Today is our last Sea Day and also the last day of this cruise.
We woke up to sunny, cloudless skies this morning, but it was still rough and had really been rough last night as the Captain had forecast. We don’t know how windy it got or how high the waves were, but I would guess the waves were at least 4.5 meters or around 15 feet. That does not seem like much, but this is not that large of a ship, and that makes a lot of difference. Plus, we are in the very bow, and we could hear the waves crashing.
I woke up around 7:45 AM and was ready to get some coffee. I got dressed and headed down to the Living Room Bar, arriving at about 8:15 AM and I ordered a Low Fat Latte and a muffin. It was fairly crowded today, maybe I was a little later getting here than on other days. There was not much of a line for coffee, but many of the tables were full, and I got the last one by the bar.
I worked on yesterday’s blog post for a little over an hour and headed back to the cabin to wake Stephanie up. She was already up, but still in the bed. We did not want to get to breakfast too late since the food is less fresh by then as they wind down the service, which ends at 10:00 AM. We found a table, but for some reason, there was a very loud noise coming from the ceiling near an entrance to the buffet kitchen area. Stephanie decided it was too loud, so we moved to another table farther to the stern, and it was better.
I had to go to the other side of the buffet for my scrambled eggs, they were almost gone on our side, and the eggs that were left in the large tray looked dried out. There was a nice and fresh batch on the other side, so it was worth the effort to go over there.
Stephanie was ordering an omelet, so it did not matter which side she got that on since it was cooked to order. Breakfast was good, but the drink service was a little slow in the section we were eating in. It took a long time before we could get anyone to bring us water, and one lady sitting near us actually went up to the service area and poured her own. Of course, a manager saw her doing that and immediately went over to get the water for her, but she was already done. It looked as if they had reduced service staff by this time, there were only 30 minutes more before the buffet closed. I guess it makes sense, they send servers on break or somewhere else as the crowd lessens near the end of the breakfast service.
After breakfast, we walked out into the sunshine at the stern of the ship since it is generally protected from the wind, which was still moderate. Unfortunately, they were doing some pressure washing of that area and most of it was roped off. I guess they are getting everything cleaned for the new guests, all of which will be on the remainder of the World Cruise.
We were trying to find Hedi and Bill, we had told them last night that we were going to be leaving our sunscreens and that we would like to give them the remaining bottles to either use or to give to someone else on the World Cruise that they are staying on the ship for. We did not find them, so we headed back to the room, but it was still not cleaned. We made a restroom break and then headed back out to go down to the Living Room Bar area to watch the Baggo (Corn Hole) contest that is held daily on sea days. We got a table near the bar and had good seats for the Baggo tournament. I actually worked to finish up yesterday’s Blog post. We never did see Hedi and Bill, we will have to try and find them later today.
After the tournament was over, we headed back to the room to do some packing so we don’t leave it all for later. We were able to get all of the clothes we don’t need into the suitcases, as well as a lot of the other items we had brought. We don’t have to have the packing completed until 10:00 PM tonight, that is the latest the bags can be left out in the hallway for collection.
After the initial packing effort was complete, Stephanie took a nap. The seas were still rough this morning, and the packing effort had made her feel a little woozy. I worked on some photo processing, trying to get the photos off of Stephanie’s phone so we can add them to the blog posts for some of the things we have done over the past few days. She does a great job of getting photos for things like our specialty dinners, or of some of the people we meet out at night. It has been a long time since I actually carried a large camera with me to dinner, or have it with me at a bar. Cell phones are just so much easier to use for that task now.
It was already 1:30 PM before we headed off to get some lunch in the World Cafe. We had eaten a late breakfast, so we were not in any hurry to go to lunch, but needed to eat before The World Cafe closed at 2:30 PM.
We ate a leisurely lunch and enjoyed sitting at the table watching the ocean go by. It was cooler outside today, so it was nice to sit inside and still enjoy the sunshine streaming through the windows.
After lunch, we found some quiet seats at the Atrium Area on Deck 2, and played cards for about an hour. It was pretty even in the win-loose score for both of us. After that, we went back to the cabin just to rest. I continued to work on some photos, uploading all of Stephanie’s phone pictures into Lightroom so I could modify them and then upload the best of the photos into a folder that I use to add them to the blog posts.
