Friday - January 18, 2008

Home Away from Home

I thought you might be interested to get a peek at our stateroom, seeing as it will be home for us for about 42 days. We thought the Princess Grille cabin we had on the World cruise was a piece of luxury, and it was, but the Queen's Grille rooms up the ante considerably. 

Our room is very elegantly decorated in grey, gold, and black with touches of orange. The walls are all trimmed in wood and there is a wall of wood panelling behind the king-sized bed. Another wall is lined with a desk and armoire for the tv, which again are made of solid wood. There is also a walk-in closet with a wall of wood shelves. The effect is very soothing and it is room that makes you feel happy to walk into. We find we have fewer drawers for storage than we had in the other cabin, but then I realized that we had given them up for a wall with sliding glass doors to our balcony, which seems like a good trade to me. 

Besides the bed and furniture I've already mentioned, we have two night tables, a couch, a sitting chair, a little table, a bench, and a desk chair, and there is still plenty of room to move around without getting in each other's way. On the balcony, we have two teak deck chairs with cushions we can put out and a small table. 

Our bathroom is very large with dark marble side-by-side sinks and light marble walls. We have a full-sized bathtub and a very nice shower that encourages long morning showers. 

I find myself enjoying the room so much that I don't go out and spend as much time on the other decks as I did the last time.  If one wanted to, it would be very easy to do a entire cruise without leaving the confines of the Grille area, except to do shore excursions, but then one wouldn't be experiencing shipboard life at its fullest. 

So far, we have been incredibly lazy, going to bed by midnight and sleeping so late that we almost miss breakfast. And then there are the naps in the deck chairs or a full-blown afternoon sleep on the bed that have crept into the day as well (Mike is stretched out as I write this!). We keep telling ourselves that we are just unwinding from the frantic push to get ready for this trip, but I have to wonder. Maybe having done a long cruise before, we don't have the same intensity and desire to do it all. Time will tell.  

One thing we were awake for though was the first gorgeous sunset of the cruise. This is the view from our balcony of the sun setting over the water on our second evening at sea on the way to Fort Lauderdale. The colors you see are totally natural; I have not adjusted the photo at all. It was a breathtaking sight!