Balinese Adventure -Royal Caribbean- Anthem of the Seas

This was a great picture taken on the island of Lombok. This little lady was on the side of the road and Sandra got a great photo of her.

Singapore in the background, off of Sandra and Garth's Balcony.

We set sail on the Anthem of the Seas which was built in 2015 and she is super pretty.

This chandelier's lights mimicked your heart rate after you placed your hands on the panel for at least 10 seconds.

At the Robotic Bar. You order your drink or create your own on a PC and the Robotic arm pours, shakes or stirs adds ice etc and makes a mean cocktail. I liked the Bahama Mama.

Sandra in front of a glass tuba art installation. There are works or art worth millions on most cruise ships and they are mostly in the stairwells.

My towel dog which was my favorite.

Sandra and I posing behind the legs of a large giraffe art piece and we were waiting for the Sail Away Party to happen.

More glass installations depicting the cosmos on a stairwell going down to deck 3.

We bid to upgrade from an inside cabin to a balcony suite and we achieved that and so did the Hubers win their bid as well for an upgrade.

Our Balcony

We lucked out and they were one floor higher than us and on the other side of the ship but both of us were midship with a bump out balcony.

This pic was taken from our balcony. The whole cruise had extremely calm seas.

It was the Hubers first cruise ever, they were Cruise Virgins.

This cruise ship has 4600 passengers plus crew, she is huge! She even has a roller skating/bumper car/basketball court etc on it.

There had been some glitches on this ship and we think it was due to RC first ever Balinese Adventure Sailing. The performance the second night was 'The Gift' in the theater. It had stopped twice due to technical difficulties. It is a shame because people started to peel out after the second stop. The first was for about 12 minutes and the second stop was about 7 minutes. I have never experienced this on any cruise ship. Needless to say the performance was excellent and worth sticking around for. The singing and dancing and the sets were excellent.

The set and stage to 'The Gift' was the nicest set I have ever seen and I unfortunately only captured this one photo.

The Cruise Director was most likely the weakest one that I have encountered. She did not have a ton of personality and it may be because her English was weak, she had no sense of humor etc.

My hubby is allergic to garlic and even though the chef assured him that there was no garlic in his first meal of the cruise, there was. It is a shame because then he was sick and not feeling well for about 3 days. He loves to cruise because he trusts the chefs on cruise ships, well not this one apparently.

We were up top on the open deck for the Sail Away Party and we smelled cigarette smoke right away. I reported it to the Bar Tender and he started yelling at the selfish dude that was smoking. The Bar Tender said you can't smoke until 7:00 pm. I was floored that you could smoke at all. Usually there is only one area at the back of the ship outside that idiots can smoke their brains out. Personally there should not even be that. Why should a handful of idiots wreck everyone's trip? There were more than a handful of idiots on this cruise with zero manners and you could always smell smoke somewhere. I actually stopped sailing on Norwegian Cruises for one simple fact and that is that smoke always managed to infiltrate the ship from the Casino. Now I am wondering if Royal Caribbean deserves my patronage. I understand that this is an Asian cruise and more Asians smoke but seriously it is 2025!!

Besides the above complaints, we had a good couple days at sea and took it pretty easy. I walked the track one day for about a half an hour and did lots of stairs because we were on Deck 9. I ate salad at the salad bar at the Windjammer every lunch and of course parked in our drink package everyday. We had some really good entertainment in the Royal theater which was very world class. Spectra's Cabaret show which played in the Two70 Theater was an interesting show as well with some very good singing and this was on the third night.

Spectra's Cabaret had 6 Robotic Arms worth 1 million each and giant screens were attached to the arms that moved the screens. It was quite a display.

On the fourth day we sailed into the port called Celukan Bawang. This was a tender port so we had to get a tender ticket to take the boat to the pier.

Bali is usually in the clouds with this incredibly high humidity.

Our pretty lady Anthem of the Seas.

On the tender boat.

It was a pretty little port with a few flea market type souvenir clothing shops run by the locals. I had hired a driver with an air-conditioned car in advance for 6 hours to take the 4 of us anywhere that we wanted to go for $83 Canadian total. I had planned an agenda of approximately an hour and a half to drive to two lakes, a waterfall and a temple. The lakes were pretty but underwhelming.

The inside of the Ice Cream Tree fruit. The milky white gelatin type fruit is very sweet.

Ice Cream Plant Tree pod.

Ice Cream Plant Tree

Temples are everywhere on Bali.

The pretty lake with the clouds descending just in one area of the lake.

The view looking down on the lakes was stunning but we had not stopped to take a photo and we should have because when we drove back up the mountain the cloud had moved in and we couldn't see anything.

Monkey families were everywhere on the roads.

Little baby monkey

It was a complete white-out once we drove into the cloud and we could not capture the beautiful pics of the lakes down below.

Even though the lakes were not amazing the drive there was fascinating. There is so much to see in Bali everything from the vegetation to the people to the amount of stray dogs everywhere, you would not believe it.

The architecture of the buildings, the Buddhist shrines and temples that are everywhere. The beautiful mountains that are topped off with glorious fluffy clouds.

Taken from our balcony.

We drove on some pretty frightening but excitingly narrow hairpin roads up the mountain and then over the mountain to the other side down to the Buyan Lake. When we were at the top it did start to rain because we were driving through a cloud and the visibility was reduced substantially.

Our driver then drove us to Manduk Waterfall which is a pretty 150 ft waterfall set in the rain forest. That was a quite a pretty setting.

Surrounding Rain Forest

Double waterfall

Banana trees.

We then drove to Brahmavihara Temple. In Bali you have to be dressed modestly to enter the temples so both men and women get a sarong tied on their waste to cover their legs.

Darren had the most gorgeous fabric on his sarong.

This Temple was some serious eye candy and it had so many different buildings and structures and statues and just the coolest side handrails where two serpents or dragons wind up the staircase to these glorious gates.

The head of the dragon to lead up the staircase.

The tail of the dragon.

I probably have never been in such a picturesque place. I could not stop taking photos. It was absolutely glorious and I really didn't want to leave. It was very peaceful and serene and gorgeous. All of the entry fees were all less than $2.00 CND per person.

Orchid growing in the tree.

This was a humongous red, blue and black 5 inch butterfly.

We drove back to the ship which took approximately 1 hour and I took some more photos along the drive. There's just always something to look at.

Rice fields are everywhere in Bali.

Cute little girl with her family.

Police poster

Market stands along the road.

Gate into the city center.

Many houses had beautiful gates and fences.

We lucked out and got on the tender fairly quickly and boated back and got in quite quickly onto the ship.

Anthem of the Seas in the background.

Unfortunately the Windjammer buffet was closed. We got in at about 4:30. We decided to go to Johnny Rockets and have a spiked milkshake instead.

That night we went to the Theater and watched Duck Cameron, an Aussie magician and he was very entertaining.

It was a really good day at the Port of Celukan Bawang.

The next day we sailed into the port of Benoa and because we had just done a day tour and we were doing a day tour the next day we decided to just get off in the port and walk around and check out the flea markets and get back on and to spend a day on the ship and relax. I had wanted to buy some flowery drapey pants but on me they were short pants which didn't really look that good and they were a bit tight on my frame so none of those worked for me and the ladies were getting quite upset with me cuz I could not fit any other clothes but Amazons don't fit into Balinese clothes. I also wanted t-shirts and tank tops but they only sold man's t-shirts and tank tops. Sorry ladies. I will maybe have better luck in Ubud and Seminyak.