Bahamas 2015 Day 5
Wednesday, September 30: NassauNassau represented a bit of a problem for us. The port struck us as somewhat similar to Jamaica on our Oasis trip: a place that we would never have selected as a destination for a self-planned trip. Given that level of disinterest as our starting point, it was hard to get excited about the various suggestions for tourists, whether they came from ship-sponsored excursions or from looking at things like TripAdvisor for independent ideas. Places like Atlantis just seemed horrendously overpriced, none of the city tours sounded interesting, and (most definitely) we are NOT shoppers, so wandering around shops looking for things to buy is our idea of hell.
After a lot of reading on the CC boards about this port we had settled on heading over to Melia for a day pass to lounge on the beach and/or around the pools. However, after a day at Coco Cay the boys had had their fill of sitting around the beach so (like Jamaica) we called an audible and turned this a “Ship Day”. I did have a couple of backup options to Melia, including the Pirate Museum and a possible city tour, but these were resoundingly pooh-poohed by the boys when I offered them. Since my wife and I had no objection to sitting on our butts, relaxing with drinks in our hands, we weren’t inclined to push it
We started this day with breakfast in the WJ. Nothing spectacular to report here – other than the constant barrage of overhead announcements as the crew was practicing lifeboat drill. Might have been annoying if you were trying to sleep in, but otherwise not a big deal. After finishing (around 10AM) we decided that we’d at stretch our legs and take a quick stroll off-ship so we could at least say we’d set foot on Nassau. Who knows? Maybe we’d find ourselves pleasantly surprised once we got on shore?
Yeah. Nope. The walk along the pier is nice, looking at the other ships tied up in port along with Enchantment. But once we cleared the secure area the constant barrage of taxi drivers trying to get you to take a city tour with them is REALLY annoying. I find nothing “quaint” about being shoulder-to-shoulder in a confined space as I’m trying to cover 100’ of sidewalk and being accosted 15-20 times in that distance.
Once we got across the street fronting the pier area and into the shopfronts things calmed down. But there’s no denying the fact that the shopping area that defines the 6-10 square blocks nearest the port is nothing more than an ugly sprawl of over-priced crap. (I know – to some it is a paradise of wonderful merchandise that sends them into paroxysms of joy…but as I said before, this is just hell on earth to us.) So we blew through this area as quickly as we could and – since we had no real objective to our trip onshore other than to say that we’d been to Nassau – quickly returned to the ship for the rest of the day. The 88 degree/high humidity weather was another motivation for returning to air-conditioned bliss.
BTW: It was here at Nassau that I first experienced the camera lens fogging up due to the high humidity. You need to give your lens a few minutes with the lens cap off (or clamshell lens cover open) in order to get pictures. I had planned to get some shots of the neighboring ships in port and some of the pier activity when out or balcony in the morning but was defeated by fogging (and impatience). It was at this point that I pretty much stopped taking pictures for the rest of the trip. We are NOT camera junkies so any excuse – however weak – to not take a picture is one that we’ll latch onto!
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| The first indication that trying to snap a photo in high humidity after just removing the lens cover wasn't going to work! After the 3rd or 4th time this happened I pretty much just put the camera away and enjoyed just looking at things directly instead of through a view finder. |
Back onboard we made our way up to Deck 10 portside and indulged in a bit of impromptu shuffleboard. The professional shuffleboard circuit is most definitely not in our future, but that didn’t stop us from having a good time. The boys thrashed the wife and me repeatedly.
Following our sporting humiliation we finally made it to our first trivia event, this one down in Boleros on Deck 5. There were about 20 people grouped into 6-7 teams for this one, with the topic being “Food and Spirits”. Only 10 total questions, and we were out in less than 15 minutes, which seemed a bit abrupt.
From there we were off to the covered outdoor seating outside the WJ to enjoy yogurt cones. While sitting there a 10 minute random rain storm arrived and everyone jumped up to slide the windows closed. We used the rain as our excuse to head into the WJ for lunch. After lunch we decided to go upstairs, change for the pool, and then come back down with our books/tablets to mix reading and swimming. As we re-entered the outdoor pool deck the rain decided to start again, which caused everyone to scatter to the covered seating once again, this time leaving us nowhere to base ourselves out of the rain. At this point we gave up on the idea of swimming and heading back to our suite to relax there until our next trivia event.
