disney cruise part 6 - triton's lunch and vista spa
Triton's wall mural
Originally uploaded by februarystar27
After getting back on the ship after walking around Nassau for a couple hours, we had a couple options for lunch. There is usually a buffet in Beach Blanket Buffet, and on certain days one of the real restaurants will be open for a sit-down meal. That day, Triton's was open for lunch, and I'd read that they have a really good lunch there, so we decided to check it out. It was great. I almost think I liked lunch there better than dinner there later that night. The sit-down lunches on cruises operate the same way as the sit-down dinners--where you get your own appetizer, main course, and dessert--only in smaller portions. I got really good hummus with pita bread as my appetizer, a mushroom rizotto for my meal (which was seriously like the best non-Palo meal on this trip), and a chocolate peanut butter pie for dessert. Brian got a burger and key lime pie, but I am blanking out on what his appetizer was. I apparently missed it in my obsessive food-picture taking, and even looking at my photo of the menu, nothing seems familiar. We also got peach (mine) and strawberry (Brian's) smoothies. Lots of yum.
It was our first time in Triton's, the fanciest of the three non-Palo restaurants, and we'd be there again for dinner later that night (and on the third night). The lighting has lots of blues and greens, and there's a big mural of Triton and Ariel on the far back wall (see photo). Luckily, lunch was nearly empty while we were there, and I got to take my time getting the entire mural in the photo. Unfortunately, I couldn't get in any closer to see the detail without cutting the edges off. At night the lights actually dim to deeper sea-like tones as the meal progresses, but at lunch all the lighting is normal and held to one tone.
After lunch, we decided to check out the Vista Spa, mostly for Brian's benefit. Since most people are off exploring the port, the spa often offers port-day specials with reduced prices and little added bonuses like champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries. We'd read about the spa beforehand, and I knew pretty much the only treatment I'd feel comfortable with was the "exotic rasul" because it does not involve a spa staffperson touching you in any way. :P You get your own private spa room for up to three people and they leave you this mineral mud to rub over yourself/each other and then you let it evaporate off in your own private steam room. Now, this is where Disney confuses me. As I mentioned before, they saw the need to edit "am I sexual" out of the Backstreet Boys song. Yet they offer a private spa room for one, two, or THREE people? Like Donald wanted to get in on Mickey and Minnie's spa action or something? One person alone I understand. Two, obviously. But how can you see "three" and not take it sexually? :P It's not the type of thing a group of girls would go do on a bachelorette party or anything. I have no problem with Disney offering the treatment to up to three people... it just didn't strike me as particularly Disney-esque. :P There's probably some way to have three people there and have it be completely innocent, but I couldn't easily think of one.
Anyway, we were given robes to change into and a locker to put all our stuff in. I had to change into the robe in the bathroom stall because I was afraid someone would walk into the locker room in the middle of my changing. Then we were shown into our little private spa room, and the spa coordinator lady explained how to first use the exfoliator lotion and rinse that off in the shower in our room, and then there was a face-specific exfoliator, followed by the actual mineral mud. I was worried that I'd be all grossed out by the texture, but it was not bad at all and was fun. There were also towels folded in the shape of two swans with I think a red bow in our room too. It was cute. After we'd used the exfoliating lotions and gotten the mineral mud all applied, it was time to open the door to our private steam room to let the mud evaporate off and (allegedly) make your skin feel much better in the process. I personally loved the private steam room. I wish we'd had more time for the treatment so I could have used it longer. But Brian was not a fan because it was too hot in there for him. :P He said it felt burning on his foot, but he was standing on like the hottest part of the floor. He only lasted a few minutes in there and then just rinsed off the rest of the mud in the shower in our main spa room. So I stayed in the steam room all by myself for a little while longer, and when it was almost time for our hour we'd booked to be up, I turned on the cold-ish water shower in one of the steam room corners and washed the rest of the mud off and washed my hair. The cold water plus the heat from the steam was a nice combination. Leaving the steam room and then leaving our private room and heading back out into the main spa was sad. And the treatment really did make my skin feel nice and smoother and just overall better.
