Couples Only Cruise ~ Cozumel

After another early morning jog, Ben and I enjoyed another leisurely breakfast on the sun deck behind Topsider buffet. We popped up to deck nine to get a better view of Cozumel as we came into the dock.



Sea days and port days feature entirely different energy on the ship. While the sea days feature a much more sleeping in and hanging out vibe, port days there is a purpose and focus as people wake up earlier, eat breakfast in a bit of a hurry and queue for their appointed Port Adventure meeting times. While on sea days the first announcements may not begin until the late morning, port days involve all ashore announcments sometimes quite early.
Thankfully, these can only be heard in the hallways and public areas, so you won't be getting an unintentional wakeup call. (Intentional wakeup calls can be scheduled on your stateroom phone.)

As the lines and craziness of the all ashore groups died down, we embraced our plan of the day, which consisted mostly of lounging and doing absolutely nothing.
 Eventually, we did head off of the ship to wander the port area for a little bit and take some pictures.



I love the Magic.



After browsing a bit, we ended up in Starbucks.
(Yay! Free WiFi!)
Then headed back to the ship. Yes, there are amazing things to do in port in Cozumel, but this trip was about relaxing. Preferably in air conditioning.
After relaxing in the Cove Café and whiling the day away, we headed up on deck to enjoy watching the crew on the bridge wing set the ship back to sea. First we hung out and enjoyed watching the last minute cruisers run for the ship.

Third Cruise, in the picture three times.

Then the bridge wing started getting ready in earnest and steered the ship away from port.



We headed back to our stateroom to gussy ourselves up for Palo then made the trek to deck 10 aft.



Dinner was fabulous!
I highly recommend going to Palo,  particularly if Chef Silvio is on board.

Non-Alcoholic after dinner digestive in a beautiful little glass.

We still had pirate night to go, so we went and changed into more appropriate attire.
If we'd been on a longer cruise, we never would have scheduled Pirate's Night and Palo for the same evening, partially for the inconvenience of changing evening wear, but mostly because of the squish factor of putting on a corset immediately following dinner at Palo.

Wow, my hair was short then.

After meeting captain Mickey, we headed up onto the top deck for some stargazing. At sea at night, the skies rival the most remote land-based stargazing I've found. Looking up at the sky from the forward edge of deck 10, the rest of the world falls away and the stars and moon become far more prominent. Just don't go back inside before you let your eyes readjust to looking around at the on deck lighting or you're in for a rude awakening.
Eventually we ran into more and more company as the other cruisers gathered in preparation for the Pirates in the Caribbean deck party.

Photo Courtesy of Chris Kolb

And of course, fireworks.

Photo Courtesy of Chris Kolb

Because every day should end with fireworks.

This post is Part Nine in an Ongoing Trip Report Couples Only Cruise. I'm so thankful for my vacations and I figure reviewing them is half the fun!
I am going to try to get all of my trip reports from 2013 finished up over the next several weeks so be on the look out for scads of updates!