January 4 - AT SEA

Bahamas bound

Weather – 26º, party cloudy

Steps – 5,879

Today is our last sea day and second last of the cruise. I’ve been having the usual end of vacation feelings for the last couple of days…I’m sad it’s ending, excited to be home (even if that means going back to winter) and back to my usual routine. I’m also dreading packing and flying – we don’t have far to go from Miami to Calgary, but it’s an ordeal.

shopping

I originally thought tomorrow, our last cruise day was a sea day, but I got the last 2 days mixed up. The last day being a port day is probably better. If it were a sea day, we’d likely spend it moping about the end of vacation…this way we get to see one more port and be distracted from the reality of going home.

Some people are staying on for the next 5 months – the world cruise starts the

nut vase

day we get off and ends May 17. In fact, we met a guy who with his wife boarded on Dec 1, the cruise BEFORE this one, and will stay on until the world cruise ends. This is the same guy who told me he’d been to Calgary before. He said he’d been to the Stampede the year the Canucks won the Stanley Cup. I said it was the Flames…he said, no it was the Canucks. Ummm, excuse me sir, I think I know. We went back and forth a bit until he relented (sort of) and said it didn’t matter. Ummm, yes it matters and thanks for mansplaining! Sheesh!!

It was another lazy sea day…same ol’ except for a bit of packing. Plus, I shockingly finished the Elton John book – not shockingly because I didn’t enjoy it – I really did, but shockingly because I usually spend free time blogging. I prefer to blog but also found time to read.

I also did a bit of shopping in the gift shop. Every cruise we seem to be left with a bit of ‘ship-board credit’. We get a bit from being onboard over 200 nights, and some from having Norwegian Cruise Line shares – we sometimes get credit

another sunset

from a ship promo, booking onboard, from our travel agent etc, but not this time. I got some sunglasses and lip balm…8 lip balms! Too bad they don’t still have the pedicure cream I love…I had them ship me 8 tubes of that once! The gift shop onboard doesn’t really have anything interesting to us. There’s lots of jewelry and watches – not our scene and some clothes that aren’t exactly our style, plus they usually have giant or tiny sizes. On Celebrity we were able to spend it in the casino – not on Regent, maybe someday.

We could also use the credit in the spa – Chris got a hair cut. I was going to have a pedicure, but the last of my Amazon bug bites are only just finally fading - I didn't want a pedicure all over my bites. We could also buy wine not included or pay tours. The included wine is just fine  with us, but the pay tours are sometimes interesting to us…they are usually smaller groups and to places that are costlier than what the cruise line is willing to include. There were very few pay tours this time. I’m happy with my purchase.