harryfat1

To the rest of the world, it’s Wednesday but you don’t care. It’s Day 5 as far as you are concerned Windjammer wasn't too busy at 7:30. They have an omelet station and unlike the old days when you had to stand in a long wait to wait for your personalized omelet, you just place your order with the person at the omelet station and they issue you the pager and when your omelet is done, the pager will vibrate and lights will go off and you just go and pick up it. Much better system. In the past, I seldom got omelets for breakfast because I didn’t want to stand in line and wait but with the pager system, you can get other food/drinks and start eating your breakfast and then go back when the omelet is done.

Went back to the cabin after my coffee and woke up the rest of the family to go to Windjammer A pilot boat here already to guide us in Aruba straight ahead

Day 5 – Aruba Since we had a tour scheduled for Aruba this morning, I woke up earlier to go down to 270 to get my coffee. Wake view at 6:56 after going through the secret entrance. More overcast today than at Curaaco yesterday. A couple of dudes are already at the back of 270 early in the morning I got there at 6:58 and the café 270 wasn’t opened yet. Had to stand and wait a couple of minutes for them to open up at 7. They are nothing if not punctual. Don't expect them to open up early

At midnight, we are only sailing at 6 knots out of Curaaco on the way to Aruba as the 2 islands are only 70 miles apart so we don’t need to break any speed record to get there tomorrow morning. Anyway, since tonight was the 80’s night and that reminds me of the popular 80’s TV show – Miami Vice and the famous Phil Collins song to close out the night: This concludes day 4 of the trip report as we are now officially halfway done with this cruise. +++++++++++ As always, I appreciate everyone for following along. It’s been over a month since I started and we are more than 60% done as Curacao has the most number of pictures compared to other days. The next day, Aruba, has the second most.

My $20 cheapo pseudo smartwatch from Temu tells me we walked 14,000+ steps today in going back and forth to Curacao twice. This would be the most we walked on this sailing as we joined the tour at Aruba so we didn't walk as much. Labadee wasn’t that much walking either. We pedaled the bike pretty far back at Hollywood Beach but I don’t think my watch accounted for that.

After the show at 11, my older son and my wife wanted to check out the 80’s dance party at the Music Hall. The venue was WAY too small for the number of people that wanted to be there. My younger son and I left after a while but my wife and my older one stayed for most of the dance. These are some of their pictures. Since I didn’t stay, I can’t comment on the event other than it was way overcrowded. You can definitely feel the 125% of capacity in this event as it was wall-to-wall people.

The show tonight was the magician Michael Holly. It was a very good act. I rate it the best of all the guest performers they had for our sailing.

So everyone is familiar with the “chair hogs” at the pool deck area whereby [people leave their towels early in the morning to hog the chair for the whole day. Well, the same chair hog people did it for the main theater seats. I had never seen it done at the theaters. I saw it at Studio B where they had 1 person trying to save 8 seats for the ice show as her party soundering in 3 minutes before the show started but at least they had a live person there. These folks take chair hogging to a new level. They came in and dropped off their drinks and left a blanket there and took off. Wow. Not that I am the fighting or confrontational type but I wish there would be a group of big dudes who come up and say, the heck with the savings the seats crap, and move the blank out to one chair and plop down and see what the chair hogs would do when they come back 3 minutes before the show to see they lost their space. Would it be a Carnival ship-level brawl? You know who I’ll be rooting for…

Dinner was done at 9:30 and since the show for the night doesn’t start until 10 PM, we visited the uncle in prison (aka photo area) to see if they uploaded the pictures we took last night and this morning getting off the ship

Our overall impression of the food was pretty good but we prefer the MDR atmosphere more. The solarium Bstro was a tad too quiet for our liking and the limited food menu that never changes will prevent us from eating it more than once per sailing We may or may not try it again on future sailings that have Solarium Bistro going forward. Dining is subjective as different people prefer different things.

Good baklava – at least for some Chinese dude who only eats it once every few years. It’s not like I’m an expert on how good/authentic it is back in Greece. It’s like some non-Chinese person reviewing dim sum in only eating it once every few years and thinks it’s good and authentic.

After we were seated, the waiter explained the setup and after we informed him of a member of the party having a nut allergy, he went to check with the chef and said there were some nuts with the lamb. Later on, the head waiter for the section came over along with the head chef for the section and said they would cook a lamb order just for us with no nuts. So I applaud RCI for being attentive to people with allergies and will accommodate by changing their recipe to the extent possible. The Calamari was pretty tasty as well as the lamb.

An interesting twist for the night is there was a wedding reception at the Bistro that night with maybe 20+ people all dressed up in white for the occasion as they took over a major part of the dining area. The straggler diners like us were seated on the side wing sections. Here's me checking in at the podium at 8:13. You can see the wedding party behind the head waiter

OK. We made it to the Solarium Bistro. My first time at this place. As the name implies, it’s located next to the solarium area. For some people who live in the Solarium area, they know exactly where it is. For us, this is the first time we even made it to this part of the ship and it’s the evening of day 4 and we are only here for the food… Here is the menu as found online. https://eatsleepcruise.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Odyssey-Solarium-Bistro-Dinner.pdf It’s the same menu nightly. It never changes so depends on how you feel about having the same food over and over again nightly in how often you want to come here for dinner. They have a breakfast and lunch buffet here with a smaller selection than Windjammer (smaller area) but we never made it up here other than tonight’s dinner. The theme is more Mediterranean cuisine The setup is new to us as it’s a hybrid between a typical buffet and MDR. They have the items listed out similar to the Windjammer but they don’t have too many of the items out. So for example, if you want lamb and it’s not there on display, they will cook it for you so it’ll be freshly cooked

Excellent photos. You have a rare perspective of NYC skyline and statue of Liberty that very few people will ever experience. Thanks for sharing.

