Winter Break. Part II - Days 6, 7 and 8: Perfect Day? Not Quite.
Last night—Sunday night—was a literal nightmare.
We went to bed close to midnight, and all night there was banging and constant noise. You could hear movement nonstop. Then, in the middle of the night, Tzvi’s stomach issues returned. So he was up and down the entire night. After him being sick the week before, I honestly can’t describe how upsetting this was. I don’t know if it was food poisoning or just that his stomach wasn’t great and then got aggravated, but it was so bad. So, so bad. I was livid.
Eventually, the sun came up—and somehow things always feel a little better once it’s light out. The girls, Shir and I got up, got dressed, and headed to the buffet. Tzvi slowly made his way after us and managed to eat some toast.
This was our first buffet breakfast of the trip, and I noticed they have an entire kosher section. There were hash browns, potatoes, baked beans, and different kinds of eggs. At the omelet station, you can ask for a kosher omelet, and they use separate pans and serve it on a paper plate. There’s also a separate area with paper plates, and the breads—bagels and rolls—are clearly labeled kosher. Honestly, it’s great. Especially considering we didn’t pay for the fresh kosher meal package, it’s a really nice option and surprisingly accommodating.
Today was supposed to be our “Perfect Day at CocoCay,” Royal Caribbean’s private island. Except it was cloudy and about 65 degrees, which is… not exactly “perfect” beach weather. Still, we decided we had to get off the ship, so we packed up, got off, took a tram to the beach, and basically sat on a cloudy beach for a couple of hours. For lunch we got veggie burgers, which were actually not bad.
The island itself is very lovely—obviously not as nice as Disney’s private island, but still really nice. It was just cold. Hallie actually ran into one of her friends who was on a different Royal Caribbean ship that was also docked there, which was cute. Eventually, though, we all agreed it was freezing and we were done. So we took the tram back to the ship, and that was our “perfect day” at CocoCay.
Once back on the ship we went to the pool, realized how cold it was, and immediately headed to the hot tubs. The girls ended up swimming a little, but overall it was just cold.
For dinner, we went to a specialty restaurant—Chops Grille, the steakhouse. We don’t usually go there because we always think, why bother? It’s expensive because you’re paying for steak, which we’re not getting. But we knew we couldn’t do too many meals in the dining room, so we decided to try it. When we walked in, they sat us at this massive table meant for about ten people, which felt very strange for just five of us. But honestly, it worked out great—we had tons of room and a lot of food.
Dinner was excellent. We had salads, salmon and branzino, and everything was really delicious. For dessert, we had key lime pie and a warm chocolate cake. It was all very well done, and we had a really nice time there. Tzvi managed to eat what he wanted, which was a win.
After dinner we walked around a bit, went to the Taylor Swift name-that-tune, and hung out in the Surfside neighborhood where the kids climbed on the climbing wall and rode the carousel. They put on a really cute ‘bedtime stories’ show for the kids. Hallie watched, but Madeleine just wanted to climb.
It was a good day overall.
Tuesday
Tuesday morning, we woke up to a sea day. It was another rough night for Tzvi, which meant it was a rough night for me. We slowly made our way to breakfast, which was the usual buffet. After that, I went to the gym—for my one and only workout of the vacation.
Tzvi took the girls to Surfside. They climbed on the wall, rode the carousel again and played air hockey in the arcade. Then we met back up and all hung out by the pool. There’s this green dry slide that takes you from Deck 16 to Deck 15, and Madeleine became completely obsessed with it. She had a really great time going on that over and over, like twenty times.
For lunch I went to the buffet and Tzvi got the Mexican food from the Mexican buffet next to the pool. He figured if his stomach was already messed up, why hold back. I think we basically stayed by the pool all day until it was time to get ready for our, you know, early-bird dinner. Tonight was fancy night, so we dressed up. People on the ship definitely do not dress up as much as they used to, which I don’t love. I think it’s because the masses started cruising and just don’t appreciate the art of fine dressing on a ship.
Anyway, tonight we had actually pre-ordered kosher, and we all had steak for dinner. It was actually delicious and nice to get some meat.
After dinner, we saw Back to the Future the Musical, which is an adaptation of the Broadway musical. The girls loved it, and I thought it was really well done. I did keep thinking, though—what would possess someone to turn this into a musical in the first place? But still, it worked. The guy who played Marty’s dad, George McFly, was fantastic. I thought he was the best one in the cast.
After the show, we went to the café and got some little cakes just for fun, and that was it for the day. Shir met a group of six Argentinian yeshiva boys who all speak Hebrew. It’s amazing how she just keeps meeting all of these people.
Wednesday
By Wednesday morning we officially started worrying about the upcoming snowstorm back home. All we were seeing all over our Instagram feeds were people talking about how all of the elements were colliding to produce a historic storm that would surely close all airports on Sunday and Monday. I said, “You know what? We should just book flights now and not wait to see what happens on Sunday.” We figured if things were bad Sunday, Monday would probably be bad also, so we booked flights for 11:50am on Tuesday. Tzvi was a little apprehensive about it, but he went along with it. I told him, worst-case scenario, one of the tickets will be refunded, but we’ll make it home. [Tzvi: I’m not saying any of this was unreasonable, but let’s be clear – this was all part of Steph’s grand scheme to add another Disney leg to this already very long vacation.]
We didn’t book any excursions for today because Cozumel is always… gross. But I’d been in touch with my friend Renee—she was on a Princess ship—and we tried to figure out a way to meet. Someone on our ship had recommended a beach club called Paradise Beach Club, so we decided to try our luck.
Now, here’s the thing about Cozumel: if you tell anyone in the port that you’re going to Paradise Beach, they immediately say, “Oh, it’s so crowded, don’t go there, it’s sold out—come to this other beach instead.” But everyone giving you that advice is probably getting kickbacks from other beaches, so you just ignore them.
This was actually the first time we’ve gone somewhere in a foreign port that wasn’t a ship-booked shore excursion. We just got on a taxi line and went. The ride was about 11 minutes, and we arrived at the beach club. It was actually pretty great – mostly clean, good service, not gross, and decent food. We were seated near Renee, and we had a really nice time. The beach club had a pool and a beach, and it was just a very pleasant way to spend the day. For lunch we ordered nachos (Tzvi was really testing that stomach, but he figured you’re not in Mexico every day). The kids had pizzas, because what else would they eat.
We eventually headed back to the ship, hit the hot tubs for a bit and Hallie and I did one of the water slides.
Tonight, we did a dinner without the kids at the Lincoln Park Supper Club. This is the ship’s specialty, fancy, most “special” dining experience. They even sent us an invitation to our room earlier in the day. Basically, it’s a six-course meal accompanied by a jazz quartet that plays you through the entire meal. Each course came with a separate cocktail pairing, which was nice, but they were like full sized cocktails and who can drink six cocktails in a meal? We had informed them of our dietary restrictions ahead of time, and they handled everything beautifully.
The food was delicious—fine dining, really well done. There was a lot of smoke produced from liquid nitrogen, which was cool. Also, it was a small space with a limited number of tables and they only do two seatings each night. The music was nice, though I could have done without it being loud the entire 2.5 hours. But that could also have been because our table was literally right next to the musicians. The space itself was very cool, the service was fantastic, and overall it was an excellent experience. The only issue was that mid way through the meal the boat started really rocking. After dinner Tzvi asked one of the musicians if it was hard to perform when the ship was rocking so much and he said “well this is the rockiest it’s been since I’ve come on board!”. Lucky us.
After dinner, we went back to the room. The kids were still up of course. We didn’t see a show but were so stuffed and tired we were ready for bed. Good day.
