At 3pm they have an Afternoon Tea in the dining room and although we missed the Dutch High Tea on Monday this day we went to the Indonesian Tea. There was no formal ceremony, but they had little Indonesian style treats with our Indonesian Tea.
It was nice to sit and relax for a few minutes. Seriously, I'm not sure cruising is all that relaxing with all the things going on! But it was nice to have my laundry and cooking done for me for a week!
One of the servers in her Indonesian Dress. Notice that I'm the under dressed one, whoops.
All the dining room staff and housekeeping were from Indonesia and all the bar staff and kitchen staff were from the Philippines. Holland America has one school in each place to teach the staff. I suppose it could be helpful that all the staff has the same language/culture. And I noticed that I think those with the better English get to work in the dining room while those with less are the housekeepers. They are all really nice, but it was next to impossible to talk to the house keepers when we needed anything different than the norm.
The had a crew show at 11pm one night that I really wanted to go to, but I was already low on sleep so I missed that one. We only went to one show, called Recycled Percussion. It was super fun though. Four guys playing drums on recycled trash cans and lots of other things. And they gave the audience all a drum stick and a discarded pot or pan. (also ear plugs) I think they said these guys had been on America's Got Talent and now have a show in Vegas. It would be worth going to!
Since we were at sea it was the last Formal Night - the Farewell Dinner even though we still had one more night on the ship. And yes, my children are at the stage where they don't take pictures well... oh well!
All the staff came out to sing for us and they encouraged us to swing our napkins... poor Uncle Kevin!
And this night we celebrated my parent's 40th anniversary (which was actually just on Saturday). This was the reason for our big family trip. 25th in Mexico, 40th in the Caribbean!
Yay for 40 years!
That's our server, Yassir, in the background. He was really nice and helpful with all our issues (needed overcooked veggies for babies and GF food etc.)
Our present to them: a personalized map of our trip that we got at The Yoda Guy store in St. Maarten.
Our towel creation for the night. It was supposed to be a dog I think, but to me it looks more like a pig!
It was Pirate Night in Club Hal. Cory went a few nights after dinner and really enjoyed it. Noah wasn't quite old enough, bummer. I highly recommend to anyone that they don't take a cruise until their children are old enough to participate in the kids' activities. It's very nice to have something just for them.
And this night was the "Dessert Extravaganza" at 10:30pm. I went to see the ice sculptures they'd been carving that morning by the pool because the boys wanted a picture of the finished product. I "think" this was supposed to be a swan, but I wasn't impressed. It did not live up to the hype of some of the other cruises my parents have been on.
All the decorations from around the world were made of styrofoam and the desserts actually weren't all that good... except for the caramel or chocolate covered apples.
Me and my sis-in-law! So happy she's better!
Her sense of humor still intact... this is a Tamarind bean... or a uni-brow, you pick!
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