{"id":7481,"date":"2012-10-21T20:38:42","date_gmt":"2012-10-22T01:38:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/?p=7481"},"modified":"2016-08-14T13:36:43","modified_gmt":"2016-08-14T18:36:43","slug":"hello-from-the-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2012\/10\/21\/hello-from-the-sea\/","title":{"rendered":"Hello from the sea!"},"content":{"rendered":"

A<\/span>s I type this to you, I am sitting on a pulled-out sofa bed in our stateroom, listening to the sea rush by below us. In case you missed it, we are aboard Royal Caribbean International\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s flagship Allure of the Seas, currently at sea between Florida and Haiti., courtesy of our friends at Fisher-Price. I still cannot believe we are here!<\/p>\n

Oops, there was supposed to be a prologue to this post that talked about our day of flying from Ottawa to New York to Florida, but by the end of the day that started at 4 am, I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the energy or wherewithal to recharge my phone let alone write a coherent blog post. A few highlights of the day included almost not being able to land in LaGuardia due to fog (we were able at the last minute), the kindest group of New Yorkers you ever could meet, who moved themselves all over the plan so the kids could sit with us, one very sick boy (better now), one relatively sick mom with an extended coughing fit on the plane (yes, I was totally that woman) and me thinking around 5 pm that maybe I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to go on a cruise after all. It was a Very Long Day.<\/p>\n

All of that evaporated the moment we stepped on to the Allure of the Seas just before lunch today. After a day of airport mayhem, I was expecting the worst when we arrived at the port, but we breezed through the various security checkpoints and were walking up the gang plank on to the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s largest cruise ship within half an hour of arriving at the port.<\/p>\n

And oh my good god, what a ship! Did I mention world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s largest? Wowza! She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a third of a kilometer (362 meters) long and has 16 passenger decks. She can house more than 6,000 guests. She is awesome, in every sense of the word.<\/p>\n

\"Allure<\/a><\/p>\n

I had done all sorts of obsessive reading and research before the trip and all that went flying out the window as soon as we walked up the gangplank. Where would we go? What would we do? Somehow we found ourselves on deck 14, where we found ourselves pretty much alone in the Wipeout Caf\u00c3\u00a9, where we found guacamole and salsa and pretzel dogs and hamburgers for lunch. (There are tonnes of complimentary food selections, and some upscale restaurants where you can eat for an additional charge.)<\/p>\n

Within the first couple of hours on board, we had lunched, admired the Flow Rider surf simulator, played mini-golf, had not one but TWO servings of ice cream (did I mention complimentary?), ridden the carousel (!) twice, toured the Boardwalk and Central Park (the ship? Has a park \u00e2\u20ac\u201c an entire football-field length of green space!), had lemonade and snacks and coffee at the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only Starbucks at sea, and watched my 10 year old baby zip his way across the ship on five stories above the Boardwalk on the ship\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s zip line. More about that tomorrow!<\/p>\n

\"Allure<\/a><\/p>\n

Did I mention the complimentary ice cream? Twice in four hours? Oh yes!<\/p>\n

\"Allure<\/a><\/p>\n

And two rounds on the carousel, too! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

\"Allure<\/a><\/p>\n

Oh yes, and all that? Was before the ship even set sail!!! Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the boys on our stateroom\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s balcony, watching Florida slide away as we sail out to sea.<\/p>\n

\"Allure<\/a><\/p>\n

Pretty good first day, eh? I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t wait to see what tomorrow, our first full day at sea, will bring! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I type this to you, I am sitting on a pulled-out sofa bed in our stateroom, listening to the sea rush by below us. In case you missed it, we are aboard Royal Caribbean International\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s flagship Allure of the Seas, currently at sea between Florida and Haiti., courtesy of our friends at Fisher-Price. I … Continue reading “Hello from the sea!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allure-of-the-seas-2012","category-product-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7481"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7513,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7481\/revisions\/7513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}