First Day at Sea El Maduro, Cuba

El Maduro, Cuba

It was an early morning with an 8 AM manicure and 9 AM pedicure for me, courtesy of a Christmas present from my niece and nephew, Amanda and Phillip. LJ brought me a quick bite of breakfast since, of course he was up early, and then I headed to the spa. My therapist was Peta from Jamaica, and I honestly have never had a better foot massage during a pedicure – ever. She was amazing.

After leaving the spa, I headed to the Serenity deck, the adult quiet zone and found LJ holding a “clam shell” chair for me which is a fantastic wicker chair built for two with a clam shell folding canvas cover to allow as much or as little sun as you’d like. So I’m sitting here looking at the ocean in front of me with my umbrella drink, my itouch tunes and blogging away – please don’t hate me. Life is good. More later about our first formal night and our first visit to the on-board specialty steak house.

LJ came back by the clamshell to collect me for lunch, I had wanted to try the Pasta Bar so we said goodbye to the Serenity area and passed by the Hairy Chest contest on our way. Too bad LJ didn’t enter, while not having what we thought would be a ‘hair-worthy’ entry, he definitely would have had the dance skills (please remember the visual of the Sexy Legs contest) and could have easily wooed the judges, especially since the contestants even had a staircase to work with in their performance. Oh well, too late and pasta was calling.

I chose the linguini with shrimp, spinach and mushrooms, topped with alfredo sauce. LJ had the meat lasagna… which was an original with steak as the meat and also with sweet potatoes inside! After lunch we came back to the room for siestas. LJ worked out again before dinner while I extended my siesta. We got ready for our evening meal and went up to Chef’s Art Steakhouse for dinner. We’ve eaten at something similar on the Royal Caribbean Ships (Chops). This is a specialty restaurant with a nominal per person fee of $30 and we’ve always been thoroughly impressed with Chops. Neither of us were very impressed with this dinner though and have decided to cancel our second reservation for there on Thursday night and just enjoy the dining room.

The evening show was a Country Show which we both really enjoyed, with a terrific banjo player who did an amazing “Devil went down to Georgia” performance. We called it a night after the show, we still haven’t made it to the casino for our annual blackjack playing, maybe tomorrow.