dollars, which is how they charge onboard!  Eric went to give the waitress the 4 Euros, and she happily took them from him and said “Belissimo.” 
After our coffee, we headed back to the ship and brought Eric’s inflatable pool up to the pool deck along with a small pail and some beach toys.  We got a few pails of water out of the Jacuzzi, and put them into Eric’s pool.   He happily splashed away there, and was so busy playing with the water that he didn’t want to leave.  It was getting late for lunch, though, so we headed to the buffet to get something to eat.  It was a much nicer day with everybody else off the ship visiting Rome.  We didn’t have the usual problems of getting across the ship or waiting for elevators, and there was no wait for a table at lunchtime. 
After lunch, we brought Eric back to the room, and he was so exhausted from running around the town and onboard, that he took a long nap.  Mauri wanted to watch the cruise ship depart from Civitavecchia from the peek-a-boo bridge that lets guests see into the bridge of the ship through windows in the deck above, but leaving once again coincided with our dinner time.  Plus, Eric was throwing a fit on the deck while waiting for his papi.  (We are now no longer mamá and papá, but are now mommy and papi.)
We arrived to dinner a bit late after trying to see the ship leave the port, and were once again the last at our table.  Our dinner was a bit awkward once again, and I started to realize what the problem was.  One of the couples was in their early 80s, while the other was likely in their early 60s.  We, of course are in our late 30s to 40s.  J  So, there are probably around twenty years between each couple at the table.  The person who speaks the most at the table is the eldest man, and he automatically speaks directly to the other man.  He only speaks to us when I am listening in and decide to add something to the conversation, and he wants to add to that.  I actually think that the other woman would prefer to speak with us, but she is too quiet to say much.  She seems more interested in what I have to say, though, than what the other couple does.  In actuality, the eldest woman never has much to say, and, when she does, it is impossible to hear her.
As is quite common on cruise ships, the waiters stopped after the main course to sing a song for us.  They sang “O Sole Mio,” after having danced around while waving their napkins over their heads.  Eric got excited and wanted to dance around and wave his napkin.  Then he saw a waiter with a napkin bunny on his hand that he moved like a hand puppet.  Eric got very excited and said “guau guau” and kept running after the waiter.  
Eric dances and waves his napkin
So, later on, we asked our waiter to try to make the bunny for us.  Even the maitre game by to give it a try, but he said it had been years since he made it, and it didn’t come out very well.  When our waiter came by with one, Eric had lost interest.  So, despite his going out of his way to make Eric happy with the napkin bunny, and despite Eric’s earlier obsession with it, Eric was too busy playing with our iPod to even show any interest.  The waiter gave Eric a napkin mouse, and we left the table.
The rest of the table had excused themselves, meanwhile, as they had tickets for the ice show that night.  What I hadn’t understood, though, is that because of the ice show, that only around 400 guests out of the thousands onboard can watch because the arena only fits 200 plus people during each of the two shows, there were no other shows available to watch that night.  So, once again, despite all of the advertising about the great ice skating rink, if anything, it only keeps us from being able to watch a nightly show, and we still had been unable to even see it.
We walked around for awhile trying to look for something to do, and came across a packed “Name that Tune” game in a very tiny, packed bar on our way back to our stateroom.  Eric heard the songs and started to excitedly dance to each song in the area by the elevators right outside the bar.  He kept dancing in circles until he fell down, over and over again.  I was laughing so hard I was about to cry.  After we let Eric dance for awhile, we decided to get him something more to eat at the always-open Café Promenade.  After that, not having much else to do, we headed back to our stateroom and went to bed.  We once again had a towel figure waiting for us in bed.  This time it was a little samurai.
Eric's late night pizza snack in the Café Promenade
2nd towel figure, a samurai
The next morning we woke up in Livorno.  We took a look at the new schedule for the day, and found that the ice skating rink was going to be open for awhile at night, but only from 7-8:30, during our dinner time.  (Are you kidding me?!?!?!?!)  We have also been invited to a reception for Crown and Anchor members, people who have cruised with Royal Caribbean before at 8:30, which we will likely attend if we get done with dinner in time.
