Day 5 of our Carnival Glory Experience

Monday, January 28

Welcome to the Grand Cayman Islands.   We awake at 8 am.  This is significant for us as we get up without an alarm clock at 6:50 am every day.  Sleeping in this late is unheard of for us.

We find "Breakfast for a King" in the Platinum restaurant.  An amazing sit-down dining experience.  There is an amazing menu but pretty much tell them what you want and they will bring it.  Cranberry juice is not on the menu but I order half cran half orange for my juice.  It arrives in a wine goblet over ice.  The orange juice is freshly squeezed, of course.  That juice is worth the price of the cruise because it is just like paradise in a glass.

No, we go and get our tender boat stickers to go ashore to the Grand Cayman.  The first tender was at 7:45 am and we both revel that we were not on the first boat.  It is hard to claim we are "morning people" when we keep sleeping in. Despite the crowds, the tendering process is efficient and amazingly quick.

We get on a very crowded boat on the lower deck and head out for our 10 minute journey.  The crew of the tendering boat is so experienced and has done this so often that this is nothing to them. To us, this is a small boat with steep steps and nothing to hold on to and the ocean water splashing in on us.  Cruising, as it turns out, is not for the faint of heart.  Not just this tender but throughout our cruise, we did a lot of walking.  Good for the caloric output, but, again, not for the faint of heart.

We arrive in Georgetown, the capital of the Cayman Islands.  We are there for a couple of minutes when we just get this vibe of the nation.  Relaxed.  Fun.  Carnival has an ice water hydration station at the end of the peer.  Even though we have already brought full water bottles, this ice water tastes like a memorable experience.  Just another example of Carnival thinking of everything.

This is the only port we go to that is actually a real city and not just a tourist mall built for cruise ships.  Although we buy two shirts, we avoid the tourist places and instead search out Canadian Banks.  We find Scotia Bank, Royal Bank, and Bank of Montreal.  I'm sure we could have found the rest of the big 5 but we don't want to wander too far away.  As we are walking through the streets, we see roosters out for their daily walks.  They must be used to people so they barely move when we walk by.  We find the Legislative Assembly for the Islands.  It is smaller than my branch of the library at home.  Of course, what do they have to legislate?   More relaxed banking regulations?  It is a Monday but we don't see any sign of activity and no one going in or out.

I am tired of walking so I ask my sweetie if we can go aboard shore.  We walk back to our peer and we there is a newly arriving tender boat unloading that we can take back.  Us and two older women.  This tender boat is even smaller.  The women choose to go to the lower level.  We sit on the upper level and sit on blocks with nothing to hold on to.  I marvel at the efficiency of the tender boats especially the different knots they use without any effort.  It makes me really safe.  I sit as close as I can to the edge of the boat and my sweetie seats as close as he can to the middle.  I am able to see several sting rays swimming in the clear aquamarine ocean.  The ocean mist brushes my hair for me and since the ocean is my friend, it playfully splashes my legs.

We arrive back to take a quick nap.  Garry meets us and wants to make sure everything is to our liking?  Really,  What is there not to like.  We wake up and my sweetie has an amazing Guy Fieri burger and I opt for a home-made taco salad.  By home-made, it means that I point to what I want in my taco bowl.  That is about the biggest exertion I make on the cruise.

We go down to the lobby for 1:30 pm trivia.  Again, I can't believe how clear my mind is and how smart I feel.  There is a group of competitive African American girls working together.  I love their energy.  Even though this is a competition, I am giving them hints to the answers they don't know.  This is not me.  Anyone who knows me, knows that I am a fierce competitor and helping people I don't know is not me.  Yet, it is a different dynamic on a cruise.  Everyone is part of one big family.  I end up finishing 2nd in the competition missing 2 questions out of 20.  The winner answers 19.20 questions correctly and...... it is my sweetie !!! He wins a piece of ship.  A tiny trophy replica of Carnival Glory.  Everyone comes over to congratulate him.  We are literally so excited that we are having a hard time breathing.  Who needs alcohol, we are drunk with this experience.  We weave our way back to our room and take pictures of this glorious ship on a stick like we just won an Oscar.

We need some way to calm down so we go to the library/games room to play a game of scrabble (and I need another book).  I love this room.  I love it because it is so pristine.  There is not a speck on dust on any book even the ones that I know that no self-respecting person would ever read.  But, that is true of our whole ship.  Everything is so clean that it is sterile.  I see cleaning people everywhere, washing windows, polishing the decks, I even saw a woman washing the grout on one of the pool decks with a toothpaste.  How thorough is that?  On the morning we boarded, we bought a Miami newspaper and there was a story about another Carnival cruise having an issue with cleanliness.  I was worried then that it was a bad omen.  The cleaning staff work so hard, however, they stop everytime someone walks by and wishes them a "good day".

We take one of the scrabble games and take the tiniest table possible so that we don't take up more room necessary.  This is where we experience our first wrinkle of the cruise.  There are four people in their twenties playing a Board game.  They are arguing about the rules, etc.  There are two people sitting at a table for 6 and they have obviously been there for a while.  Three different groups come in and ask the couple if they are actually going to play a game or can they let other people sit there and play.  The couple say that they are waiting for people and they will be playing a game.  As we are finishing our game, the couple they are waiting for arrive and they start playing a card game.  Really.  They could play a card game anywhere.  There are tons of places to sit and chill.  I guess we aren't all family after all.

My sweetie loves playing scrabble and I do to, just not with him.  You see, I used to play in a scrabble league and I am a pretty good scrabble player so I tend to win more often than I lose.  But, this is Cruise Sweetie, a different guy than Land Sweetie and he is like me, smarter.  Late in the game, I find a place to put EQUATED on the board.  The Q is on a double letter square and the word is on a double word square and I get the bonus for using all 7 letters in my tray, yet I still only win by 22 points.  The game of our lives.

We go change for supper but are delayed when we see children getting their pictures taken with Dr. Seuss characters.  The children are so incredibly cute that we just get drunk on their energy.

We go to dinner and we are seated with Adam and Terry.  They are an amazing couple who live in Yonkers.  It turns out we are all huge Law and Order fans.  Adam actually worked on the 5 story brownstone that Dick Wolf bought and restored for his daughter.  Yes.  Dick Wolf, the creator the Law and Order franchise.  Adam met him several times, and I made him tell me every detail of every conversation he ever had with him.  I will think of Adam every time I watch the end of Law and Order.  I don't know what we had for dinner but I know it was spectacular.  Remember, I was sitting with someone who had met Dick Wolf.  Terry had some digestive distress in the middle of our meal so was gone for about 15 minutes.  We talked politics, packing strategies, food network programs.  We had so much in common other than they lived in New York.

We planned to go to the Dive-Inn movie, but it wasn't one that we wanted to see.  We never did go see a movie because we were busy doing other things but watching a movie in a lounge chair under the stars surrounded by ocean was very appealing.  We also never got to see one of the four comedy acts happening nightly.  There was just too much to do.

It turns out relaxation is very tiring.  We opted to get some popcorn and go back to our room and stare at our trophy.  Our bodies were tired but our minds were still racing with the excitement of our big win.