Ft. Lauderdale to Hamburg Transatlantic Cruise – 2017

Today was the best weather day of the cruise so far.  We did not do a good job of getting up at a reasonable time again today.  The time changes are just hard to adjust to, even though we got a break last night and did not move the clock forward.  We are only two hours ahead of Eastern Standard Daylight Savings Time, but it seems like more than that.  It was 10:00 AM before either of us even budged this morning, but only 8:00 AM if we were at home, not that late.  By the time we got dressed and out of the cabin it was close to 11:00 AM. 

Our Position On The Ships TV Map

We headed to the buffet for breakfast, not so much by choice, we had planned on just getting a breakfast sandwich from the International Cafe, but when we arrived, we saw that they had already changed over to lunch items. 

Just like yesterday, the buffet was fairly crowded with other passengers suffering from our same issue, sleeping in.   Some people were already having lunch from one of the serving lines, but there was still some breakfast items in one of the other serving lines, and they actually had the breakfast sandwiches in the buffet.

After breakfast, we headed to Crooners where I was able to work on the blog and Stephanie read, trying to give our cabin steward time to clean our room.  We eventually wandered over to the Outrigger Bar to get a late morning, well really early afternoon, beverage from Arturo.  He was not there, and his bartender partner seemed to have a cold, sneezing several times in the cooler outside air.  We did not want to have her serve us with a cold, so we headed to the Seaview Bar instead.  Stephanie had her Bellini, and I had a Bloody Caesar.

Relaxing In The Sunshine

Afterward, we went back to the cabin and put on sunscreen and our bathing suits.  The wind had changed direction from yesterday, and was now coming from the stern of the ship, making the relative wind on the open decks very light.  It was only forecast to be about 70 degrees today, but with the light wind, it seemed warmer than that. 

We only spent about 15 minutes in our lounge chairs before we thought about heading to the buffet for a light lunch.  It was 1:30 PM, and we were worried if we waited much longer to eat, they might already be starting to put the lunch buffet away.  We had noticed they were serving sushi for lunch when we were there earlier eating our breakfast, and it actually looked much better than we had seen on past cruises.  There was with much more tuna in some of the sushi selections.  However, sure enough, as we had been worried about, some of the lunch serving stations were already being cleared, and the sushi was nowhere to be seen.  There was still quite a few other lunch items, but it was disappointing not to get to try the sushi.

String Quartet Playing In The Piazza

After lunch, we headed back to our chairs and spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the nice  warm sunshine.  At about 4:30 PM, we decided to head back to the room to get the computer and try to upload some photos to the blog photo albums.  We changed our minds a little once we were in the room, we figured that it would be better to just go ahead and get cleaned up for the evening, and then go out to one of the lounges to sit and do the computer work, where the internet signal is a little stronger that it is in the room.

Once we were cleaned up, we headed to Crooners to sit and upload the pictures while sipping on a glass of wine.  We saw that there was some bad weather forecast for South Carolina, and we took some time to look at the weather radar for home, where we saw that some of the severe storms had already passed through, hoping that everyone and everything was safe.

Tapas At Vines

After finishing the computer work, we headed to Vines for a glass of wine and some tapas, both of which were very good.  We got a glass of wine “to go”, and decided to just go to the buffet for dinner, but first I went back to the cabin to drop off the computer.

The dinner in the Horizon Court Buffet was nice, there were several items from the dining room menu being served in the buffet, so we got to enjoy them without having to take all the extra time that eating in the dining room takes. 

Setting Sun – Outrigger Bar On The Stern of the Ship

After dinner we tried to catch up with Arturo at the Outrigger bar, but his sick partner was still there, so we did not stop by, opting to go to the Wheelhouse Bar instead.  We thought we would make it an early evening tonight, and really try and start getting up earlier tomorrow morning.  Simon was in the bar playing guitar, and we really enjoyed his show, getting to hear more of his music since we were there longer than any other day so far.

Guitarist Simon Wilcox At The Wheelhouse Bar

We met up with one of the couples we had met last night, Sam and Glenda from Indianapolis, and got to talk with them for quite a while.  What had been planned as an early evening, turned into a late evening as we enjoyed talking with them about past cruises and destinations we had each visited.

Enjoying Music In The Wheelhouse Bar

Luckily, the Wheelhouse Bar closes at 11:30 PM, so we headed to the International Cafe for a late night snack.  Afterward, we headed home for the evening and set the wake up call for 8:00 AM, not super early, but better than the last two mornings.  The only negative was that we were losing another hour to the time change demon, so it will seem like 7:00 AM to our bodies.