Allure Day 5 - Tapas, Rising Tide and Quest!

Back on board, we (of course) went to the flowrider.  We stayed there until it closed at 6pm.

We didn’t have dinner plans this night, and it was Smart Casual dress.  We decided to have tapas and wine at Vintages.

We cleaned up and had some pictures made  on the Royal Promenade before our dinner.  (I was wearing white and was afraid of spilling wine on my outfit before we got pictures.)  We were actually both wearing white, and I thought it would be neat to have pictures made in front of the black background I had seen, so we headed that way.

After those pics, we decided maybe the white background would be cool, but we weren’t really sure if our white clothes would blend too much.

As it turned out, the background that I thought was black was really a funky blue and I didn’t like the photos.  But we had fun at the white background photo shoot and ended up buying this one.

I have to throw in an aside here.  On the evening of Day 7, we picked up this photo and were sharing with all of our new friends.  Dave and David took one look at it and one of them said (I am typing to insert my best British inflection here) "it's a grite phutoh, but..." Wow.  I was floored.  My new friends were bold enough to tell us our flaws?  He continued with "...the wheyete flureyedeh (that's flowrider in Texas speak) bonds (wristbands)..."

Hey, it's Chris and Susan.  What do you expect?  At least we coordinated our outfits to match our wristbands.  We all got quite a giggle out of that.

Back up to Deck 8 and Vintages.  We walked in and the entire restaurant and bar were empty.  Out on the patio, one table was seated.  We decided to also sit on the patio.  This ended up a great choice, because it was beautiful in Central Park, we could people-watch, and we chatted with a few of our new friends who stopped by from time to time.

Our waiter was great, and he gave us advice on a wine flight and some good tapas pairings to go with it.  I can't remember what we ordered to eat, but I can tell you we ordered 4-5 small plates and none of them had olives.  That narrows it down a little.  ALL of them were delicious.  There were a couple that we selected that our waiter talked us out of, due to the pairings, and I don't think we missed anything.

We decided at the end to order one last glass of wine each, and we picked a Mondavi Reserve (which was pretty expensive, in hindsight, making up almost half of our bill for the evening).  With it, we ordered a couple of dessert items, and our waiter brought us a surprise (“something I think you will like”, he said) of chocolate lollipops.  They were outstanding!

This was my 2^nd favorite dinner of the entire cruise (2^nd to 150 CP).  It was so nice to go at our own pace, enjoy the atmosphere, sip REALLY good wine and have some great tapas.  I recommend Vintages for a change of pace, and a meal as light or heavy as you’d like.  It’s also a good place to stop in before dinner for a quick appetizer (which we had done on Oasis).

After dinner, we didn’t have any plans.  At least until Quest.  So we decided to visit the Rising Tide Bar at Deck 8 and ride it down to Deck 5.

When we boarded the bar, we saw our friend Harold sitting in the center.  We went over and sat with him and just had a great time chatting.  Not long after that, our friend Dave from the flowrider showed up with his partner David and their friends Christy and Mark.  Then a few minutes later, up walked our new friends Brett and Jessica.  And suddenly, it was a party on the Rising Tide Bar!!

We had a great time there for a good long time.  We must have gone up and down 3-4 times.  At about 11:30 we all decided to go to Quest together, so we headed down to Deck 4 to Studio B.

We ended up all sitting together in Section 1 for Quest.  It was a great time, and almost everyone from our group participated at one time or another.  I really don’t remember much about the Quest, after a few cocktails at Rising Tide.  Our team didn’t win, but we had a great (ahem) showing.

After Quest, we walked down the hallway to Blaze for the Quest Afterparty.  I think this night was the most crowded I saw Blaze.  Not only was our group there, but we ran into the couple who had sat at Chris’s end of the table at Rita’s Fiesta, so the party kept growing.

At one point Allan Brooks, the cruise director, showed up.  He was super friendly and approachable.  We chatted with him for awhile, and some people took photos, and I began to wonder if this guy ever sleeps (remember, he does a 6am show every morning, and it’s approaching 1am now).

At some point, Harold reports that he was wearing someone else’s hat. I really don’t remember that.  But I’m sure it was fun and I’m sure there are pictures somewhere.

A great night on Allure of the Seas!  And tomorrow is a Sea Day, so we can sleep in.

Let’s visit today’s pre-cruise calendar plan:

9am-2:30pm – Bernard’s Tour Done (til 3:20)

3pm – 6pm – Flowrider Done, but started late

9:30pm – Ice Games (show) Oops.  Completely forgot this. We must have been “stuck” on the Rising Tide Bar.

11:45pm – Quest Done (and fun!)