Today was a sunny morning by the time we awoke. We slept in for the first time in three days. While the port calls had been interesting, getting up early, being on the go all day, and knowing that the following morning we would have another early wake up call, had just worn us out. The seas had been calm most of the night, and that continued into this morning. The skies were sunny, and it promised to be a nice day for relaxing by the pool with a good book.
Calm and Sunny Transatlantic Day 1
We ate at the buffet breakfast, and then headed back to the cabin to put on sunscreen for lounging on the pool deck. It was a little windy out on the decks, we were heading into a moderate SW wind, making the relative wind about 20 knots on deck. We were able to find deck chairs in a slightly protected area, so the wind was not as bad. There was about a 6-8 ft. ground swell from the Northeast, so the ship was rocking a little bit, and the pools were splashing out most of their water as the ship rocked from bow to stern. The waves in the pool would get quite high, and a lot of the water spilled over the woefully inadequate retaining wall. The entire deck area around the pool was constantly covered with a thin layer of water.
The weather forecast for tomorrow is for the wind and seas to increase, at the noon ship’s report, the Captain indicated we would be crossing through a cold front, and that it would be somewhat rougher than today.
We ate lunch and headed back out to the pool deck area to relax. Eventually, we made it back to the room to work on the postings, we were a few days behind, and with three port days in a row, there had not been enough time to prepare everything for posting to the site in a timely manner. We may try and add a few more pictures to the previous posts, it just depends on how much of our online time we use.
We had a nice sunset, although it was windy on deck, and difficult to photograph.
Sunset – Transatlantic Day 1
We went back to the room to get ready for dinner. Tonight is the second formal night, and we have reservations for dinner at 7:45 pm. It is lobster night, so that should be good. We got dressed and went to dinner. While waiting for our table to be prepared, we had our pictures taken by the photographers, who were set up tonight for formal portraits.
Dinner, unfortunately, was a big disappointment. We both ordered the lobster, and it was just one very small tail, along with some garlic, sauteed shrimp. They did not take the tails out of the shells, although they were mostly out anyway. There were about 4 bites total for the serving, and in my opinion, they were overcooked. I ordered a second serving to see if it was any better, but it was not. They really had no taste, certainly not the distinctive taste that we were accustomed to for lobster. We had ordered a bottle of wine, and that was probably the highlight of the dinner. Even the dessert menu was lacking tonight. There were only 4 choices, and two of those were sugar free. We both ordered something listed as a sampler platter, and it was three small items. We were very disappointed with the entire dining experience. Even the service was poor tonight, they forgot to serve me my salad with the meal, even though it was at the server station. I had to ask for them to bring it to me.
After dinner, we went to the buffet, a little strange while wearing formal clothes, as most of the people there were in very casual attire. We wanted to see if the lobster was also being served there, since normally, the food has seemed to be the same in both the buffet and the dining room so far on the cruise. We did not see any lobster being served, but it was close to closing time, so they may have stopped bringing more out to the buffet. We mainly went to see if they had more dessert choices, and they did. We enjoyed some ice cream. One thing that is strange its that the buffet closes at 9:00 pm, which seemed unusually early to us, especially when compared to Princess Cruises, where the buffet is open almost all night.
We decided to get out of our formal clothes, and into something more casual. We finalized the postings for the previous days while enjoying a cocktail in the room. Then we headed out to watch “rock-a-rokie”, which was like karaoke, but with a live band. There were a couple of volunteers, I classify them as victims, but mostly it was the cruise staff singing. It was interesting, it looked a lot harder than normal karaoke.
We went to the library later to post the information to the web site, it is a quiet place, and the wireless reception is good there. The internet is a lot faster later at night when there are fewer people online. After completing that, it was back to the cabin to retire for the evening. By that time, the seas were already building ahead of the front, and it was pretty rocky most of the night.