Day 2 Sat At Sea : Day 3 Sun Grand Cayman Islands

Grand Cayman photos
Sunday - January 6, 2008
So, if it is Sunday, this must be Grand Cayman. Or not yet. We left Port Everglades about 1.5 hours late. Then yesterday from 3pm to 5pm we just sat dead in the water after fighting good sized waves and winds all morning. When the ship restarted about 5pm yesterday Captain Romeo announced that we were about 30 minutes behind schedule. We guessed then he must have been talking about an Italian half-hour because by our reckoning we had to be at least 2 hours behind schedule and possibly more than 3.5 hours. It is now about 2 hours past arrival time at Grand Cayman and we can't see it yet. Last night was the Captain's Welcome Reception. He told us that a rubber band had broken, he twirled his hand around and said you know the thing that makes the ship go (hand motion for go around). He said they had fixed it. Then he introduced all his senior staff. He asked if we wondered who was "driving this thing." Then he told us not to worry because he had this remote control. He took a plastic thing out of his pocket and raised it up and clicked it and all the lights went out. He got a big laugh. Anyway, just a few minutes ago the GPS screen on the TV finally updated. All yesterday afternoon, night and this morning it had shown the same location as when went we dead in the water north of Cuba. Now it shows us nearly at Grand Cayman. We were hoping that it was a TV problem and not that the GPS on the navigator's autopilot had not been reset and we had sailed to who knows where!
The CD Brian just came on the loudspeakers and announced that we would be anchored in about an hour. It sounds like it will be about another hour before people not on ship's tours will be able to tender ashore. We have had some trauma over that. You may recall that our private guide had cancelled on us here. We were waiting to hear from him if he had been able to find us a substitute guide. When we had not heard from him by 5pm yesterday, Debbie went to the Travel Concierge Desk and explained our situation and asked if they could help us with a private guide. They told her to fill out a fax request and they would get back to confirm it. The woman sounded like it was a done deal. By 10pm last night we had heard nothing, no messages or letters or notes. But, we had 2 voicemails/missed calls from our originally scheduled guide that he had a substitute lined up for us thismorning. Debbie called him back and got the details and the new guide's name and cell phone number. This morning there was still no word from the Travel Concierge's Desk. We stopped by after their 8am opening and they did not know anything about it! So assuming that nothing had been done, we asked them to nevermind! They said they would cancel the request and assume that the local operator had ignored the request anyway. We have spoken to our new replacement private guide this morning about our late arrival and our truncated touring day. Still keeping fingers crossed to salvage something here. The plan now is local lunch/beer and the QEII Botanical Park. More on this later.
In other news... Debbie managed to step badly out of the bathroom yesterday morning and somehow bent her right foot under her and what a mess. It really hurts, is purple and not quite twice the size of her left foot! Anyway, lots of icing, elevation and anti-inflammatories. She still made a full slate of exercise classes yesterday and Formal night. Clay went to some lectures and is spending time on the treadmill vs. the jogging track. Margie got a needlepoint project yesterday afternoon. At the rate she is working, she will be a little over half done when we leave the ship. All in all everyone is enjoying themselves and the ship.
One more note on Mariner. What is up with Deck 7? It has a floor like a freaking funhouse! There is not more than 6 feet running of flat floor surface the length of it! So, here we are all wobbly and seasick and the floor is a rolling surface all on its own! The other floors aren't like this. Only ours. What the heck? Debbie and Margie are convinced they would be seasick on this floor with our without sailing.
Today's Passages had an insert on this cruise's Spotlight on Chocolate. RSSC had advertised for months that we would have John Scharffenberger on this segment. Today we are informed that our Spotlight guests and chocolate experts are Tribeca Grill Executive Pastry Chef Stephane Motir and RSSC's Director of Entertainment and Special Events, Lyn Farmer. Yesterday there was a chocolate and rum seminar and tasting. None of us went to it. Beyond yesterday's kickoff, they plan to serve 4 of Chef Motir's desserts in Compass Rose and hold 2 cooking demonstrations.
Since today is Sunday and we had no where to be early, we went to Compass Rose for breakfast. The Champagne breakfast special today was Fish Cake Eggs Benedict with caviar.No takers again! We did have the champagne and mimosas though! Everyonewe saw at breakfast commented on how alike Debbie and Margie look. The consensus is that Debbie is aging badly and Margie is obviously living right. We had a really silly head waiter named Rommel.
We appear to be slowing off the coast of George Town now, so will close and be back with more later. Wish us luck!
HAL's Amsterdam that was leaving Port Everglades the same day as us beat us to Grand Cayman, not too surprisingly given our delays and technical setbacks. Also, anchored before we arrived was Crystal Serenity. Mariner was the last to arrive, no other cruise ships showed up. (And Mariner was the first to leave!)
