February 5, 2008: Cozumel, Mexico
	February 4, 2008: Key West, Florida
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The Atrium (Decks 4-11)

The central focus of most ship activities on the Jewel of the Seas is the Atrium, so I think that is the best place to start when looking at some of the interior spaces on the ship. It is certainly the most spectacularly-designed and decorated space.

The Atrium is nine decks tall, from Deck 4 through Deck 12. I want to show you the diagrams of the Atrium area on Decks 4, 5, 6, 11 and 12 (the Atrium area is identical on the stateroom Decks 7-10):

You can refer to these small diagrams as I describe the pictures and movies that we took in and of the Atrium.

Our First Visit to the Atrium

Atrium - Decks 5-8

One of the first things we did when we had gotten on board and settled into our stateroom was to meet for lunch, and this meant our first visit to the Atrium. Lunch was the buffet in the Windjammer Cafe, which is on Deck 11, and so our first views of the Atrium were from that vantage point. I think the first view that I should show you is a movie, rather than a picture, as you will be able to see the entire atrium and get your bearings. Coming up is a movie that I took while standing near the aft Atrium railing on Deck 11 (red star on the Deck 11 schematic). The movie looks mostly forward, although I panned both to port and starboard during the filming. And I leaned a bit over the railing so I could show you the Atrium from its floor on Deck 4 to its "roof" just above Deck 11. The "roof," which we will look at later, is actually a semi-open platform that is part of Deck 12; on the underside are a number of lighting effects and on the top there is a lounge. So, take a look at the Atrium by watching that movie using the player below:

The Atrium (Mouseover Image if Video Controls Not Visible)

Although you saw this same view in the movie, I took an additional picture looking straight forward across the Atrium to the pool area on Deck 11 (looking, of course, through the glass walls that separate that area from the indoor Atrium.

After lunch, Fred and I wandered around the Atrium area for a while before going out and wandering around the exterior of the ship, and I'd like to include some of the pictures we took here. From the Windjammer Cafe, we took one of the glass elevators down to Deck 5, and then left the elevators, turned forward and came around to the railing around the Atrium. At this point, we are at the red star on the Deck 5 schematic above, and here is where the next few pictures were taken. The first one looks across Deck 5, past the Latte‑tudes coffee bar (get it? Change the word "latitude" a bit and you can get a "latte?"- too cute.) and out the starboard windows. (If you look closely, you can see the condominium buildings along the Florida shore as we pass by Hollywood and North Miami Beach.)

The Atrium (Mouseover Image if Video Controls Not Visible)

Next, we look in a slightly different direction, a bit more aft, and also look down a bit so you can see the starboard side of the Atrium, Decks 5 and 4 (which is down the stairway to the left in the picture). Finally, panning even a bit more aft, you can look across the Atrium and see the aft Atrium balcony on Deck 5, as well as the floor of the Atrium on Deck 4. When we took the earlier pictures before lunch, we were standing at a similar balcony above us on Deck 11. You can also see, in this picture, the main ships stairways. This stairway goes all the way up from here to Deck 12 and all the way down from here to Deck 2 (which was usually the departure deck for the tender to shore or for the exit to a dock).

We walked down the lighted stairway to Deck 4 so that we could get a view of the Atrium from the bottom, and when we got down there, Fred took his own movie of the interior of the Atrium, panning all around to show as much as he could. You can use the player at left to watch that movie.

More Pictures of the Atrium

We returned to the Atrium time and again (mostly since it is the central focus of ship activities) and we took some pretty interesting pictures and movies on these subsequent visits. Here are some of the best of the pictures:

A view of the forward wall of the Atrium showing Decks 6-8. On each of the stateroom decks, there is a lounge or library at the Atrium, and these are the places that have Internet access.

This is the underside of the "roof" of the Atrium at Deck 11. Above this structure, actually on Deck 12, is the Crown and Anchor Lounge, and, yes, you can see down through the glass areas.

This is the lighted lucite stairway that winds down the starboard side of the Atrium from Deck 5 to the floor of the Atrium on Deck 4. On Deck 4, the Service Desk occupies the area under the starboard side of the Deck 5 balcony.

This is a night view of the top of the Atrium. The way it is lit and decorated (the colors change throughout the day), it looks like nothing more than one of the spaceships from 'Close Encounters' coming in for a landing at Devil's Tower. I thought it was very striking. It is set off well by the lighting for the inside glass elevators that run up and down the port side of the Atrium, and you can see a couple of the elevator cars in this picture.

(Mouseover Image if Video Controls Not Visible) This is one of the first movies I took of the Atrium. Although a bit long, it shows all the features of the Atrium from top to bottom, and with music in the background. It was taken in the daytime.

