Day 13

Trivia Wins, Dining Room Dinners and Packing for Home 🧳🏆

Today was a very riveting day…or not, considering we had absolutely no plans whatsoever. Still, days like these are good too, especially after several busy sightseeing days in Mexico. After a fairly average sleep—for some unknown reason my body insists on waking up at the same time every morning regardless of how late I go to bed—I decided to head to the dining room for breakfast instead of the Windjammer Marketplace as I needed a break from buffet life.

I’m glad I did because dining room breakfasts on cruise ships can sometimes be a bit hit and miss, but this one was excellent. It was nice having decent food in a calmer atmosphere without the chaos of the buffet upstairs, where navigating through crowds to reach something as simple as the hash browns can feel like a competitive sport. It was a shame Ted didn’t want to join me, although I know he definitely prefers the buffet experience.

After breakfast we caught up with the boys from trivia again and, somehow, we managed another win. At this point we were beginning to feel suspiciously overqualified for cruise ship trivia. Riding high from our latest victory, we decided to stay put in the same lounge for music trivia immediately afterwards. Unfortunately, this confirmed that our strengths definitely lie in general knowledge rather than identifying songs from five-second audio clips. We absolutely bombed at music trivia.

It’s also becoming noticeably colder as we continue sailing north back towards Los Angeles. The warmer Mexican weather already feels a long way away, and for the first time in days we didn’t feel permanently overheated walking around the ship. Since we disembark early tomorrow morning, we spent part of the afternoon packing our bags and attempting the usual cruise tradition of trying to fit everything back into suitcases that somehow felt larger on the way over.

Tonight though, I finally convinced Ted that we should try dinner in the main dining room instead of defaulting to the buffet again, and thankfully it didn’t disappoint. I had the salmon while Ted chose the lamb, and both meals were genuinely very good. It also felt nice having a slightly more relaxed and proper dinner experience for one of our final nights onboard.

We didn’t end up having a late night tonight as I’ve developed a headache which I suspect is simply from lack of sleep after several busy weeks of driving, flying, sightseeing and late nights. Instead, we had a quieter evening and started mentally preparing ourselves for the reality that this cruise is almost over.

It’s funny reflecting back on the first couple of days onboard because we genuinely had doubts about this cruise at the beginning. The ship initially felt overcrowded, noisy and slightly overwhelming compared to some of our previous cruises. But in hindsight, we’re very grateful we stuck with it because we ended up meeting some genuinely great people, and still got to experience some really memorable destinations along the way.Read more