Royal Caribbean, Day 2, Mallorca (or.... on the ship!)

The city of Mallorca in front of rocky cliffs/mountains

Yesterday the ship docked in Mallorca, which is an island off the coast of Spain. We docked in the city of Palma which was about 100x bigger than I expected. As we had been traveling for what seems like 100 days and 2 days at the same time, we decided to forego any excursions and just explore this massive ship. Mallorca also didn't have any excursions that we could all agree on - someone in our family "hates kayaking" (weirdo) and no one found Chopin's piano as fascinating as me. I was having no part of this "cliff jumping" nonsense either.

Side note: today's picture are all just from my iphone. I don't have Doug's pictures to add to this today, so there might be a supplemental post. When I get home, I edit these posts slightly and then print them all in a Blurb book to keep on our shelves.

We're on the Oasis of the Seas which up until recently was the largest class ship in Royal Caribbean's fleet, but they just ordered a more massive ship which I can't really fathom because this ship is huge. The Oasis is the oldest of the "Oasis class" ships, so it doesn't have *all* of the amenities of the others. Notably, it lacks a massive slide and iFly. Shh, don't tell the kids.

View from my coffee.

The girls have gotten into the habit of staying up way, way, way later than usual and so they want to sleep in the mornings. Doug got up to run yesterday and I got up and came down to the area of the ship called Central Park to have a cup of coffee and write my travel log. The free coffee on this ship is literally the worst. I could pay $5/cup for a Starbucks but so far I'm very committed to living within my cruise fare. So I've been having RC coffee + all the half and half. It just requires more cups of it, but it is at least palatable. And I'm no coffee snob - give me a McDonalds coffee any day. Anyway, Central Park is really lovely. It is lush and green and even has lizards!! They have orchids growing on the trees like you find in south Florida. Its quiet in the mornings (save for the piped in bird chirping which I could do without), and has comfy chairs to sip coffee and wake up in. It is in the middle of the ship so you also don't have the winds. I think this is my favorite part of the entire ship.

Lizard friend, while having coffee.

After I had my coffee and wrote my update, I got the text that the girls were awake and hungry. They are essentially baby birds. If they are awake they want food. Luckily that's easy to come by here. So we went to the main dining hall for breakfast and chose the buffet which has ample calories for everyone.

After breakfast, the girls got into swimsuits and went to ride the "Flowrider" which is something that lets you emulate wake boarding or surfing. It got two giant thumbs up from both girls. Then it was time for a snack. I don't know what they scavenged. The wonderful thing about a cruise ship is that they can go scavenge for things without their parents, especially since we all have wifi and can message each other.

I don't know the exact order of events because I spent most of the day fighting off a migraine (unsuccessfully). They swam, ate ice cream, hot tubbed, ate more ice cream, played ping pong, more ice cream, then had lunch. We ate lunch at the massive buffet which has every type of cuisine you can imagine. If you looked at our 4 plates, you would find very little overlap because we all have such different tastes. I gravitate towards the seafood and fish.

Doug spent much of his morning in one of my other favorite spots, the solarium. It is like a greenhouse on the front of the ship. It has its own cafe. And its 16+ :) So its quiet. There are many, many, many families on this ship which is nice. When we previously sailed Royal Caribbean, it was all adults. They've definitely shifted to a more family friendly ship.

After lunch, Doug and Elisabeth did the rock wall. I was impressed by both of them!! And after the rock wall, it was time for more dessert and then a little rest back in the room primarily to charge their phones. We watched Mr. Poppers Penguins, which I found hilariously funny. I love Jim Carrey.

Charlotte asked me last night if I preferred Royal Caribbean or Disney and I said Disney. She looked at me like I had 5 heads and said WHY?!?!? So, apparently Charlotte vastly prefers this ship to any Disney ship we've done because she feels the activities are more geared towards older kids. She also just feels its a little more grown up and she likes that. Also, Disney's shows don't have insane diving feats (see below). Knowing that the kids like this so much makes me like Royal a bit more.

Doug on rock wall

Elisabeth on the rock wall

Then it was GAME TIME! We signed up for a free trial of Fubo and are therefore able to stream all of the Women's World Cup games (that's why we've been staying up way too late!). We squirreled ourselves away in the back corner of the buffet and watched the game while intermittently going back for more food. Every time someone left the table, though, something important happened. I'm still astounded that there's nowhere on this ship to watch Women's World Cup, but if ESPN had the rights instead of FOX, it would be on every tv since they are playing soccer games, just the ones on ESPN.

Game ready!!

Mercifully the US won the game last night in a not so spectacular display.

slack liners at Aqua Theater. I can't take
two steps on our slackline so this impresses me.

After the game, we had reservations for the Aqua Theater, which is a diving/synchronized swimming/slackline show. It was really amazing. At times I had to avert my eyes because I was scared they were going to get hurt. Charlotte was literally on the edge of her seat. They did high dives from 17 meters up into a small pool. Some crazy guy walked a tight rope 17 meters up. They did what felt like Olympic quality dives. It was really excellent.

Finally it was time for the good night dessert and bed, where we watched Sweden knock of Canada (which made us sad, we like the Canadian team).

On tap for today, the ship should be docking in Marseilles in the next 45 mins. We will wave to France and essentially repeat yesterday. Tomorrow though... Cinque Terra. I am *really* excited to go back to Italy which I remember as being my favorite place on earth from 1997.