When we first booked 16 nights aboard Rhapsody of the Seas it sounded like heaven. Then we started to tell people. 16 nights, they said, that’s a long time. Which made us start to think that 16 nights really was a very long time. Perhaps, indeed, even too much time. We had only cruised once before and only for 4 nights, this was going to be a lot longer than that.
People take cruising really seriously. There was a couple on our ship who were spending their 2000th night at sea (fyi you get a free steak dinner if you make it this far). Another couple on board had started a petition to keep the rhapsody of the seas in Australia (this was its last trip out of Australia, it will be replaced with a newer ship). This couple had sailed on the rhapsody of the seas over 60 times.
Cruise ships provide a lot of opportunities to be competitive. We quickly fell into a sea day routine of spending our time between breakfast and lunch participating in trivia games. We managed to win a few games, but lost the progressive trivia by a measly 1 point. Between lunch and dinner we idled by the pool or tried one of the other activities onboard (like rock climbing which had almost no line). After dinner we’d either see one of the shows onboard (as long as it was a comedian), watch a movie or have a few drinks before heading off to bed to wake up and do it all over again.
The food was ok, nothing to write home about. There was plenty of it, but all fairly bland, even the wasabi schnitzel or the Harissa chicken. Despite the constant large meals we managed to avoid putting on any weight, largely because we avoided the lifts and took the stairs everywhere.
Is the fish eating spaghetti?
Well the fish is dead, so it’s not really eating per se. It just had spaghetti thrown in its mouth, because there was spaghetti thrown everywhere.