Nassau
Saturday, November 15, 2025
Sigh. It's our last full day. We'll be leaving the ship tomorrow morning around 8:30 and driving back to the real world. But we still have today!!
We have to be at our galley tour by 9:30 so we decide to have breakfast in the main dining room and sit down like regular people instead of braving the hordes in the Windjammer. We had all agreed to forego room service but it turns out Robin and Ma actually have coffee!! So Maureen goes down to Starbucks since the dining room doesn't open until 8:00!
Ah, but when we get downstairs it turns out they actually open at 7:30. Oh well, done is done and everyone is happy! We order off the menu! A treat for breakfast and I have the lox and bagel with cream cheese and onion and hot chocolate for a change!
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| The Main Dining Room is actually three different levels. |
Ma has decided not to go on the tour, so we find her a place on the Royal Promenade to wait for us. It will only be a half hour, and we get back to Deck 4 before our 9:30 deadline. We might as well not have made ourselves crazy because we are the only ones on time. Most people straggle in ten or fifteen minutes later! It doesn't matter; we don't have much else planned for today except getting off the ship for a visit to the port.
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| Those little butterflies are actually flying, so you have something to watch while waiting for Customer Service. |
Ossie conducts the tour himself and it is very informative! There are 22 galleys on the ship! With 22 head chefs and 150 head cooks! The other numbers are so huge they escape me! Everything is stainless steel and is maintained up to the US Health Department's standards with surprise inspections every six months. We learn that broken glass and china are carefully grouped together and recycled in Miami and that food waste is separated from all other kinds of garbage. It is then ground up and the water is extracted. The solid particles that are left are discharged for the fish outside the twelve-mile limit and the water is purified and dumped fifty miles out. There are separate areas for each kind of food prep and there are photos of how each dish should look when it is sent out to the clients.
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| The repairmen are available at a moment's notice and they have all the necessary repair parts right on the ship. |
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No only must everything look the same; but the chefs continuously taste test! |
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| There are computer screens everywhere. |
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| The drinks for Main Dining Four are all prepared here, in addition to this being the bread and pastry galley for the whole ship! |
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| The staff who receive the highest ratings on the customer survey get special treats and recognition. |
There are separate facilities for the two thousand members of the crew and Ossie says they are much harder to please than we are! Every attempt is made to provide the cuisine of each employee's home country.
After the tour we are treated to mimosas and petit fours! That was a surprise! Robin left right away to go check on Ma and when Maureen and I get back to where we left her, she and Robin are gone! We go back to the room and there they are. We've all been to Nassau before, so we haven't signed up for an excursion. We remember crossing the Sydney Poitier Bridge to Paradise Island and seeing the enormous Atlantic Hotel with a Chihuly chandelier in the lobby.
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| Royal Caribbean is building a new facility on this strip of land with shops and what have you! |
Today we just walk into the port shopping area, passing the SIX enormous cruise ships that are currently in port! There are lots of restaurants and little shops filled with Nassau-themed novelties which no one really needs. I find a key chain that will do for my Christmas tree and I ask one of the sales girls why there is so much Turkish art for sale. I don't recall any crossover between Turkey and the Bahamas. It's simpler than that. The people who own the chain of port shops around the world are Turkish!! There you go!!
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| The Mouse is in the house! |
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| Obviously this shop knows its clientele! |
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| As I said.... |
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| I think they told us that Michael Jackson has owned the suite that occupies the bridge between the two parts of the hotel! |
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| They're having a blast!! I think it's the Macarena!! |
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So many ships! So many people! We make our way back to the ship and realize that it's definitely time for lunch. Once more into the fray! But there aren't many people in the Windjammer and we have a delightful chat with one of the front-of-house workers. She is from Zimbabwe and interviewed as a chef. She was told there weren't any back-of-house positions available and after seeing how hot and hard that work was, she was grateful for the job she was offered!! When she goes home she will have been on the ship for seven months. She'll be home for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and her birthday. Then back to work! |
Our bags need to be in the hall by 10:00 tonight and if we want to stay in the Schoonor Bar until the end of the Billy Joel set, we'll need to be ready before we go down later. So, packing now is the order of the day. And it's important to keep an outfit to wear in the morning if one doesn't want to leave the ship in their PJs!
We head down to dinner and arrive on time; but not before Dean. He's been drinking wines by Meiomi all week and tonight tells us that it was started by one brother while Conundrum was founded by another! I've actually had some Conundrum (thanks Jan) and really enjoyed it! When they sold Conundrum the expanded their Meiomi offerings, adding a cab.
After dinner there's time for one more tour through the sales tables and then back up to finish the packing and put out our bags. We won't be following the standard protocol for disembarking because the ship will provide a wheel chair for Ma and that will give us another smooth trip through the experience.
Now it's time to claim a space near the piano so we can see and hear Alan. The first set is all requests and these old folks like all the same stuff (I guess that makes me one of them!). Dean shows up with his new friends who had recommended the next set to him. I make my Rusty Nail last all night (my evil plan works!).During the break Robin and Ma go upstairs and Dean accompanies them so he can take the walker home with him. We just don't have room for it and all our luggage. Maureen and I stay the course and only go back to the room after the Billy Joel set. We have to pass the pizza place again and it sure is hard - read that impossible - to not grab just one slice!
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| I didn't really have a bite missing when I got it! |
There are brightly-lit ships out there on the ocean! We think they are probably gambling excursions that have to get outside the twelve mile limit. We can even hear the music from the larger, faster one! But they are far away and it's really dark!
It will be morning soon and we want to be in the car and gone by 8:30, so it's bed time!
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