My Goodness, My Guinness

We had another day at sea. Keeping Ern occupied was a little difficult because he wasn't old enough to go to the kids club on the ship. There was a room for younger kids with some toys and a tv playing kid's movies. It was unsupervised though so we had to be in there with him. It worked out.

Many of the gingerbread Christmas creations on the boat were hilariously nightmarish.

Ern in the kiddie room.

Ernie referred to this thing on the deck as the choo choo. We visited it numerous times.

It was funny we couldn't ever record on walks on our Apple watches because while we were walking our normal speed the ship was plowing through the ocean, so the watch thought we were cheating and jogging at 50 miles an hour or however fast we were traveling.

We did more perfume sampling surely than the rest of my cumulative life.

There was a library onboard and I was delighted that they actually had a book that I wanted to read. Erik Larson is one of my favorite authors who does non fiction stories that are so gripping they feel like fiction.

We did some playdough mess making at lunch.

Ernie had his first plantains today. I think he was a bit confused because his mom told him they were bananas. He wasn’t a fan at first but he stuck with it. The fake bananas were served in a fake Irish pub that didn’t have Guinness or any other Irish beer that I could see. The only beer on tap was Stella. I think this must be where bad Irish people go when they die.

They had a South African beer that I'd never tried before. I thought it was fun that they seemed to have random products that the ship picked up on its journeys around the world.

My book had some fascinating historical food and drink references.

We had dinner at one of the ship's restaurants to mix things up a little.

This was at Cagney's which was a steak house. So I ordered a steak.

We watched a show that was like a medley of song and dance through the decades. Turns out when you're trapped on a boat with no internet you'll pretty much watch paint dry.

At Sea

Keeping his highness entertained while docked at a world class city is one thing. Keeping him occupied solely within the confines of a cruise ship is an entirely different thing. I think we did a pretty darn good job with what we had, though.

I didn't end up buying Starlink for this trip but it definitely captured my imagination. If I have a remote job and could actually trust that I'd have a solid internet connection... I could cruise for months at a time! To anywhere on the planet!

Ern returned to his important project of becoming more melon than human at the ship's cafeteria.

We explored every inch of the ship.

There have been a few moments today where the sun was shining and the ocean was passing peacefully by and we didn’t have a care in the world or anywhere we needed to be. Ernie was running or playing something happily nearby. I got a weird feeling that this is what heaven would be like. It wasn’t entirely a good feeling. Almost like things were too perfect so something must be wrong. To be in heaven you have to be dead, after all.

We jingled every jangle.

We examined the numerous and sprawling gingerbread cities.

It's funny how quickly your entertainment tastes change when you have little to no internet and a lil guy to amuse. A chef showing you how to make animal sculptures out of fruit? Yes I'll watch that.

In addition to the beautifully convenient buffet, there were several restaurants on board as well.

The loss of instant food gratification was a little painful, I must say. We had more entertainment work to do while waiting for our order.

I was amused whenever the cafeteria and the restaurant food overlapped. Ern's lunch melon was in different shapes than his breakfast melon.

We walked through the onboard shops several times. Maybe more than one time a day. One highlight was smelling all of the expensive perfume sample bottles.

They're kind of weird about drinks. For example you aren't supposed to fill up a water bottle with anything at the cafeteria, even water. The sink water is kind of gross. So we bought numerous cases of bottled water. It's funny that it sort of seems to be whatever kind of bottled water that was available at whatever the last port was. On our previous cruise on the Norwegian Dawn I recall the water was in carton box things while this time it was in glass bottles.