Sea Daze!

March 19, etc …

Our first stretch of sea days has begun.  We always look forward to these days as a chance to catch our breath and get caught up on reading, blogging, and emailing.  Of course the satellite isn’t cooperating.  Barney has finished three books and I am on my second.  The ship has a fantastic library and there is always something interesting to check out.  We also see a great many people using E-Readers.  The library also doubles as the internet room for those without laptops.  It may be the busiest room on the ship. 

We have had our second formal evening.

   

                                   

We have also had a theme night for St. Patrick’s Day and tonight is “Buccaneer” night.  The food is excellent and there is plenty of it.  We eat breakfast and lunch at the Lido buffet.  Still no desserts, bread, or potatoes for Patty.  Each day she wants to cheat, but  hasn’t so far.  No promises as the days roll on. 

                               

The weather has been warmer than we expected.  We have had rain/drizzle only one morning.  The Atlantic Crossing is giving us time to really enjoy the balcony.  Since the sun is straight overhead, we can be outdoors without being in the sun.  The winds are typically high at sea and Barney seems to nearly blow away while walking the promenade deck.  We tried to photograph that wonderful magnificent near moon on Sunday night but had difficulty due to the strong winds and the motion of the ship.  The Crow’s Nest lounge was playing all the songs that give tribute to the moon. 

                                

The entertainment shows are not as professional as the ones we have seen on previous cruises.  We think this might be one of the ways that Holland America is meeting a smaller budget.  This cruise crowd is a tough audience and some of the performers have really struggled.  Everyone is excited about the group called “Black Tie”.  They are two couples from Australia and have been entertaining on cruise ships for 20+ years.  They are Dorothy’s favorite group so we are anxious to hear them. 

Our tablemates, Ken and Dee, from Illinois have finally made email contact with their son and daughter-in-law who are in Japan.  They are safe, but have said that the conditions are just unimaginable.  I googled their location for Ken and Dee in an attempt to find out where they are.  The location is Chiba City, about 40km from Tokyo.  They are using their remaining days in Japan to volunteer with assistance agencies.  Dee and Ken will be relieved to have them back on home soil.

Neither Barney nor I are taking advantage of many of the lectures, meetings, classes, etc as we seem to just want to “chill”.  Barney did go to a meeting of car collectors yesterday and enjoyed it  He got a lead on a restorable Model T brass coup for sale in Nebraska.  Bet I know what we’ll be doing Mid-May.

    

The World situation has a lot of people on edge.  Everyone has an opinion on what is safe to do, and what is not.  We are not concerned as we figure it isn’t up to us to make the decision on where this ship goes.  We are able to get CNN and FOX news most of the time, depending on satellite coverage.

Life on this part of the Atlantic is very quiet.  It was explained to us that ships going East usually take the Northern route and those going West take this Southern route because the trades are better for traveling in those directions. We are going against the trades, and have only seen one other ship in the past three days – it was going in the opposite direction…two ships passing in the night.  The depth of the ocean had been about 18,500 ft. with the the floor of the ocean looking a lot like Switzerland with mountains and valleys.  Now that we have just crossed the Atlantic Ridge the bottom is quite flat. Our nearest point of land now is in the Cape Verdes Islands.

We just experienced the strangest of “time changes”.  We need to move forward two hours before we reach Cape Verde.  The captain decided that we would do that two days in a row at Noon.  Bells were rung and noon became 1 pm.   Can’t wait to see the confusion that this will cause…go figure!

Another quiet day ahead, before going ashore at Cape Verde on Wednesday.  We begin our Malaria medication this evening.  We thought of skipping it and taking a chance, but then remembered how we seem to get the strangest of things and don’t really want to add malaria to that.