​We woke up at 9am and had a nice big breakfast. I had sausage, salmon Benedict, a cinnamon roll, and a huge made-to-order omelet with cheese, peppers, mushrooms, bacon, sausage, and spinach.

After breakfast, we went to the port side to see Cuba in the distance - very cool! Incredible to ever be that close to Cuba . We could see some campfire smoke in the distance. I realize it's not that far from Florida but I still never realized I would ever be this close to Cuba. At first I was questioning if it was really Cuba, but I pulled up the ol' Google Maps (it still works as it always has access to the GPS even w/o internet) to confirm. I took off the airplane mode on the phone for a bit to use Google maps, and I thought it was fascinating that I received a "welcome to Cuba" text from Verizon. Also, the captain mentioned it over the intercom to confirm my suspicions.

We walked on the jogging loop for a little bit, getting a little bit of an exercise for the day. It was also kind of cool to be walking around the jogging track on the top of the ship overlooking the ocean. While on the jogging track we saw our friends from dinner, and it's funny: later they were saying it was so hot every lap they were saying in their head's "fuck this". I was thinking the same thing for them.

Alicia and I decided to try our skills on the mini putt-putt course . The course wasn't long (9 holes) but it was entertaining. Near the mini golf course is a netted off area for volleyball and basketball.

Later we decided to check the fitness center onboard. It's pretty neat - it's at the very front of the ship on the highest level so your view while working out is straight sea. Kind of motivating if I do say so myself. We were just in flip flops checking it out so we definitely earned a few stares. All that gym and exercise stuff made us decide to get some ice cream.

We admired the sea for a long time today. There was a lot of time spent staring into the distance at Cuba or at the seemingly endless amount of water in the horizon.

At this point, we have traveled just over 300 miles away from Florida. Our current speed at noon was 22mph or about 17-19 knots. We still had 375 miles left to the Cayman Islands.

We partook in Harry Potter trivia . I thought we did really well! We had 18/20 questions correct. Of course, there were some true HP nerds in the audience that had a full 20/20 including bonus question (we had the tie breaker question right too for the record).

For lunch, we tried out the burrito bar and I had some chicken tenders from the buffet. The burrito bar was delicious, serving it sort of Chipotle style in crunchy burrito bowl. I had a lemon tart for dessert. The lemon tart had some berry garnishing and the lady was nice enough to give them to me in a bowl - yay fruit! :) we saved in our room for later.

We checked out a mini and reoccurring showing of Clue: The Game Show. We had an overview and there were future clue sessions throughout the rest of the cruise to Sherlock the murder mystery.

Although we didn't do a whole lot thus far, we were still exhausted. We suncreened up and laid in the sun and relaxed for a while.

Next up: Packer game! How stressful. We found a nice Wisconsin table that made room for us. We sat next to people from Milwaukee, Wausau, and La Crosse. It was a thriller of a game! The Packers were up 18 in the third quarter but the Cowboys rallied late to tie it up. The last two minutes was as such: Mason Crosby squeaks in a long 56 yd FG to take the lead with 1:33 left on the clock. And man, that field goal was scary because it barely knuckled in . If he missed it, the Cowboys would have had the ball left with plenty – but at the same time not very much – time left in great field position. Cowboys march quickly down the field, but the Packers D bends but not breaks and Dan Bailey nails a gimmie to tie it up with 35 seconds left. Aaron had a few timeouts to work with and work he did. It wasn't quite a hail marry, but it may as well have been with the 3rd down pass down the field to a tippy toe-touching-turf snag by Jared Cook. Mason Crosby kicked another looong 51 field goal for the win! But wait, Cowboys called a timeout. Good lord! Let's try again: Mason Crosby kicked it again and barely squeaked it through the left upright and let the screams and celebration begin!

As I said, we watched much of the game with our Packer friends (who one couple was just married the other day on the cruise(!). It was a formal dinner tonight, and the game started at 4:35pm ship time. Our dinner reservations are for 8:00pm every night. So if you could do the math, we barely had enough time for both . Sacrilegious, I know, but if the game would have went into overtime I don't think we could have watched as because it was a formal night, lobster was on the menu. A crazy story: when the 2-minute warning hit, Alicia and I said our good-byes and SPRINTED to our room. We were weaving through foot-traffic in true NASCAR style. We made it back to our room, 3 floors up and the opposite side of the ship, and had the TV turned on to the right channel without missing ONE SECOND of game action. We quick rinsed off, changed, and actually weren't even that late to our 8:00pm dinner slot. We were on fire temperature-wise and elated in the victory - we were literally basking in it when we explained why we were a few minutes late to our Michigan friends. Woo, Sports!

Dinner was a marvelous one. For appetize, I had fried oysters, boiled lobster (as mentioned) with shrimp (bonus), and vanilla crème brûlée. Alicia had the same except with an Italian meatball soup for an appetizer. Phenomenal dinner! I really could get used to this . Some of our other dinner-mates were at dinner too tonight but didn't participate much in conversation. They made reservations for the (expensive) steak house last night. Apparently, Viktor our waiter was saying if we wanted fancy steak like that we could easily get it here and it would have been $20 cheaper. We had thought it rained earlier as the side of the windows at the sports bar had water droplets, but we were unsure. Either way, it was definitely getting bumpy at dinner the more we got into the open waters with the rattling sounds of wine glasses constant in the background along with the rumbling of the engine, presumably directly below us.

After a 90-minute dinner and everlasting (and enjoyable) conversation, we decided we'd try hot tubing since presumably all of the old people would be inside / sleeping. We had a hell of a time finding a hot tub we were allowed in, though. Apparently the 2 hot tubs in the front of the ship in the adults-only section (Serenity) close at 10:00pm as do the poolside hot tubs . We had to go all the way to the aft (back) of the ship in another adults-only section (nice/confusing, right? Not quite sure how that's enforced). We were finally able to hot tub after the third try, but sadly the hot tub was more of a lukewarm tub. It was beautiful to stare up at the stars and moon though in a relatively clear night.

At this time, we were going 18.8 knots speed at night (about 22mph). It was a little bumpy in the ship and getting windier outside. Sleepy time; even though it was sort of a lazy day we still logged 13k steps. The first thing I noticed when laying down is that the whole ship was really swaying now. I'm assuming the deeper waters had this effect. I kind of thought it was sort of soothing as it rocked me to sleep. Next up, Grand Cayman and stingrays and snorkeling!

Tonight’s towel animal was a panda.