It has always been difficult to upload our phone photos into the same photo albums as the pictures from my digital camera. For some reason, the dates do not always transpose correctly, and the photos are difficult to sort to keep them all in order. Lately, we have just been uploading the phone photos into their own photo album, but then they are not necessarily segregated by location.
We attempted to try and watch the National Championship Football Game between Michigan and Washington through wifi streaming. I could not get it to work directly through the ESPN App, it did not allow me to pick DirecTV as the servicer provider because the ESPN app thought we were living in South America, and DirecTV was not an option. I could not manually make it work either. Then we logged onto our DirecTV account through the phone app, and after several tries, I was able to live stream the game on the ESPN channel. Once we were connected, the stream was quite good, we never had any delay issues.
We watched the game until halftime, and then got showers so we could get ready for dinner. We wanted to go to The Living Room Bar and see who was there to say goodbye, and also to say goodbye to the bartenders there. Stephanie was able to connect with a couple of them through Facebook. We had a couple of glasses of wine before we left for dinner in the World Cafe. We certainly did not want to take the time to eat in The Restaurant on our last night.
We headed upstairs to The World Cafe and had a light dinner, we did not want to eat a big meal tonight knowing we are traveling early tomorrow morning. We saw Brandon and his mom Charlotte in the buffet line, and they came over to eat with us at our table for six. We all had a fun time eating. After dinner, our plan was to finish our packing, and then come back to The Living Room Bar for a final drink and goodbyes.
We went back to our cabin and finished our final packing effort, which included weighing our suitcases to make sure they were within the 50-pound airline weight limit. We turned back on the championship football game, but by that time, there were only about four minutes left in the game and Michigan was running away with it, they were 21 points ahead, so it was basically already over.
Stephanie changed into her travel clothes for tomorrow, and I had already been wearing mine. This allowed us to pack everything but those clothes into the suitcases that we needed to put outside the door for pickup by 10:00 PM. Once we had everything packed, we weighed them with our luggage scale. Stephnie’s bag was about 2.5 pounds over, and mine was about three pounds over. We made some adjustments, putting both raincoats into my bag, along with a few other items of clothing. We are expecting rain when we arrive home tomorrow night, so it will make it easier to get our raincoats out on just one suitcase if we need them to walk out to the car in long-term parking.
The adjustments did the trick both bags now weighed about 49 pounds. We closed them up and put our colored Purple 1 Viking Luggage tags onto the handles and set them outside our cabin door.
We headed back to the Living Room Bar and there were a few people there that we knew. We also met a new couple there that we had seen but never talked to. Most of the couples there were staying on for the World Cruise, so they did not have any of the packing issues to deal with tonight, nor the early wake-up to get ready for disembarkation at 8:15 AM tomorrow. Bill and Bobbi were there, as well as Andre and Andi. We talked with Bill and Bobbi for a bit, and then we headed up to the Explorer’s Lounge. They decided to follow us up there. The bar was pretty empty and there was not anyone there that we knew. The guitar player was just finishing up his show, singing only two more songs after we arrived. We had one drink and then we all left to head home. We said goodbye to the bartender there and left.
We had thought we would see Brandon there, as well as Andre and Andi, but they must have come and gone and headed to the Torshavn Bar, Andre and Andi’s favorite late-night venue.
We were too tired to go there, and just headed back to the cabin, calling it a night. We did spend some time on our balcony as we approached Los Angeles. The Captain had told us during his noon report that we would be anchoring near the Los Angeles harbor in a designated anchorage area at about 10:00 PM. This was so they could have divers do an inspection of the hull for any foreign growth that may attached itself to the hull. Since the ship is going to Australia and New Zealand as part of the World Cruise, the hull must be inspected to make sure there is no foreign biologic growth that could inadvertently be brought in and harm their reefs and marine animals. They will not allow ships to enter if they do their required inspections once the ship arrives, and it is found to have a contaminated hull.
We were out on the balcony when the ship was dropping the anchor. Luckily the area we anchored in was well protected from any wind and waves, so the seas were calm. We did not stay up late enough to see any underwater activity from the divers, it was just getting too late
We need to get up by 6:15 AM tomorrow because we have to be out of the room by 8:00 AM, and need to have time to go to eat breakfast and then finish getting everything together. We hate to be rushed, so we always leave plenty of time before we leave the cabin for the last time.
We set our alarm for 6:15 AM and headed to bed at about 10:45 PM.
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