We decided to check out the spa's "rainforest room," a collection of various saunas and steam rooms, for a few minutes after that, but all of their rooms require bathing suit and no robe, and our bathing suits were up in the stateroom. Brian was thinking about doing their port-day massage special, so we talked to the woman at the front desk, who said that he could book that for right now, we could run upstairs and change into bathing suits, and then I could purchase a rainforest room day pass (it's really cheap after you already have a spa treatment that day) to hang out there while he did the massage. His special includes an hour of rainforest room time, so she said he could have some of it right when we got back and then the rest of it after his massage was over.
So we quickly went upstairs to change and then headed back down, got new robes, and headed into the rainforest room. The main room has a few (lightly) heated tile lounge chairs and a heated tile bench on the opposite wall, and then has a pretty mild sauna, a steam room that's kind of more intense, and a sort of aromatherapy steam room where the air feels all menthol-y and minty. There's also a "rainforest shower," which pretty much just means that the water falls from a big circle panel on the ceiling rather than from a small shower head, and you can select to have a mild warm tropical rainfall or a freezing cold rainstorm. There was also supposed to be a "fog shower" which I was really looking forward to, but it was either broken or I was doing it wrong, because it just seemed like a regular shower to me.
Brian and I tried both the sauna and regular steam room before he left for the massage (someone was in the aromatic one, which is also the smallest of the three). He could really only take the sauna because the steam room was too much for him. So we sat in the sauna until the spa people came to get him for the massage. After that I wandered around the various rooms for probably about an hour. People, probably pre- and post-treatments, came in and out of the room here and there, but I was pretty much the only "regular" during that time and pretty much always had the rooms to myself. The regular steam room was definitely the most intense. It was excessively hot in there. There was a statue of parrots on the center of the back bench. I sat next to them for awhile. I walked around the room a few times too because no one else was in it. There was a sign up about not staying in that room for more than I think it was 30 minutes at once. But it may have been 20. I had no idea how long I was in there. I had nothing to do so I'd sit there and try to see how long I could stand being in there till I got too hot, and then I'd come out and go to one of their showers and maybe sit on the tiled chairs for a minute or two and get some water from their water bubbler thingie. Then I'd head into the next room once I felt cooled down again and repeat the same routine. The aromatherapy steam room was less intense than the bigger regular steam room, but stronger than the sauna. It's smaller, like four people would be crowding it in slightly. It was nice, except that the steam seemed to be released in cycles. I noticed that if I stayed in long enough, at one point so much steam would come out that I literally couldn't see right in front of me very well. Then it would gradually fade off and a few minutes later would fog up again. So I went around all the rooms a few times, focusing mainly on the two steam rooms since I knew when Brian got back he'd be more likely to go in the sauna with me.
When Brian came back I was sitting in one of the heated lounge chairs taking another break from the steam rooms. His special deal included chocolate-covered strawberries and champagne afterward, which they'd brought into the rainforest room with him. And he'd also bought some spa gel that they'd used on his back, so he had a little spa bag too. The spa people were really nice and came back a minute later with a glass of champagne for me even though I hadn't paid for it, and Brian shared the strawberries with me. When we were done we went back in the sauna, and then Brian tried the aromatherapy steam room and found that it was not too hot for him, yay. We stayed in there for a few minutes so I could show him how it really fogs up when all the steam seems to get released at once. He didn't really like that part so we got out after that. :P Then we used their rainforest shower one last time and went back to the locker room to change and head back to the stateroom. I ended up liking he spa a lot more than I'd been expecting, since I'd started off mainly doing it for Brian. And going on a port day when it's pretty empty was also nice because nothing was crowded. This is also the only part of my trip where I have absolutely no pictures whatsoever since I couldn't bring my camera into the spa with all the steam and water and everything. I wish I'd at least gotten a picture of the lobby or something, but it's ok. So, overall, the spa was 10 times better than Nassau (at least the part of Nassau right around the port), and our time was much better spent there.