Today is another unplanned Sea Day. We knew we were having a sea day today, and of course, it is due to the Typhoon, not the original Itinerary.
It was really rough last night, I was constantly rolling in the bed, and several times I thought I might roll out of the bed. It was not pounding into the waves from bow to stern, we were just rolling side to side.
I woke up at about 6:00 AM but stayed in bed and slept longer, getting up at about 7:15 AM. As usual, it was coffee time and blog writing time down at The Library Bar on Deck 1. I had a Capuchino with Skim Milk and a filled powdered sugar-coated roll it had a cream filling that was really good with the coffee.
Of course, I worked on the blog and was able to catch up to today’s post, and I was happy about that, it is stressful to fall behind. Note: Apparently, I was “on schedule” because I had skipped a day altogether. Somehow I had combined the last two days in the same post. I have been writing the posts in MS Word because of internet issues on the ship due to the Typhoon and rough seas, so somehow, I accidentally put them together.
At about 9:10 AM, I headed back to the room to wake Stephanie up so we could go to breakfast before it closed at 10:00 AM.
Breakfast was good and we enjoyed sitting at the table watching the seas go by. It was a little sunny outside, and we were glad for that. We looked at the map of the cruise on a digital information screen outside the buffet and it was interesting to see that we had just been making circles in the ocean for the past two days, waiting for the Typhoon to move out of the area.
The typhoon is not as strong as it was, but it is still a large storm and is moving very slowly northward.
We received a new Itinerary last night, and it shows that we are going back northward to the port of Xiamen, and that is at least one day away from our current position. If we make it there, it will be on the same day as we had been scheduled to stop there on our original itinerary, and so we will be back on schedule.
We were not moving very fast this morning, so I looked online at Cruise Mapper and saw what our course had been over the last couple of days. I will try and post a screenshot of our path. It was in circles, well more like long ovals, but now we were heading north and back toward the storm.
We decided to go back to the spa again today, we had really enjoyed it the other day, and with another sea day, it seemed like a good idea again.
We picked up our bathing suits from the room and headed to the spa. It was not crowded, and rightfully so, it was about 11:45 AM, and most people were heading to lunch, a perfect time to be here. We soaked in the hot tub and then in the heated pool.
While we were soaking in the pool, the Captain came on the PA system (so it does work in the Spa!) and gave us an update on the Typhoon, and on our course. We were going to be heading to Xiamen today, and hopefully, by tomorrow morning when we arrive, the port will be open. He said it was still closed as of today due to the Typhoon, but they expected to open the port by tomorrow morning, and we scheduled to arrive at 8:00 AM. The seas were expected to increase as we headed north today since we will be heading toward the typhoon. The typhoon was moving slowly northward, and was weakening, but the seas were still predicted to be rough.
Stephanie was planning to wash her hair today so she was able to join me in the steam room after we had some water and cooled off. It did not take long before it was just too hot in the steam room, so we headed to the snow/ice room across the way. It was nice to cool off, and I put some of the snow on my hip to help with the bursitis.
Stephanie left first since she was going to use the shower in the spa area, and also had to wash and dry her hair. I stayed in the ice room a bit longer and then I headed to the men’s locker room to take my shower. The showers are larger and have both a rain shower head and a powerful hand-held shower nozzle. Plus, the bath gel and shampoo have a really nice aroma, better than the good products we have in the room.
I did bring my glasses today so I could tell which of the bottles hanging on the wall was the shampoo and which one was the bath gel. The showers are dark inside, and I could not read them the last time I was here and I did not have my glasses with me.
After showering, I used the centrifuge to dry my bathing suit, it worked really well, and after about three spin cycles, the suit was almost dry.
I went back to the room and waited for Stephanie, she arrived about 10 minutes later since she had to dry her hair, and that took longer today.
We headed up to the World Cafe for some lunch, they were having a wok cooking demonstration today. By the time we arrived, there was not much cooking going on, they were just serving the food that they had already prepared. There were some large scallops in their shells that were steamed, and some shrimp cooked with a Shezwan sauce, as well as some plain shrimp. I also stopped off at the buffet area and got a few of the lightly fried shrimp they had there to go along with the other items.
Stephanie got a few different things from the buffet, but we both got the same items from the wok station.
Neither of us liked the scallops, they were overcooked sitting in the steamer. They were really tough and there was some portion of the scallop that was not just the round white piece, and it had a really strange texture when I ate it. I pulled that part off of the second scallop I ate, and it was better, but still overcooked and rubbery.