(Mouseover Image if Video Controls Not Visible) I made this movie in the early evening as folks were going to dinner. The soft music playing in the background, and the entirely different lighting give a wholly different mood. The music (whose source you'll see in the movie) is the love theme from "Tootsie").

This is another night view of the Atrium, this time taken from Deck 11 and looking down towards the starboard side of the ship. Note the wonderful lighting effects hanging in the Atrium and set off by the underdeck lights.

This is Fred on one of the bridges to the Crown and Anchor Lounge on Deck 12, which is actually atop the roof of the Atrium. There are two bridges across the open atrium to the lounge itself, and you can, of course, look down the seven stories of the Atrium below you.

Taken the same evening, this is another view looking down into the Atrium from Deck 11. This view shows the aft balconies (from which many of our first pictures were taken) and the starboard/aft corner of the Atrium floor. When I took the two movies above, I was sitting in one of the chairs just in front of the small performance stage (the same stage that the violinist and pianist were on in that last movie).

(Mouseover Image if Video Controls Not Visible) This was the last movie I took in the Atrium- on our last sea day. There was an art auction going on on Deck 4, and you can hear the auctioneer talking throughout the movie. The movie begins at the floor of the Atrium and pans slowly up past each deck along the forward wall, ending with a view out to the pool on Deck 11 and a view of the roof of the Atrium at Deck 12.

The Solarium (Decks 11-12)

The Solarium on board the Jewel of the Seas is a domed area with a swimming pool, two spas (hot tubs), numerous deck chairs, some saunas and a couple of places where you could get drinks or something to eat. The solarium provided a much, much quieter experience for someone who wanted to swim in a pool or relax in a hot tub. If it were inclement weather, it would provide the obvious retreat for at least some of the passengers; the lounging space in the Solarium was much less than was available poolside at the main pool just aft.

(Mouseover Image if Video Controls Not Visible)

Probably the best way to get introduced to the Solarium is to watch the movie that Fred made on the next-to-last day of the cruise, after we'd gotten back from Chichen Itza. His movie will take you through the major elements here in the Solarium.

The solarium was very quiet, but there were a lot of interesting things to see. For one thing, there were all the plants growing throughout the space. These made it seem something like an arboretum or a greenhouse in spots. The decoration was very well-done; it was something of an Asian motif, I think, or perhaps Indian, with elements suggestive of those cultures, such as this gilded elephant. Balancing that were Oriental touches like this wooden ramp leading up to the saunas.

All in all, quite a good job was done on the decoration of the Solarium, and it was certainly a great place to sit and relax.

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The Tides Main Dining Room (Decks 4-5)

The Tides Dining Room was the main dining room on board the Jewel of the Seas. It and the Windjammer Cafe were the two main places to eat, with the dining room being a sit-down, full waiter service and the Windjammer Cafe being a serve-yourself buffet.

We had four wonderful dinners in the Tides Dining Room; we had our lunches and breakfasts in the Windjammer, although we could also have eaten them in the dining room. Fred and I ate two of our dinners in the Windjammer and we had the other dinner with the rest of the group in the Portofino Restaurant on Deck 6.

The Tides is a two-story room. There are balcony seating areas along the port, starboard and forward sides on Deck 5, and then (as you can see on the schematics) stairways down to the main floor on Deck 4. On Deck 4, some of the seating was underneath the balconies on the port and starboard sides, but we were fortunate to have a table almost in the center of the room, and so we could look around at the entire main floor and all of the balcony seating areas.

Sometimes when we entered the dining room, we came through one of the door on Deck 5 and then had to descend the stairs to our table on Deck 4. But we also entered sometimes directly from Deck 4; it really mattered little. The only picture we took of the dining room itself (you've seen pictures of us sitting at our table elsewhere in this part of the album) we took just before it opened for the lunch seating one day. That picture, which you can see here was taken just after we came in the starboard door on Deck 5. The seating you see is the forward balcony, and you can also see the two sets of stairs leading down from that deck at the left in the picture.

The Tides Dining Room was a nice environment for eating, and our service was uniformly good.

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The Windjammer Cafe (Deck 11)

The Windjammer Cafe was basically an upscale buffet, open from about six in the morning until nine at night (with half-hour closings around ten and four so that the buffet could change from breakfast to lunch to dinner). We ate all our breakfasts and lunches there, and a couple of dinners, too, once when it was "formal night" in the Dining Room and once when Greg, Grant, Joe and Virl ate in Chops Restaurant and we just didn't feel either like joining them or sitting at our dining room table alone.