Breakfast the next day
We decided to head into town after breakfast, and found that in Livorno, to get off the ship, you are forced to pay 5 Euros per person for a shuttle that brings you from the ship into the town center.  They do not allow you the option of leaving by foot.  We headed into town, but there wasn’t much to see.  We got due capuccini at a café with free wifi, and tried to quickly get caught up on emails.  I only checked to see if I had anything important, which I didn’t, deleted unwanted mail without opening it, and didn’t bother to open anything else.  I tried to get into Facebook to see if anything exciting was going on there, but I couldn’t get into may account, and it seemed to be blocked because of trying to access it from an unknown location.  They gave no problems to Mauri, though, and he was able to access his without a hitch.
Livorno port
During a very short coffee break, we were interrupted by 3 or 4 men trying to sell us things.  Mauri ended up buying Eric some inexpensive little plastic bracelets from one of them, right before paying so that we could leave.  Our cappuccinos cost even more here in Livorno, 6 Euros, or 3 Euros each!!!  With the cost of going into town, and the fact that there is nothing there interesting to see, I don’t think I would ever get off of a ship here ever again unless I wanted to go back to Pisa or Florence.  It just wasn’t worth it.
Checking email in Livorno
We went back to the ship, after I bought a new bead for my charm bracelet, and brought Eric up to the pool deck to play again.  It was much colder and he seemed less interested in the pool, so after a short play time, we decided to go to lunch.  Eric loved their Tandoori fish, and ate more than he had at any other meal so far.  After lunch, we brought an exhausted Eric back to our room for another long nap.  He never takes such long naps at home, so he must really be exhausting himself from all of his running around.  Mauri says that Eric is the person who is going to enjoy this vacation the most.  J
Once again, his nap was so long that we didn’t have much time for anything else before dinner time.  We went up to the sports deck because the climbing wall was going to finally be open, and we wanted to see some people climb it.  Then, we got ready for dinner.  Tonight was the first night that we weren’t the last to arrive at the table, but we did arrive right after the middle aged couple, and started to talk to them for awhile.  
At the lunch buffet, Eric loved the tandoori fish!!
The eldest couple arrived shortly after, and they had a seat and the older man seemed a bit upset that we were already in the middle of a conversation.  He would periodically mumble something about a different subject, but I would end up continuing the previous conversation, and he didn’t have as much to say that night.  We did talk quite a bit about the weather as it was quite windy, and the pool party above had been cancelled.  The other couple admitted to also having a stateroom on the other side of the second deck, and we were debating whether or not the waves were going to be banging against our window that night.  They asked for Mauri’s "professional opinion", and he said that it was highly likely.  Luckily, it didn’t turn out to be too bad, and, although the waves came close to our window, and we did notice the occasional splash, it wasn’t enough to keep us up all night.
Eric loved the stairways and elevators on the ship.
At dinner time the waiters once again danced, and wanted us to dance the Macarena with them.  After making such a scene dancing yesterday, we figured Eric would love it, but he just didn’t get as into it this time.  The only thing that ended up happening was that we had taken him out of his high chair, right after finally getting him into it, and he refused to go back in afterwards.  The eldest couple excused themselves from the table, before dessert was served, so we were able to enjoy the rest of the dinner talking with the other couple.
At the Crown and Anchor reception
We, though, were also in a bit of a rush to leave, having the reception for Crown and Anchor members to go to.  Of course, once again the scheduling of this ship seemed a bit off, and they had scheduled it for 8:30, but we didn’t finish dinner until around 10 to 9.  We made our way, as quickly as we could with Eric, to the Imperial Lounge, which is a relatively small lounge, especially when you consider the size of the ship.  There didn’t seem to be any seats left, so we sat on some chairs that they had placed against the back wall of the lounge, but they didn’t have a table nearby.  We walked in during a small dancing show, and soon after the Captain spoke.  They had been passing around cava and wine, and we crossed with one of the waiters on our way to our seats, and he gave us each a glass of cava.  Looking around, I saw a lot of empty glasses, and it seems that they had also served some sort of cocktail, and other people had already been served several times.  By the time we arrived, though, the waiters weren’t really passing out drinks anymore.  They offered us canapés, but since we had just finished eating, we, of course, politely declined.
