Christmas Cruise - Part 3 - Ports plus

I forgot to cover one area of service on the ship in Part 2. I have added
it here.

Dining room service: As previously reported by others cruising HAL, the
service was inconsistent. Some nights we had great service and courses
were served timely. Other nights we had long waits between one or two
courses. One night we almost left, the whole table of 10, because we
thought they just forgot our desert!

The first night I asked the waiter for a Caesar salad for my son, since it
is the only salad that he really likes. I was told that they did not have
it that night, but it will be on the menu the next night. Little did I know
at the time that it is always on the room service menu, or I would have made
more of an issue of it. On the second night Jay, our son, ordered the
Caesar salad and I told the waiter that this is the only kind of salad that
Jay really likes. On the third night, we again asked for a Caesar salad, the
waiter said that he wasn't sure if he could get it for us! I told him that
it is on the room service menu, so should I order one from room service and
have it delivered to the dining room? He mumbled something about room
service and he would see what he could do. We never had a problem getting a
Caesar salad after that.

Dress Code: Most people dressed appropriately for formal night although
there were fewer tuxes than I expected. My husband was the only man at our
table with one. Informal (jackets required/tie optional) was really not
followed by most of the under 60 male passengers, they looked the same as
they would on a casual night. On the last night I did see one guy in shorts
in the dining room at the end of dinner. He apparently was not refused
entry.

Sea sickness: I bought Bonine, we all took it prior to boarding since the
first night we would still be in the Atlantic. Lauren, our 21 y.o. took
another at 8 p.m., but still got sick. She was not able to attend dinner
with us that night. After that first night she was fine without any
medication. I guess Bonine doesn't work for everyone and some people just
have to give there body time to adjust. She always seems to get sick the
first night,but is fine from then on. She will try the patch next cruise.

The Christmas Cruise experience:

Decor: There were Christmas trees in many of the public rooms, bars and of
course the Atrium. The dining room had garland and wreaths. The tables
were set with white and gold linen for Christmas night dinner and it was
the second formal night. It looked very elegant. Each cabin door had a
wreath on it also. Bartenders and waiters wore Santa hats all week. A
Season's Greetings card was given to each cabin on Christmas Eve.

Music: Christmas music played incessantly on the intercom system. I love
Christmas songs and carols, but by the time Christmas came I'd had enough!

They did have a special International Christmas Choir at 11 p.m. on
Christmas Eve. This was made up by the ships staff.

Religious services: There were religious services for Catholic, Protestants
and Jews all week long. Midnight mass and service were offered on Christmas
eve for Catholics and Protestants as well.

There was a big deal made about Santa arriving on board and he seemingly
appeared out of the smoke stack. He visited the aft pool deck, then the
Lido deck, then to the show lounge where he greeted anyone who wanted to
visit with him. He gave out gifts to the children, but I don't know what
the gift was.

Christmas morning was the only day that we ate breakfast in the dining room.
Since the cruise was our family Christmas present we did not exchange gifts,
but I did bring stockings and stuffers for both of the kids. This has
always been their favorite part of Christmas, so I wanted to carry on that
tradition. Since I could not have wrapped packages on the plane I wrapped
and shipped all the stocking stuff to my nephew's in Pompano Beach and
picked up the package the night we ate at his restaurant.

Ports:

Security: They would scan our boarding pass each time we left the ship.
They would scan our boarding pass and we had to show our picture ID to get
back on. All our carry-ons were also scanned coming back on board.

Towels: Available at each port as you left the ship. You did not need to
give a room number or anything. The actually trust people to return them!

Half Moon Cay: We just beached it here. I think we were all too tired to
want to do more than lounge in a chair and go for a dip every now and then,
so having this be our first port was perfect! The BBQ on the beach was OK.
Not great, but not inedible either. Bathrooms were clean. We were the only
ship to use the island that day.

Jamaica: I will leave this as Part 4, since we really had quite the
experience here.

Cozumel: We were able to get off in this port at 7:30 a.m. I don't know
about anyone else, but we are not early morning type people. However, we
did drag ourselves off the ship before 8:30 a.m. since we had to be back by
1:30 p.m. This was not long enough for us to do the beach experience and
shop. Since we did not get a chance to do much shopping in Jamaica (more to
come on that) we did want to shop in Cozumel. We got some nice deals on
silver, salsa and leather. I also picked up some vanilla here. We also
need to make phone calls and found that most of the phones charged 75 cents
a minute, but if you can find "gray phones" which we did, it only costs 50
cents a minute.

Our son really wanted to jet ski, so when he & hubby had their fill of
shopping they took off to Playa Sol. Jet ski rental was $55 per half hour.
No, my husband doesn't bargain, so paid full price. He did not care for
this beach at all. They did not have regular lounge chairs, but molded
plastic lounges in the sand. He said it was not really clean and would not
have eaten there. He didn't drink anything there either.

My daughter and I continued to shop until 12:00 and then I took her to
Carlos & Charlie's. She is 21 after all and I think this is a "must" stop
for someone (21 or older) on their first trip to Coz. We each had a drink
(not a Yard) and then Lauren had a shot! She took a nap when we got back to
the ship. LOL

This was the first port that we noticed heightened security. There were 2
armed (machine guns) guards at the entrance to the dock where our ID's were
checked.

Key West: This was our first time in Key West, so we did the touristy thing
and shopped Duval Street. For only 2 ships in port that day it was very
crowded. It was fun though just to be there. We let the kids go off on
their own to shop for an hour. We went to an open air bar and people
watched. After meeting back up we all went to Margaritaville to have a
cheeseburger in paradise. Somethings you just have to do : ) Mallory
Square was fun. There were many performers and vendors. We were on board
but did not sail away till after sunset, much to the disappointment of those
in Mallory Square I'm sure.

Next time I would rent one of those 4 passenger dune buggy type cars and go
see what lies outside of the immediate downtown area.

Part 4 - Jamaica and final thoughts

Yvonne in NH---------------to be
continued......................................... ................