Back from a good day ashore. Since there are only about 540 people onboard now tendering went very quickly. We barely sat down in Mariner Lounge after getting our tender tickets before we were called to leave. The tender was less than half full, so the whole ticketing process seemed really unnecessary. The tenders on Mariner have seats up on the roof, which is really cool and way better than riding inside.
Fortunately, we had a cell phone number for Merril, our substitute guide, because we had to call him at least 3 times to tell us where to walk and then we still did not find him until he told Debbie that he was looking right at her and she heard his voice in her other ear! He was funny and we had a good day with him. He had a big van and was a good driver. He said he drives a bus for a living. First, he took us to a small local bar near downtown George Town. It was like Cheers and everyone said hello. It turns out that Merril knows a lot of people on the island! Clay had a Cay Brew beer. He liked it. It was lager style. Merril ordered a Miller Lite. We thought that odd, but he said Cay Brew was new and he had not tasted it yet. He tasted Clay's and liked it but was not ready to change brands. Later we drove by the the Cay Brew Brewery near the airport. Then we went to lunch with a whole lot of locals at a Sunday Buffet of local delicacies. Tripe with beans, BBQ chicken, fried Mahi Mahi, chicken curry, jerk pork, spicy meatballs, homemade chicken and dumpling soup, fried plantains, rum cake, bread pudding and a lot of other things that we did not even try. It turns out that Caymanians really like spicy food! We drove past the Mastic Trail drive and to the QEII Botanic Park. It was very pretty and we saw lots, including blue iguanas and green Parrotts. Blue iguanas are really creepy and scary and green parrotts arereally cute. Debbie even spotted a Hickatee, which is a small green turtle. Margie found a native Cayman rock near what they call Cliff Rock walls. They said they are very hard rocks, but that is all we know. Then we went to see the Blowholes. They were really good today with big waves rolling in on that shore. A little after that we had driven to the furthest point from where we arrived. We turned around and headed back. Merril dropped us off back near the dock area to shop for Clay a T-shirt. We tendered back just after 4pm. The last tender was scheduled at 4:30 and departure was 5pm. We actually headed out about 15 minutes early.
Margie wants to go up to the Observation Lounge before dinner to hear Hal Fraser on piano and then she wants to go to the 9:45pm Constellation Theater show for the ventriliquist/comedian. We'll see.
Margie was a no go. She got as far as dressed for drinks, dinner and show and dropped into bed. The seas got into the same side-to-side rolling as the first night. Added to that was some front-to-back up and down. It got pretty exciting. Clay and Debbie did go up to the OL to hear Hal. It was like a roller coaster thrill ride or one of those anti-gravity flights! Then, since we had all decided that the Compass Rose menu was particularly unappealing that we would go up to LaVeranda, so that is where we went. Not too happy to stay up so high on the ship, but... We got one of the added tables at the back. Voyager never did this in LaVeranda, but Mariner walls off the breakfast buffet area and puts the antipasto and dessert buffet in the aisle, then adds two tables to finish off the aisle. Since there is a anti-slip runner going down that walkway, the tables wobble. Ours was just rocking wildly without us even touching it because of the motion. We had to get that remedied pretty quick to stay there. LaVeranda was very crowded tonight. It was Country Club Casual shipwide anyway. We finished eating by about 10 of 8pm and way too early to think about going to the CT. We decided to go look at the videotapes and pick one to see if Margie would like to watch from bed and we could get her something to eat. Also, to get some cookies and cappuchino since we skipped dessert to get out of the amplified motion of the higher deck of LV. We got side tracked by the Puzzle Corner. There was a jigsaw puzzle of Venice with only about 30-40 pieces left to go. We got our snacks and sat down to work. Not long after we arrived a puzzle fanatic came tohelp us finish it and no one could leave until it was done. There were 2 missing pieces but otherwise it was finished. The guy was very pleased because this meant he would get a new one tomorrow. We will make an effort to not walk by there again! We got a video and stopped at Margie's cabin but she was sound asleep. Debbie took in the stuff from her door and then left her alone. We did not watch the movie either! We did have tomorrow's menu on our door tonight. They only include Compass Rose Lunch, Dinner and dessert and LaVeranda Dinner. None for Signatures or Latitudes. We have not seen a menu for Latitudes since boarding. Clay thought he saw one lying on the bar up in the OL tonight, but it was so rough up there that he didn't try to walk over to read it. It was never up on the walk today outside the restaurant. Also, unlike Voyager, Mariner does not run the day's menus on the TV on any channel. Not that we really like that, since it can take you an hour to wait to catch all of the menu you want to read cycling by on the TV, but at least you don't have to keep running around the ship trying to find a dang menu posted somewhere! Mariner really needs to get interactive TVs and get those menus up and posted for everyone to easily to able to check. Tomorrow is a sea day and we will hope that we awake to much calmer seas.
Grand Cayman photos