A towel kangaroo awaited us in our stateroom after dinner.
Basically the reception was over, but they said that they had one last surprise for us, and it was to be able to talk to the performers of the ice show that we had been unable to attend.  They asked us if we had enjoyed it, and we thought if only there had been room for us to see it.  Since Eric was running around and couldn’t sit still, and it didn’t seem like there was going to be much for us there, shortly after having arrived, we left.  Poor Mauri had dressed in slacks for nothing.  (Jeans and tanks tops were not allowed in at the reception.)  We couldn’t help but marvel at how bad the scheduling was once again.  I complained that everything went against the people at the first seating of dinner.  We couldn’t use the ice skating rink, and we missed most of the best part of the reception.  Then Mauri pointed out that the people in the second seating of dinner had to miss the night show if they wanted to attend the reception.  It, once again, just didn’t seem to make any sense, no matter how you looked at it. 
I thought back to our last reception of this sort, on the Norwegian Wind.  It had been planned so much better.  They held it in the afternoon, when everybody could attend, and it was held in the larger theater/lounge that was more than large enough for everybody to comfortably sit in.  They even handed out little gifts to the members, Norwegian Cruise line pins.
By the elevator floor, you could always tell which day it was.  Today was Wednesday.
After the reception, we went to see some of our photos.  Not to sound like I am constantly complaining about this cruise, because I really did enjoy myself, but we were very surprised by how much the price of photos had increased.  On past cruises, we have always bought most of the photos that they have taken of us, be it on formal night, photos with the captain, photos on the gangway…
On this cruise, though, the prices are no longer a much more reasonable 6-7 dollars a piece.  They have been raised to $19.95 a photo (plus 21% VAT, of course, and who knows about gratuities)!!!  The problem is that we actually do like some of them.  So, we will have to decide what we are going to do.  They have made it so cost prohibitive to do anything on this cruise, that you just have no interest in buying anything from them anywhere.  They have printed out so many pictures, that they are just going to end up throwing away anyway.  It just makes no sense to me why they would make it so cost prohibitive for you to get your pictures.  I can’t imagine that they are making more money this way.  If anything, I think they are only pissing people off.  The other two couples at our dinner table, who are also frequent cruisers, have refused to let them take their pictures anymore and have also mentioned how surprised they were by how ridiculously expensive things had become on this cruise.  The eldest couple had even smuggled 6 bottles of champagne aboard!! Despite wanting some of the pictures, I’m tempted to just save our money and get a photographer at home to do a session with us.  So, no, the pictures wouldn’t be a souvenir from our cruise, but we have plenty of other memories from it.
After the show, there was supposed to be a big party on the small Promenade again.  Are you serious!?!?!
We don't fit!!!!!
To be fair, they have photo packages available, but you are to buy several pictures at once, and it is almost impossible to find each of your photos to be able to do so.  To make things worse, they keep moving them around each day, and are often hiding some under others.  I found two photos of one little girl under a stack of our pictures.  It would have been impossible for her to find them had I not put them somewhere else for her to see them.  The packages aren’t really a great deal either, and the cheapest package only gives you four photos that they have taken of you aboard.  Once you buy those four pictures, they give you a picture of the ship in a special portfolio/frame thing.
Eric's night bottle with whole milk from cartons available in the breakfast buffet.
There is another, more expensive package for people who want the cruise DVD (yawn), with the annoying cruise director and activities manager, and 5 small pictures of the ship/ports of call, along with their four pictures.  I really couldn’t care less about any of that.  How about giving me 5 smaller pictures of us?!?!?  They’d still be making a huge profit.  If anything, they’d be making more money because they’d be giving away photos that they are going to throw away anyways instead of pictures of the ship that somebody else might actually be interested in purchasing.
Next post begins in Ajaccio, Corsica
As you can tell, I’m not as impressed with Royal Caribbean as I once was.  There are only so many times and ways one can feel like someone is trying to take advantage of them before getting upset about it.  They even want to charge you $13 (plus VAT) to watch a movie in your cabin, despite having free movies in the conference center daily.  I mean, really, if I get stopped by one more crew member trying to peddle me his $5 (plus) one liter bottle of Evian…!!!

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