Oasis of the Seas - Day 5 - St. Maarten (Part 1)

Today is our first port day of the cruise, St. Maarten! We were in port today from 8AM until all aboard at 4:30PM. St. Maarten was a port we'd visited once before on my very first cruise. Back then Dad went on an ATV ride and I went on the glass bottom boat tour during the day. Then since we were in port then until 10PM, we both enjoyed a sunset catamaran excursion.

As I mentioned previously, we were ready to pick a sailing even if it meant visiting ports we'd already been to. At this point, we've done all the stereotypical Caribbean activities that we cared to and figured that this was a good excuse to take advantage of a quieter ship. I did do a little research in hopes of finding something unique to do but in the end we decided to just wander off when we felt like it, take some pictures, maybe do a little shopping, and then return to the comforts of the ship.

Woke up earlier than my alarm this morning and got to watch us pull in to port. I love that our balcony wraps around giving us the best of both worlds - look one way and it's the blissful scene of the open water; look the other way and you can watch our skillful captain back our ship into port.

The view as I stepped onto the balcony from my bedroom:

Moving along the side of the balcony I get a good view of where we've been:

And where we're headed:

After a quick shower, we headed over to Coastal Kitchen for a filling breakfast. We had received the luggage valet forms the day before and the information on them said to return the filled out forms to the concierge. We had tried luggage valet on Celebrity and it was a no brainer for us since the $25 fee is waived for suites and our first class flights meant no baggage fees. This morning we took the time to drop it off with the concierge on our way to breakfast since we walked right past their desk anyway.

Never really had a problem finding a seat at breakfast time in Coastal Kitchen. Never experienced dining there for any other meal where reservations are expected. The staff did get a little anxious when only a four top was available as just like Princess' Club Class dining, they didn't want to risk a group of 4 coming in and not having a table. Instead, they moved the tables apart to give us a two top. Not that it really matters if we sat at a four top - after all my imaginary friends need to eat too!

One of the female wait staff who routinely brought us the pastry tray to choose from would joke that the pastries "are hot like me." Today I asked what the choices were and my heart skipped a beat when she told me the filled donut had "vanilla" today. Not lemon for a change? Be still my heart and fill my plate please! Here's what she plunked down on my plate (I split it open for the picture) as I told the defibrillator to stand down:

Oh what a tease pastry tray pass out person! That's the yellowest vanilla I've ever seen. I still ate it just in case it was actually vanilla flavored. Yeah, I'm that desperate for donuts.

For breakfast today I threw in a little extra fruit and asked for a banana. Do you think I can have someone follow me around at home and serve me bananas sliced up and reassembled?

I think this is what they called the "Fast Fare Breakfast" I know I ordered it one of the days so I could report about it. For my readers I give all of my thoughts, heart, and taste buds for the cause!

I don't know for sure whether this is pork or chicken sausage. I don't care either way but Dad is particular and didn't care for the sausage. Luckily, they were always ready with the bacon for him so there was no mutiny on this sailing!

Carbs to hide that icky lemon donut.

With our bellies full, pop quiz, where do you think we went from here readers? Give me a T, give me an R, give me an I, well you get the idea. A great trick to increase your odds of finally winning a trivia session is to stay on board while everyone else is in port. Attended General Knowledge Morning Trivia in the Schooner Bar and won ourselves some RCL pens. For some reason I have an odd fascination with cruise line branded pens. And it's always unintentional - I either won them as prizes or go to unpack and find that one or two got thrown in my bag by those imaginary friends since they didn't get breakfast.

With time to kill before Famous Faces trivia, I decided to test out the report that Star Class gets Starbucks drinks (not the merchandise or food) included. I'm not a big coffee drinker nor is Dad but I enjoy the occasional flavored Frappuccino. There was no wait as no one was even sitting nearby much less standing in line to order. We'd heard that when you're ordering at Starbucks and you're Star Class, you need to tell them before they ring up your order. I've also read reports that you only have to show your card, not scan it or you might be charged. So we each ordered vanilla Frappuccinos and Dad holds out his card. The guy working behind the counter tells him he has to scan it and we verified that it showed a $0 balance before signing on the screen for the charge. 

