Saturday, February 8, 2025
I cancelled a HAL excursion for here on the 2nd day of the cruise because they moved the starting time back to 7:15. I wanted to see the National Aviary, but I didn’t want to leave that early and spend two hours on the bus. We were not really interested in going into Old Town either as we heard the vendors could be pushy. We decided we would go to the mini aviary at the Welcome Center at the port.
They had a number of pretty birds and some other animals and you could just follow the marked path to see them. There was no cost. The path was shady and there was a nice breeze. The path and aviary circled the huge gift shop which was a very good marketing strategy.
While Chuck was watching a red parrot eat, the parrot decided to crawl up Chuck’s arm and made himself at home on Chuck’s shoulder. He soon became fascinated by Chuck’s lanyard and started chewing on it. While Chuck was trying to figure out how to get it out of the bird’s beak without getting bit, something hit the back of my neck -hard.
I thought someone had thrown something at me. Nope. A small green parrot had decided that my neck would be a great landing space. He eventually moved to my shoulder and dug in. I am not a fan of birds on my person. I moved closer to Chuck to see if he could shoo it away. The two parrots started squawking at each other and flapping their wings. I quickly got away from Chuck. His parrot started chewing on the lanyard again.
Another person was able to coax the green parrot off of my shoulder. Then Chuck realized the red parrot had chewed through the lanyard and was flying away with it – it had his keycard in it. Another guest was able to intercept it before the parrot got away. I was ready to move on from that area.
We soon came to an area where a staff member was holding a small monkey. It immediately jumped to Chuck. The monkey started trying to find something in Chuck’s shirt pocket. Luckily, there was nothing in it. The monkey, being unsuccessful at stealing, jumped to the nearest tree and posed for photos.
After we finished walking through the aviary and bought a souvenir at the gift shop, we went back to the ship and had lunch. The afternoon was spent in the pool.
When we got back to the cabin to get ready for the evening, we found that our Mariner tiles had arrived. Everyone gets a tile every cruise. We have so many now that I don’t bring them home any more. We also had another nice gift from the Casino.
We had an excellent dinner at Rudy’s. I had the grilled shrimp Provencale. Chuck had the grilled seafood platter with a lobster tail. We split a bottle of chianti (also complimentary from the Casino). For dessert, I had the apple tart tatin with cinnamon gelato. Chuck had Rudy’s Face to Face Chocolate and Fruit dessert.
After we finished dinner, we went to one set of the Rolling Stone Lounge band and then to the main stage to see the second show of Doc Dixon. He was very good again.
Afterwards, Chuck went to play some cards, and I was ready for some quiet time on the balcony listening to the waves.
Tomorrow – Panama Canal