The Windjammer Cafe is located on Deck 11, and I've grabbed a schematic from the Royal Caribbean website and put it over at the left. The main entrance is from the Atrium, although it is possible to get in through the starboard side veranda seating area or the port side outside seating area (picture taken at #6 on the schematic). There are also doors into the Cafe from either side coming from the stern, where there is more outdoor seating on both sides of the ship and around the stern. Here is a view of the starboard/stern outside seating (picture taken at #5 on the schematic).

Entering from the Atrium sends you down the main entry aisle, and here's a picture of Fred in the main entry to the buffet (picture taken at #1 on the schematic). Then, of course, it's every man for himself.

Depending on the meal, the content of the various buffet tables changed. When you come in the entry, there are two, mirror-image fruit and salad buffet stations (which also have the various breads and rolls). Beyond them are three more stations which were usually different- one might be Italian and another might be American. Or, at breakfast, one might have all the eggs and sausages and stuff like that (picture taken at #4 on the schematic), while another might have cereals and a third might have pastries. Along the aft wall of the Windjammer there were duplicate dessert stations (picture taken at #3 on the schematic) on either side, and, in the middle, a cook-to-order station. The cook-to-order station might have steaks at dinner, mongolian BBQ at lunch and omelettes/pancakes at breakfast. There was always something different there.

As you might suspect, it is difficult not to go hog-wild (which many people, most of whom didn't need to, did), but with all the different dishes one could afford to taste lots of different things (which I often find more attractive than a pre-determined sit-down dining-room meal, which is why we ate here frequently). On the first day of the cruise, all six of us came up to the buffet for lunch, and Fred wanted to record me returning from the buffet (picture taken at #2 on the schematic) with my very first plate of food on the cruise. Just as I passed Fred, he went forward a ways toward the actual buffet and took another picture of the buffet stations in the center of the room.

I might also mention that there were condiment stations sprinkled around (so I had all the ketchup I needed for my french fries) and also two beverage stations inside the buffet and three more in the outside seating areas. As on most cruises, drinks like coffee and tea and lemonade and juices are free, but sodas and mixed drinks are extra. I didn't get that many sodas during the week, since they didn't have Diet Sunkist, but I did utilize the in-room mini-bar a few times for a Diet Coke. I really didn't miss my sodas all that much.

We enjoyed the Windjammer Cafe; the food was uniformly good. The presentation wasn't as exotic as in the dining room, of course, but then you can't taste presentation. Fred and I were lucky that we didn't gain more than a few pounds each!

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Elevators and Elevator Lobbies

Atrium Elevators (Decks 4-12)

Although they don't qualify as an "interior space," like the Windjammer or the Solarium, I thought the atrium elevators and their lobbies were worth a separate section because they were so well done. As you can see in the picture of the Deck 6 elevator lobby at the right, there is a ship model in the middle of the lobby with a complete key to all the public spaces and staterooms, so you never have to wonder what floor you should go to. (In general, I thought the navigation signage aboard ship was excellent.)

There isn't much that I can say about the elevators and the lobbies beyond the fact that they were architecturally striking; the last cruise ship I was on had nothing like them. So let me just put a few thumbnails for some pictures of the Atrium elevators below; click on them to see the full-size images:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

Forward Elevators (Decks 3-12)

In addition to the elevators located beside the Atrium (and not counting crew-only or freight elevators), there was a second bank of elevators just aft of the Coral Theatre towards the bow of the ship. These were the elevators that we took most frequently to get from our stateroom to just about anyplace on the ship. (There was also an adjacent stairway, that we started to use more frequently in an attempt to balance our meals in the buffet.)

These were not glass elevators; there is no atrium forward in the ship. But they and the lobbies were also very pretty- much nicer-looking than even in upscale office buildings or hotels. I just have one picture of them to show you- a picture of Fred in the Deck 12 lobby as we were waiting for a car down to Deck 3 and our stateroom.

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The Fitness Center (Deck 12)

The fitness center (gym) was very nicely outfitted. There were all kinds of aerobic workout machines, including treadmills and stairsteppers, and, my personal favorite- the recumbent bike. And there were four of those (and pretty good models to boot). Another nice thing about the recumbent bikes is that they were right at the front of the center facing out ahead of the ship. Even if there were people on the treadmills between the bikes and the front windows, there was still an excellent view. So I enjoyed the four or five times that I came up here to get some exercise. There were also two or three complete weight sets and a whole row of gym-quality weight equipment. In the center of the room was a large wood floor used for aerobics and dance classes- held almost continuously through the day.

I only took one picture actually in the fitness center; I have marked on the map where it was taken and what direction it was looking. You can look at that picture here.

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	February 5, 2008: Cozumel, Mexico
	February 4, 2008: Key West, Florida
	Return to the Caribbean Cruise Master Index