Next up was a "visual trivia" held in On Air since there were screens or in this case, a screen they projected from their computers onto. This trivia was a mix of celebrity faces as well as historical faces. Our mishmash team of new trivia loving friends from other sessions lost out by one point because the other team recognized that a photo of a portrait was actually Leonardo Da Vinci. They were one of the few to get it right so our trivia host Dominic joked that he should have put up a picture of Leonardo the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle instead. The winners were a sweet family with a young daughter named Sydney and Dominic was enamored with her for the rest of the trip. One of Dominic's jokes during his trivia sessions was to offer a blown up balloon that said something like "Better Luck Next Time" as a "booby prize." He offered this time to let Sydney pick the prize offering a water bottle, a hat, a highlighter, or a balloon and of course she chose the balloon. We saw Sydney and her parents at several other trivia events during the week and I'm pretty sure she cleaned Dominic out of his balloon supply.

Finally headed out on shore and getting off the ship was super easy at this point since the mad rush had already left. We were the only ship in port today and the sun was quite warm. We mostly wandered around the shops and I paused to snap pictures along the way. Pretty sure I found 1/4 of the ship doing the same thing as pretty much every souvenir store was packed. I'd walk in, scan the space confirming "same junk, different port" and head right back out. I had been hoping to find something unique like a treat or snack that you could only find in these ports but mostly it was knickknacks and knockoffs in the form of jewelry and fashion.

Love that I managed to catch a photo with the flag fully picked up by the breeze.

What the solarium hot tub that hangs over the ship looks like

Left picture shows the tiered balconies - ours was the very bottom and had the most space. Right picture shows the same balconies from the other angle so you can see the different furniture you get the higher and narrower your balcony is.

I love getting pictures of "bridges to nowhere." Something spooky about the look of it extending out into the water with no boat at the end.

The immediate port area doesn't look "damaged" from the hurricane but the further you travel inland there are still signs. One such sign of the damage was that the famous chocolate shop in St. Maarten is now the only fully enclosed shack along the rows of souvenir stalls. They had to move into this little pop up shop for the time being and since it's chocolate, they have to control the temperature inside by keeping the door closed. It was so tiny, only a couple people could go in at once and even then you could see their backs pressed up against the door they walked through to come in. I was considering going inside just to try some chocolate but there was always a steady stream of people going in and taking their dear sweet time.

Hello! From the other side. It'll cost you $7 to come back. Anyone else wonder why they even offer the $5 one way ticket? I would think everyone would want to come back to the ship they came in on!

You could stop and check out El Dorado and Mr. Table Cloth Too!

Or if you find that port liquor tastes better than ship liquor

Look out for the "special" t-shirts. They do tricks!

Like make new flavors of soda. Come to St. Maarten and try the new "Fare Berry O" hybrid soda brand!

I guess it's a good thing this bar is within sight of the ship. They can just spin you around three times and watch you weave your way back to the ship. You get your drink on and their happy hour is watching passengers try to stumble back just before the ship leaves.

Do you ever get the feeling that you're being watched?

The little yellow building next to the ship is where they housed several x-ray machines and metal detectors. The weird thing is that while they had barricades set up gearing you to going through the building in order to get up to the ship's gangway, there was nothing stopping you from walking straight along the right side of the pier bypassing the building entirely. There were barricades up after the building to guide the crowd toward the gangway but they'd left an opening in the middle. Anyone who walked past the building could come in that opening and walk right up to the gangway and we watched several do that. There was another gangway up near the front of the boat and some people did walk all the way up to get back on board. 

We went through the yellow building where Dad ended up getting beeped by the metal detectors because he had our passports in his pocket. Once on the gangway, we got dinged in with our ship cards but no further security. Later when we saw Dominic again, we asked about why some people got funneled through that building and others didn't. He told us about how those who went all the way to the front had to go through security once back on board. We told him about the people we saw going through the opening bypassing security totally and he promised to mention that to security.

All the people on the right side of this photo are walking right past the little security building.

 Ahh well, at least we got a chance to sit in the shade and rehydrate with water and fruit punch once we got through the security check. Missed the touch of Celebrity's ice cold wet washcloths though.