This was “Where in the World” at Boleros. Instead of being asked questions, we were given a 12 question worksheet and had to fill-in answers to the clues written down. That means it felt a bit more like a school quiz and less like a social event. Perhaps I’m being influenced by the fact that we did HORRIBLY on this one! (Note to self: 10 year old son should NOT be over-ruled. We would have had 2 more points if we'd accepted his correct answers instead of insisting on our own incorrect ones.) We consoled ourselves by (once again) swinging through to Park Café for some quick snacks, followed by the Solarium Bar and then enjoying some quiet time on our balcony.
Nassau looks to have pier space to host up to 5 cruise ships at once – it’s a veritable ship parking lot! IIRC, it was at Nassau 1-2 years ago that an RCCL Ship – I assume it was Enchantment – was trying to maneuver into or out of its berth during high winds and was pushed into its neighbor, with both vessels suffering damage. We could definitely see how this could happen with so many ships so close together. We were there with NCL Sky and Carnival Sunshine. Our balcony looked out to Carnival, so later in the day we got to watch them sail away when they left at 5PM. When they blasted their horn on the way out it really got the blood pumping! Enchantment is apparently the guest that keeps hanging around the door while you’re trying to get them to go away, leaving around 1130PM or so. At that time of night she let off only a couple of dainty toots rather than the big ‘ole bellow that the earlier departures used.
One nature note: Once the Sunshine left we were able to see the pier she’d been docked at. From our balcony we watched in fascination as the seagulls wheeled about and then, for reasons that we couldn’t fathom, began to land in a small section on the pier across from our berth. Seagulls were arriving from all points of the compass and – somehow – all decided that it was time to congregate. Over the course of about 15 minutes I’d guess that about 300 birds all landed in a 15’ x 15’ section of the dock. It was marvelous to see each bird cruise in and execute a pinpoint landing in a small space in the midst of all the other birds, and it was amazing that, once grounded, each bird pretty much stayed immobile in their selected spot. When they all responded to yet another unknown stimulus and all took flight at once that, too, was wonderful to behold.
This is probably a good place to mention a surprise at the bars. On the Oasis we bought all our drinks at Schooner, and on the tables there were reasonably comprehensive drink menus. On Enchantment each venue that we were at (Boleros, Schooner, R Bar, and Solarium Bar) had their own private drink menus, showing only a subset of the entire set of offerings. So while you could pretty much order any drink at any bar, if you needed to rely on the menu for a reminder you could find yourself out of luck if the local bar didn’t include your desired drink as part of “their” list. As to pricing, we sampled virgin drinks for the boys (all USD $4), a couple drinks of the day ($7.75), and several non-premium mixed and/or frozen drinks ($10). I personally never found my "go-to" drink, not that I didn't enjoy the attempt – although I’m starting to believe a lot of that is due to the low-end rum, etc. of the $10 drinks. (I used to think premium alcohol was just a lot of marketing hype…until my senior year in college when my roommate and I tried to economize by buying bottom-of-the-shelf “Aggie Vodka” rather than Absolut. I became a true believer that the extra cost can make a HUGE difference!! J )
One of the perks of having a suite is that each evening the cabin attendant would leave us a copy of the following day’s dinner menu. You can, of course, find the daily menu displayed outside the MDR each day and get your information this way, but there’s no denying the convenience of having it delivered to your stateroom each day.
It should be noted that the printed menus we got in our stateroom were NOT 100% faithful reproductions of the actual MDR menu – I’d guess that there usually were 2-3 items available each night in the MDR that were NOT on our menus (and conversely 2-3 items on our menus not being served in the MDR). As they’ve tweaked the current MDR menus it doesn’t appear that they’ve bothered to reprint the room menus. For example, the MDR menus correctly reflected escargot, while the in-room menus showed the scallop-based version of the same dish.
