It was another early wake up time for me in our cabin today. All of the time changes still have us a little sleep confused, especially me. The seas are indeed a little rougher this morning, but as this is being written, it is still dark outside, and I can’t really tell how rough it is. Stephanie is still sleeping in, but I have already made a coffee run, and completed the posting for yesterday. It is nice that there is wireless in the rooms on this voyage, in the past we had to go to a public area to get a strong enough signal. Now, we can do the postings from the comfort of our cabin desk.
So far, we have been able to manage using only about 6 minutes of connection time for each of the two posts we have done from the ship. Of course, we have not yet posted many pictures, and that can dramatically increase the upload time. I am running a copy of the blog on my laptop computer so that I can write the posting there, and insert the pictures where I want them to be. Then, all I have to do is copy the HTML code for the post, change a couple of items designating the folder where the pictures are located, to point to the online server folder location versus my local computer folder location, and then go online and paste the HTML code into the real blog post server. Then we upload the pictures to the blog server while online, and wallah, the post is done. Of course, it is a little more complicated than that, but still relatively easy. We do have to edit the pictures to decrease their file size to “blog size” before we upload them. It took several previous trips to work out all of the steps in this process, all attempting to minimize the shipboard internet connection time required to upload to the blog server. We only have a limited amount of minutes of shipboard internet access due to cost, and the actual time on the slow shipboard satellite connection, as compared to home internet speeds, can cause frustration in itself.
Stephanie has just started to “proof’ the posts, so there may be some errors in spelling and word selections that may not be misspelled, but are not the correct word for the sentence.
Once Stephanie got up, we headed to the spa to exercise. After exercising in the spa area, we headed to breakfast at the buffet. By the time we finished breakfast, it was time to go and sign up for the classes they are offering on making lei’s out of real orchids which Stephanie wants to attend. We went down to the Library where the sign up was to be held and found quite a long line of people already waiting. We got in line and talked with some different folks while we slowly crept forward. After at least 40 minutes of waiting, Stephanie was signed up for the third class on October 31, which is the day after we leave the last Hawaiian port. At least the flowers should be fresh since they all come from Hawaii. Some of the classes will be held on the next two sea says from today, so they get the “old” flowers, ha ha.
Finally Some Sunshine
The sun finally came out this morning at about 10:00 AM, it was nice to see after all of the cloudy weather days. The air temperature was still a little cool, and with the wind, it was only warm in sunny areas on the outside decks that were protected from the wind. We went around the ship taking some pictures of the blue skies and blue seas. We then headed to the Atrium to watch a demonstration on making different types of martinis. There is a Martini Bar on the ship, and the bartenders from that bar put on quite a show making the various martinis. The people they picked out of the audience to taste them were required to first perform embarrassing “dances” while shaking up their Martinis. It was actually a funny event, and we really enjoyed the show.
There was a special sushi buffet set up for lunch, so we tried that, and as we had found many times on previous cruises, the sushi on the ships is not very good. The rice is really gummy and the sushi is very dense. There were also some hot Asian dishes which were not bad. After lunch, it was time for Ukulele class, so we headed to the Wheelhouse Bar for class number two. We had expected the class to shrink in size compared to yesterday, but actually found that there were a lot of additional newcomers. This caused an issue with there being a need to share the 16 available loaner Ukulele’s, and also required the instructor to spend most of the class going over the basics that were covered in the first class, so it was very tedious and boring for the students that had attended the day before. Then everyone from the first day’s class was asked to give their Ukulele’s to the newer students, so practice time with an actual instrument was very limited. We would have gotten just as far if we had not attended the day before.
Later in the afternoon, we headed to the hot tubs at the Spa area and met two sisters that were traveling together. They were originally from Colorado, but one was now living in California, the other was still in Colorado. One of the sisters was actually a Catholic nun, and the one living in California was the voice of one of the characters on Sponge Bob Square Pants. They were very nice and quite interesting to talk with.
Rainbow at Sea
We headed back to the room for some adult refreshments on the balcony, and set up the music system with the iPod. We had decided not to go to the main dining room for dinner tonight, it is the first formal night of the cruise. We really did not feel like dressing up in all of the formal wear, and the menu for the dinner was not that spectacular. The ship passed by a rainstorm, and a beautiful rainbow appeared as the ship passed by. It was not too far away, you could actually see where the rainbow appeared to touch the water.
Stephanie ordered one of the appetizers from the main dinner menu through room service, and unfortunately, it took them over an hour and four phone calls before it was delivered to us. We were not happy that it took so long.
I headed up to take pictures of the sunset, it was the first one we were able to see because of all of the fog and clouds for the first two days of the cruise.
Sunset at Sea
We got ready for dinner and headed up to the buffet. It was interesting to see that there were quite a lot of other passengers with the same idea, just relaxing and not getting all dressed up. It was also interesting that there were actually some folks dressed up in formal wear that were eating in the buffet. I guess they dressed up to attend the champagne waterfall event in the Atrium, but did not want to go to the dining room for dinner. There are still three more formal nights during the trip, so we will dress up next time.
After dinner, we headed to the Explorer’s Lounge for the early comedy show by an entertainer named Scott Wyler. We should have realized that this was scheduled for the early seating dining crowd, and due to the age group of the cruise, I believe this is the majority of the passengers. We arrived thirty minutes before the show, and there was not a seat to be had in the lounge. The crew ended up setting up some folding chairs, and we were able to get a couple of those for the show. The comedian was good and we enjoyed the show.
We were pretty tired, so after walking around and listening to a few of the other musicians that were in the Atrium, we headed back to the room. There will be another time change tonight, so tomorrow, we will be 5 hours earlier than Eastern Time, with only one more hour to change before we are on Hawaii time.
Tomorrow, we have an interview with the Maitre’d at 10:00 AM as part of the Chef’s Dinner that we signed up to attend during the cruise. They actually interview the folks attending this special event to determine the menu items. That should be interesting, but unfortunately, it is at the same time as the next Ukulele class. We are not sure when the Chef’s dinner will be held, hopefully it will be on a sea day. We will probably find out tomorrow. We will provide some additional information on the entire event in tomorrow’s post.