NOLA and Cruise-Day 3

We were fortunate to have a balcony attached to our room. It was on the 7th deck, towards the very back of the ship. The only issue with it was there were no stairs or elevators where we were located. To get to an elevator or anything at all, we had to walk down the very long hallway to the center of the ship. And that walk took me a full minute and that's saying something. 

I kept the shade open just a little bit so the sun would find its way in, mainly since I wanted to get the gym in early every day before breakfast. I knew I would eat and drink a lot so I was going to get my workouts in. 

The gym is on the 12th deck. It's shaped like a letter U except the entire inside of the U is a hardwood floor set aside for classes. So the cardio machines are in the middle with free weights on one side of the U and the machines on the other. Plenty of towels, but no water fountains. It was actually pretty crazy, there was no water refill stations that I could find anywhere. Often times, I'd get bottles of water from the bar and keep them in our fridge or I would take two glasses o ice water from the Windjammer Cafe and pour them in my blender bottle. 

I started with a 20 minute run before doing chest and back. Then came breakfast in Windjammer.

Sadly I didn't notice the omelet station until I had already eaten my eggs and bacon and fruit. I took a shower in what was of course a very small space where you can't stretch out. But I loved that water pressure, I wish I could take that home! Then I did some trivia, there was a Sudoku challenge, Christmas trivia, and a Christmas dilitoid challenge, which was brutally hard. For instance 12 D of C is 12 Days of Christmas. But they came up with some brutal ones,

 

Lunch was a burger salad. Then since it was Sunday, I walked to King and Country pub, which is the British themed pub on board to watch some football. I ended up at a table surrounded by Lions fans. It was fun, talked to some cool people and they were very interested when they realized I'm a Jets fan. That led to a 20 minute discussion about Aaron Rodgers. I was probably in there about 4 hours.

I tried playing mini golf on the top deck (13th), but most of the putters were designed for kids and there must have been 20 kids all over the 9 holes. I got through 3 holes before I finally had enough. Pretty cool that they have an actual course and not just a green. 

For dinner, it was formal night. And I should give a shoutout to Maria and Rey, our servers. Both are from the Philippines, I would say half the staff on board was Filipino. I went with the French onion soup, which was super hot, to start. Then a very nice beef tenderloin with mashed potatoes and two mere spears of asparagus, finished off with an apple cobbler and ice cream for dessert.

Back in Schooner, I had a peanut butter tropic. It had skrewball, pineapple juice and a couple of other ingredients. Really weird, a little sweet for me. I don't tend to prefer sweet drinks later in the evening. I went to the 50s and 60s music party in the Colony Club, where the game shows take place. Only about 45 minutes, but really fun, I also watched the Miss Brilliance pageant, located in the Centrum, which is in the open space in the middle of the ship on the 4th floor. My issue with the Centrum is it's too small, there's so little room to stand when there's an event or party there. Anyway, the final 4 was three black women and a 65 year old white woman. The elderly women had some attitude and sass, and she won. I was kinda bored at this point, so I listened to some classical guitar by a guy named Andres and I turned it in for the night.