Today was a sea day, and it was nice to sleep in, especially since we had to move our clocks forward by an hour, robbing us of some sleep time. For the next four days, for the stops in Tallinn, St. Petersburg (2 days) and for Helsinki, we will be 7 hours ahead of normal time at home. We will eventually get the hour back after we leave Helsinki on September 5.
We did take some time to do our first load of laundry, the laundromat is fairly close to our room on this deck, but it is a smaller size laundromat than on other decks, with only two washers and two dryers total. Normally, there are four of each. Needless to say, we had to keep checking for an open washer. We even went both one floor up and one floor down, where there are full size laundromats, but they were also full. We were finally able to get an open washer, and even a dryer later on without much difficulty.
Tonight is the first Formal night of the cruise, but they were also serving the Mongolian Bar-B-Que in the buffet, one of our favorite things to eat because it is individually prepared for each person based on their choices, and is always hot and tasty. We decided to go and eat in the buffet first, and then come back to the room to change into our dressy clothes. That made eating in the buffet easier, and safer from a food spillage standpoint, protecting our formal clothes from spills.
After changing into our formal clothes, really just a coat and tie for me, and black pants and top for Stephanie, we headed down to the Vines wine bar for some glasses of wine. The champagne waterfall and Captains reception was being held in the Piazza (Atrium) and by the time we got there, the reception was over, but there was still a long line for people to get their picture taken at the champagne waterfall. Vines is in the Piazza area, so it was fun to people watch, and since we had changed, we did not feel out of place since about everyone in that area was dressed up.
We were still tired from the time change and travel over the past few days in general, so we did not stay out terribly late. Our first port stop is tomorrow at 8:00 AM in Tallinn, Estonia.