Grandeur of the Seas - Day 12 - Sea Day (Part 3)

We headed back to the Schooner Bar next to participate in the Higher or Lower Game hosted by Bitty. It was basically her trying to do a version of the old Card Sharks TV game show. There was a good amount of people who showed up to play so she had us form teams sending one representative from each team to compete in each round of 2 person challenges. She insisted that the representative be a different person each round forcing several of our impromptu team members to participate when they didn't want to. Our team had the worst luck getting a card after making our choice that was one number below or above in the opposite direction of what we chose. I could tell Bitty was still nervous as she kept mixing up which teams were still in the competition and whose turn it should be.

Random query - I wonder if anyone participated in the 50+ age group Rock Wall Climbing sessions. I was surprised to see that as an option. Usually it's a reference to blocks of time reserved for teens etc. Reminds me of our Panama Canal cruise where there was no one on board under 18 so they opened up the games in the Teen Club for a sort of nostalgic adult happy hour on some evenings.

Back to a more treat worthy dessert sampler for the suite treat today. Tried those round things in the concierge lounge one day. It was like someone had rolled a ball of frosting in a coating.

Dad went back to the cabin to relax for a little bit while I went down to participate in the Spelling Bee in the Centrum. The Centrum was pretty full with people just lounging so I asked to share a seat with someone only to realize that it was my fellow St. Maarten tour mates of Kay, her husband, and Scotty. Kay's husband was encouraging her to participate in the spelling bee but she was hesitant. I told her that I'd do it if she did it and that was enough to get us both in contestant's row. Katrina hosted the activity and we had a pretty decent sized group participating. The only guy though was Nick from the Harry Potter loving honeymoon couple from the Love & Marriage game. He lasted a good while until messing up. It was funny to watch his wife's face as he started spelling his final word wrong. He even was cracking up watching her but didn't pick up on her reaction to change his answer. There was a couple words as the game went on that I was so glad it wasn't my turn. Eventually we got down to me and one other woman still standing and we both lasted a couple more rounds. At one point, Katrina gave the other woman the word "tyrannosaur" to spell and neither of us had ever heard the term outside of "Tyrannosaurus Rex." Since we both questioned it, she skipped that word and gave the woman another word. You all should have figured out how much of a nerd I am by now that I had to look the word up when I got home. Turns out tyrannosaur is the word for the general class of dinosaurs that Tyrannosaurus Rex belongs. You learn something new everyday. Hence why I always say, learn the correct answers to the trivia questions you get wrong because they'll come in handy another day. After we both lasted another couple rounds, Katrina declared that the next round if we both got it right we would be crowned co-champions. That was exactly how it turned out and Katrina quickly dug around for an extra prize giving us both pens and highlighters. I suppose in a way that was fitting for a spelling bee challenge. An added bonus was riding the elevator back up with some teens who recognized me from the spelling bee and thought it was so cool how smart we were.

I reunited with Dad next at the 4PM afternoon trivia. The Schooner Bar was packed and we only found seats by joining Bob and his wife. Unfortunately, that meant my new trivia crew didn't have space to join us. They eventually sat with another couple but I took the time to say goodbye to them before the trivia started. Unbeknownst to me, they had watched part of the Spelling Bee from one of the upper decks and gave me high fives now for co-winning. One of the most endearing things they said as we parted ways was that they'd always remember me as "the girl who helped that lady win a hat." Dad had brought down our accumulated highlighters and keychains in the small shopping bag we'd gotten from the vendor in St. Lucia. After one last ditch effort to give them away to other cruisers, we ended up giving the entire bag to Bitty so she could reuse them for future games. She took one look in the bag and there was that shocked expression again. "You won all these?!" I almost replied "No, we came down here in the middle of the night and raided the piano bench where you keep the prizes."

Earlier in the day, Captain Thor had announced that NASA would be firing off a rocket from a base in Virginia right around 4:45PM, and we would be potentially sailing close enough to see it. It was quite the popular attraction and thankfully we got up there before everyone crowded the railing. A small group of crew members even came out with a little video camera to film themselves watching it. We were still so far away that you couldn't tell where anything was in relation to land so it was simply by chance and people's reaction to notice when the rocket was fired. Everyone was shivering as the wind was still strong and the temperatures had dipped by 15-20 degrees as we got closer back to Baltimore. All you could see from our vantage point was the smoke trail:

A lot of excitement for 5 minutes of activity. It also gave me the opportunity to see the results of the repaired crack in the jogging track on the open deck:

A large segment of the crowd that had been hanging out by the railing simply came back inside and went right to the Viking Crown Lounge. Nearly every table was full and we literally got the last table before the wall at the bottom. The bar staff serving happy hour for the Concierge Lounge guests were being run ragged and I'm pretty sure there were several cruisers this afternoon getting free drinks because the bar staff assumed everyone was there for the happy hour perk.

On the plus side, look who finally got fried mozzarella sticks! (Check out my Pride of America blog post for that backstory!) These were the last two left in the pot.

Earlier in the day we had decided to cancel our scheduled dinner reservation in Chops for tonight and play it by ear. As we left our cabin to participate in the Final Pub Quiz (we later learned that our new friend didn't show to play tonight because one of the elderly parents they'd traveled with on this trip had taken ill. She was taken to an ambulance on a stretcher when we disembarked back in Baltimore), I took the last TV watching towel animal that Moses had left me (he was considerate enough to leave them intact until using the towels to make a new friend 2 nights later), and put it sitting on top of my bathroom toilet with the door closed. I wish I could have seen his reaction when he went in there to clean tonight. When we came back to the room, my towel friend was hiding under the sink:

Final post to come featuring dinner and debarkation. I now have all the important papers, dining room menus, and Compass issues scanned in as well so look for those posts to come soon!