The best item was the sauteed shrimp in the Shezwan sauce, it was a little spicy and had a great flavor. The fried shrimp were also very good, the batter was really light. I headed to the back of the ship to get more of the sauteed shrimp from the wok station, but they were serving the last portion when I got there and were getting ready to make some more, so I went back tot he table. Stephanie went back to get us more shrimp several minutes later.
We enjoyed some of the house wine with lunch, it was the Sauvignon Blanc we have had several other days, and we like it much better than the two Sauvignon Blancs that they serve in the bars. We just enjoyed sitting in the buffet area looking out the window at the rough seas, enjoying the wine.
After lunch, we headed to Guest Services to sign up for one of the two fan painting sessions that were going to take place this afternoon, but they were already filled up. We headed back up to Deck 7 to sit outside and watch the ocean roll by. It was getting more cloudy and windy, so we headed toward the pool deck. We just happened to run into the fan painting session that was going on near the pool bar. It was very different than we thought it would be. We had thought it was painting foldable fans, like a Spanish fan, but these were flat fans made of a paintable canvas and had wooden handles. There were buckets of water and all sorts of colors of oil-based paint in dropper bottles.
You picked a primary color, a secondary color and a glitter color, either silver or gold. They were instructing people to court about 7 drops of the primary color, about 5 drops of the secondary color and roughly 3 drops of the glitter. All of these were put into the 5 gal buckets of water. The paints floated on the surface of the water, and people were then slowly dipping and rotating the fans into the water and the paint would stick to the canvas in various shades of the colors of the paints used. It was very interesting to watch, sort of like doing a tye-dye.
Stephanie went over and asked the person in charge if we could do one each after everyone was done, and he said maybe, if there was enough time before painting session number 2.
A bit later he flagged us over and we were each given fans to paint. I picked orange and purple as my colors with silver glitter, trying to make the fan have Clemson colors.
Stephanie did not want to do the same thing for her South Carolina Gamecock colors, there was only red and no garnet, so she used purple, pink and silver for her fan.
They both came out differently, I wish I had put in more color drops in the bucket, but they still seemed nice. They had stamps to apply to the fans after wiping off the excess water. They had a large stamp in Chinese letters for the name of the ship, Yi Dun, and there was a date stamp in Chinese, as well as a panda stamp.
It was a lot of fun to see all of the different fans being painted and the differences in the colors and techniques used when dipping the fan into the paint/water. We were glad we happened upon the fan painting and got to participate. Now we have another item to bring home…….
We were heading back to the cabin to take the fans back there to let them dry. We ran into Michael and Suzie in the Wintergarden area by the pool, they were sitting there relaxing. We talked with them for a while, until the staff started setting up to have the afternoon tea there. Michael and Suzie were staying for the afternoon tea, but we did not want to participate, and we were not really dressed for that event, it is sort of formal, or at least supposed to be.
We took the fans to the cabin to drop them off and headed to the Explorer Bar for a glass of wine. They were also performing another tea ceremony there making traditional Chinese Tea. We had watched it the other day in this bar, and it was pretty crowded for that session. Today, there were only a few people there and we actually got to sample some of the teas made by the girl performing the ceremonial tea making. The other day we just got a cup of some tea made in bulk by the bar staff, she only makes six cups at a time.
Stephanie left and headed back to the cabin to take a nap. I stayed and had some interesting conversations with the bar staff there.
I headed back to the cabin to get cleaned up for dinner. We had reservations for 7:00 PM at the Chef’s Table, but we decided to go at around 6:00 PM to see if we could get a table with the same wait staff we had there the other day.
On the way to dinner, we stopped off at The Library Bar on Deck 1 for a pre-dinner glass of wine. We headed over to the Chef’s Table on that same deck, but on the opposite corner and asked for the waiter we wanted.
Apparently, there was some type of mis-communication, and we were seated in the front room, not the back where we had sat the other night. We thought at first that maybe our waiter was at these tables tonight, but we soon learned that was not the case. It was a nice table right next to a window, so we could see the ocean go by.
We were disappointed we were not with the other waiter, but the service here was good. Tonight was Japan/Korea food dishes.
It was not as good as the Singapore menu we had the first night. There were a couple of good things served tonight, but overall it was not our favorite. Plus, one of the wine pairings was one of the Sauvignon Blanc wines we hate, so we just asked to have the initial white wine that had been served with an earlier course.
When we were leaving, we finally ran into our waiter, and she was disappointed as well that we had not been able to sit at one of her tables. Stephanie took a picture of her name badge so we can ask for her again in a couple of days when the menu changes again, obviously using her English name had not worked.
We stopped by The Library Bar on the same deck and had a glass of wine there talking with a few people we see there occasionally.
We called it a night shortly afterward.
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