Based on what we were seeing we all independently concluded that tonight’s Pomodoro menu offerings weren’t particularly appealing to any of us. So earlier in the morning I’d made our one and only use of the Concierge and had him change our pre-booked night 4 reservation at Chops to night 3 – i.e. tonight. So off we went to Chops, once again pausing along our way to enjoy the live music coming from the Centrum.
We had gone to Chops on Oasis and enjoyed it. However, the reason we enjoyed it had absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the steaks (which we consider to be pretty unremarkable) or the quality of the sides (ditto). Rather, we simply find the idea of eating at a dedicated steakhouse onboard a ship to be an fun, quirky novelty. The experience, not the cuisine, is the attraction. If we were on land I wouldn’t go to Chops – it isn’t worth it IMO. But tonight the novelty factor won. I was disappointed to find out that they were NOT offering the au poivre sauce option shown on the menu. I had planned to get the 9 oz filet (a cut of meat that I generally find to be tasteless, but the 9oz size was right where my appetite was that night) and make it palatable by adding a pepper sauce. Instead I went with the 12 oz NY strip, medium rare. My wife’s and the boys’ attempts to order the smaller cuts turned out not to matter – the waiter said he’d being the larger cut anyway. Since we weren’t paying any extra for different size cuts there was no particular reason not to allow this to happen…so meat-fest ensued. My steak was actually delivered rare rather than medium rare, but not so rare that it was worth sending back. We also didn’t have to make any decisions about which of the six sides to order – they simply brought us all six to share. We enjoyed chatting that night with our waiter, who was from India. As I was about to head out to Bangalore on business he gave us some stories of his home country.
We once again stopped off in the Centrum to enjoy live music on our way back to our cabin to change. My wife and I prefer to wear “work casual” for dinner, and we make sure the boys wear nice jeans rather than their normal choice of shorts. Amusingly, our 15 year old son had forgotten to pack ANY casual pants. Fortunately, his inseam is close enough to mine that he was able to make up the 6 inch difference in our waist sizes with some serious belt action – and so he was able to wear my blue jeans for dinner. (After the first night’s dinner he actually decided he preferred to wear his dress pants for dinner rather than dad’s baggy jeans.)
Once changed it was back to the Orpheum Theater for the late show from the headliner, Jeff the Juggler. Jeff was a very skilled juggler and entertaining. His tricks are all pretty standard, although his opening piece involving ping pong balls and paddles was a new variation. At one point he spoke about “The Art of Juggling” and then performed a joke-free routine accompanied by music that was, in fact, quite beautiful.
We then sent the boys off to bed while the wife and I stayed for the Love and Marriage game show. We hadn’t caught this on Oasis, so this was our first experience with it. For the small subset of folks not aware of what this is, the game is simply “The Newlywed Game”, with the three couples representing those married 0-5 year, 6-24 years, and 25+ years. The prospective (100% volunteer) contestants were asked by CD Marc to perform a nonsense chant while “selling” themselves in some entertaining way, after which the audience voted on the couple they wanted to see come up on stage for the game. The 3rd couple (married “43-ish” years) were, I assume, veterans of many prior cruises because they clearly “got it” and seemed to know exactly what was expected of them in terms of how they responded – with the end result being that they consistently kept the audience entertained and eventually won by going 6 for 6 in their responses – for which they won matching his/hers watches from the onboard watch store, by the way. The husband of the 0-5 year couple was entertaining in a “can’t tear your eyes away from this slow-motion car crash” kind of way. He seemed to be pretty drunk (fortunately not in a sloppy way - mostly a dopey way) when he came up on stage, and then proceeded to place three more beer orders from stage. This show is not vulgar (at least, not to us, but your mileage may vary)…but neither is it kid-friendly. So while they don’t specifically list it as being for 18+ year olds, parents are best advised to treat it this way.
At the end of the show CD Marc did his normal end-of-day wrap-up, and also mentioned that we might have some extra rocking and rolling of the ship that night because we were running away from Tropical Storm Joaquim – a storm that would prevent the cruise that was started right after ours from attempting Nassau (substituting Freeport instead), and also caused that cruise to miss Coco Cay due to wind. In fact, Nassau would end up taking a huge pounding from the storm.
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