We wake up in the dark (as usual) and I'm excited because we've arrived at our first port of call: George Town! I've never been to the Caribbean before, and the only thing we had planned today was to hang out at the beach. Because I am crazy and anal retentive, I not only researched and found a beach club (I like bathrooms. Clean bathrooms) but I booked us a cabana too because with a cabana you get shade, a table and 4 chairs as well as 4 chaise lounges too. Sounds good to me!
Raymond and I dress in our bathing suits and walk the 3 steps across the hall to our parents' cabin. I go out to the balcony and take my first look at George Town. Eh, I can't tell what it looks like from here, but I'm excited anyway. Good morning Caribbean!
It's going to be a pretty busy day in George Town with multiple ships tendering in:
Per the usual, we head to the buffet, where I once again meet my old friends: Royal Caribbean breakfast pastries. Lord they're so good. Just looking at them now makes me drool. (sigh)
I eat a pretty hearty breakfast, but not as much as usual since well, we're going to the beach, and I don't need to be super bloated while floating around in the water. Then we're ready to go!
We get in the elevator to go down to the tendering station.
And look outside at the view:
We get on the tender pretty quickly:
We're all decked out for the beach - when we arrive on the tender, it's easy to find a taxi. They direct you to their van and wait for it to fill up and drop you off at whatever location you want. For the Royal Palms Beach Club it was $5 per person. It's a little too far to walk, for us anyway, but not a far drive at all.
We got there pretty early, only one of the cabanas were taken and we picked the one closest to the main building for proximity to the changing rooms and toilets.
Here's what the cabanas look like:
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| looking at the other cabanas from ours |
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| other cabanas |
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| our cabana |
and of course, we had to take a picture of us at ours:
If I were to do it again, I don't think I'd get a cabana. I do like having a table, our own lounge chairs, and some shade, but I really don't like the locations of the cabanas. You're paying extra money to be behind everyone else so you don't get a great view of the water.
Here's the view from our cabana:
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| this is a crap selfie, but you can see exactly where we are relative to the water |
The service was fine - the employees were friendly, though the drinks were kinda pricey, but I think for the same amount of money, we could've just done with getting 4 lounge chairs, umbrellas and food and drinks for less we spent. And because we got there early, we could've picked chairs in fantastic locations with a great view instead of a view of the water obstructed by everyone else.
Regardless, it was a fantastically beautiful day and I overcame my disappointment.
My parents wandered off and laid their towels beneath some shade for a better view of the ocean while Raymond and I wandered around on our own.
I thought it was time for another selfie:
The one thing I wanted to try was conch. We don't have that in So Cal, so I ordered the conch fritters and a few drinks. Eh. The conch was chopped up into teeny tiny pieces and most of the fritter was breading. I couldn't taste conch. I felt like I was eating fried carbs in some fancy mayo.
The iced tea was good, but it better be for like, $5.
I mostly spent the day on my lounge chair reading a trashy novel and then cooling off in the ocean when it got hot. My parents actually took a nap in the shade and came back for a snack - then we took some more photos.
When it was around 2:30 or so, we decided to leave. My dad wanted to get back on the ship and eat a real lunch, and we'd all had enough sun by then considering we'd been sitting there for about 5 hours or so by then.
My parents took the tender back first while Raymond and I wandered around the shops by port first. I purchased a deck of cards for my friend for a souvenir and Raymond bought a couple of Cuban cigars. Then we took the tender back. And see a funny pirate ship available for rent.
We literally just relaxed the whole day, but I was still tired! Thus I was in need of refreshment. Raymond and I headed directly to Cafe Lattitudes and got iced lattes to help us recover from our way too relaxing day.
I decided to take some photos while I made Raymond stand in line and order. I found a seat and plopped down.
The rest of the day was spent lazing about - reading, watching TV, wandering about the ship, and eating.
We went to the buffet for an early dinner (and of course, we had another late night snack) and I built mky own burger. I came up with the idea of using cheese and lettuce from the salad bar instead of the stuff available at the grill. I don't like shredded lettuce on my burgers, so I just went and got the big pieces of lettuce in the salad bar for my burger. And I prefer provolone instead of American cheese, and they had that at the salad bar. AND they have thousand island dressing, so I could make my own ghetto style In N Out burger. Yay!
And of course, there's pie!
After more Star Wars glutting and picking our clothes for trekking through the jungle and packing our bags for the next day's excursion, we snack and go to bed. The next day, we get to see Mayan ruins!
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