Today was a very welcome day at sea after three straight port days, including the very long day in Cobh yesterday. We slept in, and also got the benefit of a change in time, moving the clocks back one hour last night as we slowly adjust to Eastern Standard Daylight Savings time while crossing the Atlantic.
We are currently four hours ahead, having already made two previous adjustments as we headed westward over the last several days. We will also be making another one hour adjustment tonight.
The skies were fairly sunny this morning as we finally started getting ready. I went for breakfast sandwiches at around 9:30 AM. I was able to work on the blog some this morning, mostly adding some photos and catching up with the posts. We will be adding more photo albums today since it is too cool to be outside.
After breakfast, we headed out to find a quiet spot in the ship to give our cabin steward, Beth, a chance to clean the cabin. Finding an open spot was really hard, everyone is stuck inside with the cooler weather outside, and we really had to search around before we found an open table in the Vines Bar. It did not help that the Vista Lounge was being used for Bingo, and the Wheelhouse Bar area was closed in preparation for the Pub Lunch. This just made everything else more congested. We played some cards for a while, waiting for a hula dance class to finish in the Atrium area. When things quieted down, I started working on the blog post for yesterday.
We ate lunch in the Horizon Court Buffet, and noticed that there were placards on the tables requesting that passengers not stay at the tables after they finished eating so that there would be room for people coming in for lunch to have a place sit and eat. For the most part, this was followed, but there were several tables that were just being used as a place to visit, play games, etc., everything but eating.
The weather had really deteriorated by this time, the winds were blowing about 45 knots, and it was raining. These cool, windy and cloudy days are the only times that the ship really feels full of people, everyone is forced to be inside and it gets crowded in the common areas.
We went back to the room after lunch, it is an easier location to do computer work, and afforded Stephanie the opportunity to nap while I worked on the photos. For some reason, my camera had put the last couple of days of photos on the standby memory card, and I had only taken the primary card out with me when we were doing work in Vines, so we had to go back to the room anyway.
Later in the afternoon, we were quite surprised that the Clemson Vs. Georgia Southern football game was on TV on ESPN2, the only ESPN channel we receive. We had been watching Game Day, and the game came on after that. The only issue was that the Satellite signal on the ship kept cutting out for the ESPN feed due to the bad weather and our location this far out from land.
The weather did clear some, and we were a little stir crazy from being in the room, so we ventured out to Vines for a glass of wine and some tapas. Tonight is a formal night, so we discussed our dining and dress options. Since everyone in the Atrium area was already dressed up for early dinner seating, we felt a little uncomfortable being there in our shorts and casual clothes.
We left Vines and headed upstairs to see what was being offered for food in the Buffet. We did not see anything that we really wanted there, so we decided to head back to the cabin and get dressed in our formal clothes. We headed to the Bellini’s Bar for a glass of wine before heading right next door to Alfredo’s. We met a nice couple in Bellini’s from Washington State, and talked with them for a while before we headed over to eat.
We got a nice window seat, and enjoyed looking out at the passing ocean. The weather had cleared, and the winds were lower but the sun was setting out of our line of sight, so we did not get to see that from the table as we ate our dinner. We both had some good Minestrone soup for the appetizer, and then we both had a different pasta dish, It was really good, served nice and hot, and our server, Nehat, that had served us a couple of times previously, and that we really liked, served us again tonight.
There was a special show being performed in the Atrium at 9:00 PM, so we headed over to Crooners to try and get a seat there before the crowds hit. Everyone must have been at dinner, or at the Princess Theater because hardly anyone was at Crooners, making it easy for us to get our normal seats at the end of the bar. About 10 minutes before the show in the Atrium was scheduled to begin, all hell broke loose from the people leaving the show in the theater. The bartenders went from hardly serving to being overwhelmed. The show in the atrium was pretty good, we could only hear it, it was the ship’s musicians, plus some performers, playing and singing songs, so there was not much to really see anyway. At least it was not at an annoyingly high volume like some of the shows there have been.
Once that show ended, the crowds left for something else, somewhere else, and Crooners returned to an enjoyable, quiet place once again. We did not want to stay out too late, so we headed back to the room at about 10:30 PM, hoping to catch another football game on ESPN. Unfortunately, the signal for ESPN is now totally lost due to our position out in the Atlantic Ocean, so we just turned in for the night.