Day 6-Freeport

When I woke up, I took note that the ship was still and that it was dark outside.



We had gotten up early because of the short time we had in Freeport, and the fact that we had to be ready for our excursion at 8:00. We watched the morning show, then went to breakfast. We watched the sunrise during breakfast and took note that they played very different music over the PA system that early in the morning! It sounded like Sunday morning at my Grandmom's house. After breakfast, we headed straight to deck A to disembark. We rode a bus to the UNEXCO store. We went and signed in, got our complimentary t-shirts, and were sent outside to get our flippers and wait for the rest of our excursion party. Our boat captain/guide whose name was Ian came over and introduced himself to us and told us we were just waiting on one more group. I had seen some other people milling around with the same color wristbands as us, and pointed them out. Ian went to grab them and we all headed to the boat that would take us to the dolphin enclosure.

This particular place has three different dolphin experiences. There's the Encounter, where you just sort of stand around the edge of an enclosure, the dolphins swim over to you and you can touch them and make them do tricks, and they'll jump and that sort of thing. There's the swim, where you get to be in the water with the dolphins in an enclosure and swim with them. Then there's the open ocean swim, which is what we were signed up for, and is somewhat self-explanatory. However, on that particular day, the dolphins decided they didn't want to come play in the ocean. The owner offered to either refund our money and send us back to the ship or allow us to have a sort of extended dolphin swim in the enclosure. Of course we opted for the swim in the enclosure. I was disappointed at first, but afterwords decided that the enclosure was probably better. We were introduced to our dolphin friends for the day, Salvatore and Briland. They checked us out as much as we checked them out.





We were instructed briefly on some safety tips (biggest point, don't get in the dolphins' face), then allowed to hop in the water. They had the dolphins swim over to each of us and told us hand signals to make them do a trick, had us swim along beside them and then took some posed pictures of us with the dolphins. After that, we were allowed to just sort of free swim, and the dolphins swam where they wanted to go. Bronin seemed to like me a lot and we swam together for a few minutes. He made me nervous, though because he kept cutting in front of me, and I was trying to stay out of his face. One of the other people on the excursion got popped in the head by Salvatore's flipper because the guy got in his face. Can't say I blame him.



Me getting friendly with my buddy Briland.













Our guide Ian was originally from England and was very informative about life on the island. Freeport is, as advertised, very industrial. There was hardly anything to look at on the drive out to the excursion. We rode on the bow of the boat on the way to and from the dolphin encounter, though, and that was a nice ride. It was sunny on the way out, but clouds were rolling in as we were in the encounter. It ended up raining on our bus ride back to the ship, which made it a little easier getting back onboard, even knowing it would be our last port.

It had been announced the night before and that morning that Halloween would be celebrated onboard that night even though Saturday was technically Halloween. When we got back on the ship it was to find decorations and bowls of candy on the promenade deck. The candy went really fast, but we were able to score a few pieces.











After showering and changing, we headed for lunch, then took a walk around and then headed back to hang out on our balcony. That night was also to be our last cruise elegant night, so while Rob took a nap, I took myself to one of the laundry rooms located on the ship and ironed my dress for that night. It was incredibly hot and humid in there! We watched the sunset from our balcony then got ready for dinner.





There were some people already in costume when we went downstairs, and this by far was the best one I saw all night. He was a blind referee! So clever.



For dinner that night I had a pasta dish for an appetizer (any of the entree pasta dishes can be eaten as a starter, just so you know), chateaubriand for an entree and the chocolate walnut cake for dessert. The desserts were special tonight in recognition of the Halloween fun. The ghostie dessert was a cheesecake that on of my tablemates ordered. So cute!





We posed with our tablemates and got a shot of our great servers, Dip and Glenn.





After dinner was over, we scooted back up to our cabin to do a quick change into our costumes. Rob and I went as Jon and Kate. There were tons of people in costume, all gathered in the atrium. It got a little crazy because there were so many people. Jamie (aka Robin below) was handing out tickets to 25 of the best costumes who would then go in for the costume contest in the Taj Mahal. We didn't get a ticket, but we didn't mind. We made our way up to the piano bar instead.













We saw Jamie, Kirk, Joey and William (all members of the entertainment staff) in the bar that night. I took the opportunity to thank Jamie and Kirk for being such a huge part of the experience for us, and Kirk thanked us and offered to buy us a drink. We accepted and they asked us to sit for a while. Jamie and the other staffers had to leave to host the costume parade, but Kirk sat with us a while longer chatting. We repaid him by buying them a round the next night and they referred to us as Jon and Kate for the rest of the cruise. Good times.

We shut down the piano bar again, then made our way with our piano bar buddies down to Beauties. Beauties was somewhat dead, so we decided to go up to the aft lido deck, which was even deader. We made it fun though. It was heading toward closing time there, sothen Rob and I headed back to Beauties, which was saying it was last dance, last song, so we had no choice but to go to bed. We went back to our room to find our next towel animal...a stingray. Not my favorite. Even though the rest of the world was still on daylight savings, we reset our clocks on the ship that night. The moon was almost full that night.





We knew the next day was our last and were sad already.