After a photo-heavy day 3, we left the camera in the cabin and explored the ship during our full day at sea.
On our fourth day, we had to start heading back to where we started, so we spent the entire day at sea. This gave us an opportunity to take advantage of the swimming pools and lounges and things throughout the ship. We spent most of the day with a little group of friends we’ve made, all honeymooners like us. Most of them are a few years younger than we are, but they’re pretty fun people to hang out with. With the open all-inclusive bar, there was a steady stream of margaritas and other tropical beverages coming to our table. The cruise directors organized a “men’s sexiest leg competition” which I didn’t enter, but several of our group did. They had to dance through a line of a dozen seated women (all the partners of the contestants) and the women had to touch their legs and decide which was sexiest. It was all pretty silly and voted arbitrarily by applause. The psychologically probable result of the first and last contestants being chosen for the finals occurred. With this and the drag queen thing, I think it’s funny how it’s politically okay to objectify men, but not women. If it was a women’s sexiest leg contest, it wouldn’t go over as well. Later, there was a thing I participated in with the other guys in our group. We had to sit on four chairs in a square, be “hypnotized” (told to lie backwards onto the legs of the guy behind us). Then the chairs were removed from beneath us, forming a table using only our back muscles. We stayed like that for all of 1.2 seconds before collapsing into a heap. Concept described better here.
Dinner was our elegant night, and we got to pose for a photo with the captain, who is a generally unimpressive late-fifties Spaniard who looks like he’s a little lost all the time. Just the guy to have his finger on the “abandon ship” alarm button. After dinner, a short nap, and then a “cabaret” show. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great. Actually that sentence applies to most everything about this cruise. We looked around for our friends but couldn’t find them, so we headed for bed.
Up next: Aruba!