Spectrum of the Seas Review: Day 10 – Sea Dayfeatured

I couldn’t make myself get up.

After a week of flights, of heavily touring new places and jet lag and all of the excitement of embarkation, our sea day was my vacation from my vacation – one I sorely needed.

Stephanie, however, was up with the sun. Before the sun. She was up early enough to watch the sun rise. I think I opened my eyes, thought to myself Nope, not today and promptly rolled back over.

So Stephanie got an early start. She watched the sunrise and finished unpacking and I…slept. Our plans for the day involved moving from our bed to a lounge chair to the pool and probably back to the bed, so I knew I had time.

She finally dragged me up and out around 9:00 AM, where the promise of coffee in the Windjammer was too alluring to pass up. I was hopeful that the crowds would be low and that most people would be at the destination talk, but I wasn’t so lucky – everyone, their Mom, their grandmom and their third cousin once removed were up at the Windjammer. It was packed and even finding an empty table was an exercise in patience. Breakfast was okay – I was missing my cruise arepas – but the made to order omelets fit the bill for a filling breakfast.

I was curious how things would be outside at the pool deck given how crowded the Windjammer was, but surprisingly, the pool deck was relatively empty – and the main pool was shut down. We found loungers right away and settled in and it was h-o-t. I’m pretty sure whatever sunscreen I had on I sweated off within minutes because the heat and humidity enveloped me in a sticky sheen.

I’m not sure why the pool was closed – they didn’t open it until nearly 11:00 AM and didn’t say why, but once it was opened, I moved right from my lounger to a water lounger and the cold water on my sun drenched skin was the most refreshing feeling. Stephanie hopped right in the pool and within minutes, it was packed with people seeking the same relief.

By noon, we were done. It was too hot and too crowded, so we sought shade in some loungers looking out of the windows towards the water. As much as the lower floors lacked water views in the public spaces, the upper decks were ripe with them and we enjoyed them as often as we could get upstairs!

We contemplated going to the dining room for lunch, but we didn’t really love the menu. We perused the offerings at the Windjammer, but nothing looked particularly good. So we settled on pizza from Sorrentos and some hot dogs from the Splashaway Café before heading back to the room for a siesta.

Our room still hadn’t been made up, but that might have been our fault for not putting up the Please Make Up Our Room sign. Do you need to put that up now? We hadn’t on other cruises, but maybe we’re behind the times now! We watched the Royal Caribbean slash Hallmark movie starring the PenaVegas and watched the water dance along the horizon out our balcony window. We needed a day of doing nothing and we were already excelling at it.

In the battle between the SPF 50 we were wearing vs the sun, the sun won and both of us were covered in angry red splotches. We didn’t have time to dwell on it, though, because we had a quick run down to Guest Services. See, apparently, we needed a Visa to get off the ship in Vietnam. Not to worry, though, Guest Services told us – we’d have more details in our stateroom later! I’d done some Googling before we left and was under the impression we wouldn’t need one. Thankfully, it was taken care of by the ship and it was only $6 (posted to our onboard accounts), but it would have been helpful had Royal Caribbean advised us on which ports we’d need visas for versus which ones we wouldn’t before we left.

Since we were already out of the room, we decided to walk around a bit. We ended up at Leaf & Bean for some teas (a strawberry cheese tea for me and some jasmine concoction for Stephanie). They were as delicious as they were refreshing, and the décor of the café was so cute!

The evening was rapidly approaching, so we headed back to the room to get ready. Once we were all glammed up, we took our obligatory formal night balcony shots and caught our first sunset at sea, which filled the sky with the most beautiful shades of pink and purple.

We were a little early for our dinner reservations, so we headed down to stroll around, ultimately ending up at the Bionic Bar, which is a fully electronic bar experience – you order from an iPad on a table and a bionic bartender makes your drink! We thought it was so fun to watch this robot make custom cocktails to order. The future is now, you guys.

Dinner tonight was at Chops Grille, Royal Caribbean’s resident steakhouse. The meal was covered under our dining plan, and we feasted like royalty on all kinds of steakhouse classics – carpaccios and filets and cheesecakes – so much food. We split a bunch of sides, we took notes on our favorites (the warm goat cheese salad!) and we talked about all of the things we hoped to see in Vietnam in the coming days.

The big show of the night was a production show called Showgirls!, a high-energy tribute to showgirls of the past, present and future (and showmen – it ended with a medley from The Greatest Showman). The Royal Theater was much bigger than I anticipated, a true theater at sea, meant to dazzle and entertain, and Showgirls! certainly delivered.

Our visas for our ports in Vietnam were waiting in our room, along with a new towel friend. Port days are always exhausting, so we laid out our outfits and packed our purses for our tour so we could get a few extra winks of sleep in the morning. We put our camera batteries in the charger before we headed to bed because while we didn’t know what the day would have in store for us, we knew our first time in Vietnam would be one we’d never forget.