Friday April 19th – Sea Day

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Today is the first day of our return cruise back to the US from the South Pacific. There will actually be 8 sea days before we get home, so this is going to be our longest continuous time of cruising the ocean. We enjoy the relaxed attitude of cruising and will have to wait and see if the 8^thday can still be fun, but we are optimistic.

We slept until 8:00 today and then got up and headed to the Horizon Court for breakfast. Then Janet went straight to the Knitting Meeting and spent the rest of the morning have a relaxing time with her friends. David delivered some paperwork to Passenger Services which will eventually get us slotted to leave the ship. Then he did some reading on the Balcony and finally took a little nap in the cabin.

At 11:30 Janet came back to the room and we went to the Capri Dining Room for a shopping frenzy. There are many items of clothing which have not been sold on earlier cruises, and were marked down to sell to these customers. Janet did find a nice blouse but we skipped over many of the others.

Afterwards we got a couple of tuna sandwiches and sodas and had a light lunch in the Wheelhouse Bar. Why there? Because at 12:30 was a “book exchange”. David had finished 2 books and started a 3^rd, only to discover it was one he had read many years ago. So he was able to swap it for another one which looks like it should be interesting. If it isn’t then he didn’t really have anything invested anyway.

We returned to the cabin where Janet got her Needlework project out and spent a lot of the afternoon working on it. She had been thinking about going to the theater to see a movie, but it will probably be on the TV tomorrow. Last night had been a late night for her (although she enjoyed the movie) and she didn’t want to sit in that seat another 2 hours.

David worked on the pictures from Tahiti and has finally gotten those posted in the blog from April 16^th. There were a bunch from the evening show that we had watched on the ship and those probably are continued as additional pictures following the text. Unfortunately there are no new pictures for today.

At 3:00 David went up to the pool for a little swim. The temperature was 91 degrees at that time, so he didn’t actually sit out in the sun. Instead he went to the covered pool which was cooler. That was a nice restful afternoon for him while Janet enjoyed a quiet afternoon in the cabin.

At 4:30 we had mini appetizers delivered to the cabin before our 3^rd Formal Dinner. The alternative was to go to the “Shrimp Fountain” in the Elite Lounge, but this way we could just stay in the cabin and not have to play “elevator roulette” as we would have to go up, come back down, transfer to mid-ship, and go down again. So we took the easy way today.

This is another Friday in Lent and avoiding meat had not been a problem earlier in the day. But once again the premiere offering at dinner was Surf & Turf. Instead Janet had Seafood Skewers and David had Striped Corvine. We had delicious crabmeat appetizer and a yummy “warm brownie with vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup".

We went to the theater this evening and were a little unsure whether it was something we would like or not. The performer was named Ryan Ahern and he was an excellent pianist. He regularly plays in major Las Vegas shows and just does occasional cruises. He was very good and we really enjoyed it. This was definitely a good decision.

Tonight we lose another hour on the clock, so we will stop here. Good night.

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