Fort Lauderdale to Copenhagen Transatlantic Cruise – 2016

Today was the best weather day of the cruise, so far.  Of course, after we celebrated like rock stars last night, we slept in this morning.

Since we lost another hour of time last night, sleeping in only made it worse, we did not get up and get going until about 9:30 AM on yesterday’s time, and then with loosing another hour, it was really 10:30 AM today.  It is like having daylight savings time go away over and over and over, you just can’t acclimate.  We think it is just easier to travel by airplane and loose all of the hours at once instead of repeating it over and over.  It is even worse at night knowing you are already out even later than you think knowing the time is going to change.

We have set a goal of making sure we start to get up earlier after we leave the Azores next Sunday.  We will have at least two days after the Azores to try and get used to being up earlier so that we are adjusted to getting up earlier by the time we arrive in Cherbourg, France and are on strict schedules for port days.

Of course, we barely made it to breakfast at the buffet before it was starting to close.  We are certainly not alone in our late rising, the breakfast buffet is still pretty crowded with other passengers having the same difficulty with the changing time.  Luckily, we get a break tonight, we do not change time again until tomorrow night.

The weather was really nice this morning, the winds were still blowing about 25 mph, but from behind the ship, so it was nice and calm on deck.  After breakfast, before heading back to the room to put on our bathing suits and sunscreen, and while we were visiting the bartenders at the Outrigger Bar, a rainstorm caught up with the ship.  It was a pretty heavy rainfall, and was over in just a few minutes, but it really cooled things off, and of course, got everything outside really wet.  It was sort of unusual for the rain to come from the stern, especially with the ship traveling about 21 knots, but with the wind force and direction, the rain shower was moving faster than the ship.  Within just a few minutes, the skies were clear again.

We headed back to the room to change into our bathing suits.  We usually have to figure out a way to spend at least 45 minutes eating breakfast and walking around the ship so that we leave enough time for our cabin steward to clean the room each morning.  We decided that we would walk on the walk/jog track before we actually sat out in the sun, so we took our walking shoes with us and found some open lounge chairs.  It was far from crowded around the pool area, but there were many more passengers out in the sunshine than on any previous days.

At around 2:00 PM, we headed to the buffet to get some lunch.  Since we ate breakfast so late, we also ended up eating lunch later than normal.  Luckily, we are going to one of the specialty restaurants tonight, the Crab Shack, and our reservation is for 8:00 PM, so having a late lunch fit into that timetable.

After lunch, we went back to our lounge chairs, and we both ended up taking a short nap.  Mine was really short, and was not intentional, since I am not a napper.  Stephanie took a much longer nap. It had started to get cloudy outside, so at about 4:00 PM, we packed up and headed to the Outrigger Bar for our first beverage of the day.   We spent about an hour there before heading back to the room to get cleaned up.

Pre Dinner Wine at Vines

We planned on visiting the Vines Wine Bar for a couple of glasses of wine before our 8:00 PM reservation at the Crab Shack for dinner.

The Crab Shack dinner was nice, we had never eaten there before.  It is not a specific restaurant, but a portion of the buffet seating in cordoned off and used for the Crab Shack tables.  The Crab Shack is not open every night, only a few times per cruise.

Ready for Seafood

We got a nice table next to the window and were able to enjoy looking out at the ocean as we ate.  The food was good.  We had some hot fried shrimp and hush puppies for the appetizer and then a cup of Brunswick Clam Chowder.  These were the only choices for appetizers and soup.  There were four choices for dinner, all of which we some variant of snow crab, king crab, shrimp, mussels and clams.  One had crawfish.  Basically, there were large bowls of steamed/boiled seafood brought out to each person, based on your selection of the combinations on the menu.  They also provided us with large cloth bibs.

Ready for Seafood

The crab and shrimp were good, but neither of us are really that fond of mussels, and the clams were sort of gritty.  It was sort of like a shrimp and crab low country boil, there were some small pieces of corn and potatoes in the bowls as well as the seafood.

It was sort of messy to eat, and a lot of work to get the crab claws open.  However, it was tasty.  We had dessert afterward, which was cheesecake for Stephanie and a chocolate cake dessert for me.

After visiting a washroom to wash our sticky hands, we headed back outside to visit Rupi in the Outrigger Bar, which is right behind the buffet.  We did not stay long since he was being sent to another bar for the night, so we headed to the Crooner’s Bar near the Atrium to listen to some piano music by the entertainer there.  We did not stay nearly as long as last night, and that was good.

It had been a nice day and we were tired, so we headed back to the cabin for the night.  We may try and go to some shows later in the cruise, but we had already heard that the Princess Theater was really full for the shows that start around 8:00 PM with all of the older passengers who go to dinner early.  We have seen this on other cruises that are mainly with passengers that are older in age.  If you don’t go to dinner early, or have early seating at 5:15 PM, and don’t get to the show venues at least 30-40 minutes ahead of time for a seat, you won’t get in.  There are later shows, but they generally do not start until near 10:00 PM, and we are usually too sleepy to enjoy them by that time.