I really dislike the glass in the pool deck area. The reflection kills all photo opts. Only a small group of people are out to watch the sail away at 8 PM as they are either just sat down for the late seating or probably at a show from early seating

Forgot to upload the pictures from our balcony after coming back to the ship at Curacao. Very bright full moon tonight Let's zoom in with the cell phone Time to queue up the CCR song:

As we are departing Curacao, now is a good time to give my assessment of the island. For me, Curacao and San Juan are my two favorite Caribbean stops as I like historical forts/buildings. Just visiting a beach in of themselves is less appealing to me. Also scoring high is the safety factor. We felt safe walking amongst the crowd at night time at Curacao. I would not feel the same out in Falmouth at night outside of the cruise compound. You can instantly tell how “safe” the area is by the presence (or lack of) heavily gated fences with spikes pointing at the potential intruders from our 2014 visit to Falmouth as they built these spike-gated fences for a reason. For me, most of the Caribbean islands are “one and done” as I don’t have an “Oh, I wish I could go back there now” yearning as we vacation to see new things. The bucket list is getting longer and we are getting older so repeat visits to the same Caribbean Islands are not something we are willing to do unless there's a compelling new ship that goes with it like the Carinval Jubilee this December. That being said, Curacao is interesting enough that I wouldn’t mind going back years later as part of the ABC island fulfillment cruise so we can complete the tri-island bucket list.

Yeah, this itinerary is not conducive for catching pier runners. Besides the late departure, you also need “something to do” like drinking or shopping in town to make you lose track of time in coming back late to the ship. Cuaraco is pretty at night but unless you are stuck on the Punda side with the bridge closed, there isn’t much at the Rif Fort at 7 PM to keep you there long other than restaurants as many of the stores are closed by then, and no real big partying bars there. Aruba is the same story with not much going on by the pier and that one has a 9:30 All Aboard time. I didn’t see any big partying places when we walked around the Aruba pier Labadee would have been your husband's best bet but I think the island shuts down pretty much after 4 PM ahead of the 4:30 All Aboard so unless someone fell asleep on the beach, there’s not much to do there to prevent you from coming back late. The final consideration is this is a Holiday crowd. A lot more families/big group gatherings on the Holiday sailings. Less likely for a big group to be Pier Runners as chances are one person in a family of 10+ will be the anal one and be tracking the time to get everyone back to the ship on time. You need more of the “Senor Frog” partying couples in Nassau/Cozumel to have Pier Runners potentials after that had 3 too many shots.

I made a dinner reservation for 8:15 on the outside chance we were coming back from Cuaraco night walk slightly later and needed more time to shower. Also figured we might catch a few minutes of the sail away at 8 PM. By the time we made it to the top deck at 8:09, the ship had already cast off The AIDA ship is still docked as they are in port until 10 PM to give people extra time in port

We got back to the cabins to rest a bit before showering. The second time around wasn’t nearly as tiring as the morning walk. Without the Caribbean sun beating down on you, the nighttime walk was much more pleasant but it was still warm in the low 80s with humidity. For dinner tonight, I made reservations for the Soalorum Bistro as I wanted to try it I read many rave reviews on CC on how great the place is. Since we had a subpar experience with MDR on the Navaiagor just a few months before, we wanted to try out a new experience. There’s no extra fee to eat at the Solarium Bistro as it’s not considered a specialty dining. You just need to make a dinner reservation on the handy dandy app or talk to someone to make the reservation while on board. But nowadays many people don't go the old-school route to request the reservation via a phone call or in person. We are much more anti-social and requesting it via the app. We can go down another rabbit hole on how the phone apps have changed our lifestyle/social interactions...

Not too many people outside of the cruise terminal Made it back to the pier at 7 PM, 30 minutes ahead of “All Aboard”. No need to be a Pier Runner to have the people at the balconies harassing you for being late

As I mentioned, my wife upgraded her phone last year and she has pictures that are better than mine (or maybe she's just a better photographer than me)...😜

For me, this is my favorite picture from our cruise. Others may disagree as pictures are subjective similar to food and music. I like these night ship pictures because it’s more difficult to obtain as you need to have a few things lined up to take them: 1 – Your ship has to be in port later than 5 PM or else you can’t get a night picture of the ship. This isn’t always easy as in the Caribbean, most ships depart by 5 PM 2 – Sunset needs to be earlier in the night for the ship lights to come on 3 – You must be willing to come outside of the ship after sunset to take this picture. If you are ON the ship eating dinner at 7 PM, you can’t take a picture OF the ship 1,000 feet away 4 – There can’t be any “cruise terminal building” to get in the way of the picture. You need an unobstructed view When you have all the boxes checked, you will have a chance to take these night pictures

Onward with the trip report as we approach what I consider to be my favorite picture area for the entire cruise: +++++++++++++ I think it's a pretty sight to have both ships lid up along the cruise terminal The Odyssey is more colorful with its different color lights but the AIDA has the old school strand of lights from the Bow to the back that is absent in the Odyssey