Adventure of the Seas - Freeport and Hot Ice Cool Art

Ahhh, first morning of the cruise, one of my favorite moments.  You've just woken up, the ship is still quiet (although it was pretty quiet all the time on this one due to capacity), and you can wander around in peace, enjoy it like it's your own private yacht.  Same reason why I like staying on the ship in some ports.

This morning we're at Freeport Bahamas, I'd originally planned on doing an all inclusive beach resort for the afternoon but ended up canceling and opting to spend the day on the ship.  Between the reviews from the first Adventure cruise being pretty negative for this one and the fact that they changed it from all inclusive to "Beach Getaway with Lunch" I didn't really have any interest in it anymore.  With tourism basically being shut down for the previous year and a half right after the island getting hit hard by hurricane Dorian, they definitely need the income that excursions can bring in, but they're just not quite ready for it to come back yet.  Even on the cruise planner there's 9 excursions available and most of them are different levels of the same ones.  I hope with things ramping up this summer they're able to make a quicker comeback.

Well, with that canceled it left me with essentially a sea day, one of my favorite days on a cruise. So, woke up, drank a few bottles of electrolyte replacement, grabbed a shower, and went out onto the balcony to see where we were.

Not a bad view at all to start the morning.  There are some people that can't cruise without a balcony.  I'm not not one of them, at least when I'm going solo.  I'd rather spent my time on deck or almost anywhere else on the ship than my room so it's highly optional for me.  This time though, the cost wasn't actually that much more than an interior and I wanted one just on the off chance we got quarantined I could still get some fresh air.  That said, this was the most time I spent on the balcony the whole cruise, other than using it to dry some clothes.

So, off I went in search of coffee and breakfast, some love the Windjammer for this but I'm a Cafe Promenade man.  Give me an iced americano with an egg and cheese breakfast sandwich and I'm a happy man.  Nice, tasty, light, and sets me up for the morning without weighing me down.  I've got to give these guys some serious props, wish I'd thought to get their picture or write down their names (maybe next time since I'm back on in less than 6 weeks), but by the second morning they'd already recognized me and would have my order ready as I was walking up.

Yesterday I'd spent a lot of time with other people, this morning I just wanted to kinda chill, maybe do some reading and grab some photos.  Right after breakfast I headed up to the pool deck just to do a little bit of people watching and relax with a book for awhile.  Maybe a breakfast bloody mary or two, extra spicy.  At some point I'd noticed a fueling barge coming up beside us and decided to head down to deck 4 to get a bit of a closer look, and noticed that we're actually docked next to the Grandeur of the Seas too.

I'll be on the Grandeur out of Barbados in December for a couple weeks, can't wait.    She just finished with a dry dock that was hopefully getting her prepared for us.

After a bit I just went back in to get a few pictures of the ship and keep exploring around a bit.

This pretty much went on all morning/afternoon.  Sit down to read for a bit, have a drink or two, then get up to wander around, people watch, grab another drink, etc etc.  Till about 2:30....when I grabbed a mani-pedi.  Does it cost more on ship? Yeah.  Is it worth it? Yeah.  For me at least.  

Skipped lunch so after that was done I headed down to Cafe Promenade again for a slice of pizza and an iced coffee and decided to get changed for the evening.  I packed very casual this trip so getting ready for dinner really just consisted of putting on jeans instead of shorts and wearing an undershirt under a casual dress shirt.  And a shower.  That sun is hot.

With a couple hours before dinner I bounced between Boleros and the Schooner bar, enjoying the music and coconut mojitos, before meeting up with Kelly for dinner at Chops.  

Dinner and company was great and finished just in time for me to hit up "Hot Ice Cool Art", the ice show in Studio B.  Was fairly excited to see this as I'd been following Jordan Bauth on youtube since she announced that she had a contract for the Adventure and would be joining the ice show cast.  It was just fantastic to watch her vlogs for the behind the scene view of the crew, see the precautions they took on getting them on board, and then some glimpses of the show itself.  

All I'll say is it was better in it's entirety than the short clips (or my photos below) could do justice.  I won't say much more other than I sat in the wrong spot for great photos and I had my camera set wrong for the type of lights initially...so about half my photos are worthless because I was using electronic shutter which with these led lights makes horizontal lines through the whole shot.  Oh well.  Just an excuse to watch it again next time..and maybe take a different camera for some color shots too!

If you want to know more about the cast, Jordan has a video on her account all about meeting the cast:

And of course if you want links to their instagram accounts just click through (follow her) and she supplied them here :)

After the show I ended up at the Blue Moon bar on deck 14 with a bunch of people from the roll call for a great evening.  I'll spare everyone the photos from there, but suffice it to say, many drinks were had and the DJ was really playing to his audience tonight.