Cruise to Barcelona, part 1

We took a trans-Atlantic cruise two years ago, when Carter was a little over one year old. He was still crawling then, still very much a baby. We had a sense that this experience would be quite different, and it is. But it's just as much fun!

We got a "Royal family suite" on the ship, Royal Caribbean's Voyager of the Seas. The Royal family suite has two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room with a table we can eat at, and a large balcony facing the back of the ship. It's not as amazing as the suite we had on the last cruise, but then, it's about a fourth of the price. ;-) I have a video of the room that I'll have to post later -- the internet on the ship is way too slow and expensive to upload it now.

It's nice to have the living space separate from the sleeping space, I have to say. It's nice to have a big room with lots of space for Carter to play. It took him a day to get into the spirit of being on the ship, but now he totally knows where the cool places to go are. There is a kids' area which is typically a day care center, but since there aren't many kids on the cruise they've designated one of the rooms as a free play space where parents can come with their kids to play. We've spent quite a bit of time with carter in here already.



There's a rock wall in this room, and Carter is gradually getting better at climbing it.





There is a Johnny Rockets restaurant on board, and here is a picture of me and Carter sharing a chocolate malt there.



The ship has a kids' pool area, and we checked it out on the first sea day. It has a small waterslide. There is a big waterslide we're looking forward to trying, but it has yet to be open when we walk by it.





That pool was really cold! There were a couple of other kids swimming in it whose lips were blue, and so when Carter said he was cold, I decided we would head over to the main pool. I don't have any pictures of that pool yet, but what Carter really liked was a hot tub (one designated for families) that was fairly large and shaded, and not terribly hot. We've spent a good chunk of the last two afternoons in that hot tub. The pools on the ship have salt water in them, and Carter hasn't like that much so far, so we've spent most of our swimming time in the hot tubs. Carter does flips and swims back and forth, and generally has a great time.

We've spent the late afternoons back in the room, hanging out and enjoying the view. Since we're in a suite we can order the dining room food to have in our room, and we've been eating dinner sitting on the balcony watching the scenery go by.







There is lots to do on the ship, of course. We haven't explored much of it yet. but today we took Carter through one of the main areas of the ship. There was an airbrush tattoo booth, and we asked Carter if he would like to get a tattoo. He chose a racecar, and he sat very still while the attendant applied it.





Of course, after an hour in the pool today, it had started to wash off. It's apparently not going to last the week advertised.

Tomorrow we have tickets to see an ice skating show. I'm hoping that Carter will be interested in trying ice skating after he sees it. It's kind of crazy that the ship has an ice skating rink, but hey -- we'll try to enjoy it! This evening we rounded the tip of Florida and saw the skyscrapers of Miami off on the horizon. Now we're headed out to the Atlantic.

Seven days to the Azores!