Blogs from Oceans and Seas - page 9

Relaxing day at sea today. Slept in till about 11 and went & had lunch. In the afternoon went to the movies and saw “Arbitrage” with Richard Gere, Tim Roth and Susan Sarandon. Quite interesting story about the rich and the financial industry. Went to dinner and Moises surprised Barb with a birthday cake for her 65th birthday. It was his last night on board. Went to the 8:30 show and saw “The MacDonald Brothers,” a duo from Scotland. They sang Scottish, Irish and American pop songs. Was strange when they sang the American pop, they lost their Scottish accents. Very entertaining and thoroughly enjoyed them.... read more

Today the ship the highlights are, a "Beyond the Podium" speaker will talk about Trans-Atlantic Contact before Columbus. There is also a galley tour and a "Freedance" that will benefit The Breast Cancer Research Foundation. For that you pay $15.00 and receive a tee shirt and $10 goes to the foundation. Here we are in the middle of the Pacific Ocean steaming, okay diesel ing, our way to Pago Pago Samoa. It is a clear and beautiful day out. Actually the weather could not be better. Warm and clear with a beautiful breeze and a few puffy white clouds floating in front of the sun from time to time to just give you a comfortable respite from the sun. I can walk around the ship and look out and see nothing. Literally nothing, but ocean. It ... read more

Polliwog to Shellback One of the reason we decided to choose this cruise itinerary is because we will become "Shellbacks". When I was becoming certified as a cruise agent through CLIA I learned about it and said that, that was for me. So some of you maybe asking, "what is a Shellback"? A Shellback is a person that sails over the equator. There is a ceremony, "The Court of Neptune". It is held by every ship on the high seas whenever they cross the equator. One of the attributes I love most is, it does not matter where you rank, if you are but a Pollywog you must participate. From meek young ensign to admiral of the fleet. I have read about the different types of ceremonies. Some of the hard core naval ones consisted of ... read more

Sumer is a cumin in Here on New Ground, three miles from, and a thousand feet higher, than Jamestown the weather is suggesting that a gloomy and damp spring is moving into summer. Plenty of high white cloud and the odd spattering of clear blue – enough to make a – I don’t recall the end of this saying – a sailor’s handkerchief, perhaps. Someone out there let me know – these small things can worry away! Well, news from St Helena – last weekend was overfull with public celebration. On Friday the Halloween event moved to High Knoll Fort, a British fortification that looms over a large part of the island. ‘New Horizons’ – a very active group that organizes events and activities for youngsters had converted one of the tower areas of the fort ... read more

November 1 I haven’t blogged for a couple of days since we were cruising and basically read, slept, ate, read, slept and ate some more. The weather has been lovely but Hot, Hot, Hot and the seas calm. We did attend a show, a combination of a comic violinist and a wonderful concert pianist. The pianist was wonderful and her selection of material was familiar and accessible to a wide audience. I am enjoying a delicious bowl of orange slices and ML is off for a scalp massage. We are now on our way to Indonesia. Yesterday we visited Darwin. The temperature was between 80 and 90 but the humidity was very high. We took the shuttle into town. It is a lovely small city, impeccably maintained, no graffiti and parks manicured. We stopped in the ... read more

Guess I decided to go to Antarctica. Here's a picture of some stairs.... read more

Three days at sea after visit to GBR although we saw lots of islands including Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in the Torres Straits where they used to trade the heads of tasty Europeans with the people of Papua New Guinea. Enjoying the ship's activities including the gym, the bar, BBQ on deck with M & E captured on film dancing to Dancing Queen! Darwin was next stop where we sweated our way round the town which had to be completely rebuilt after the 1974 Cyclone Tracy. Nice dock area with netted swimming beach to keep out the crocs. Then more sea, sea and sea- looking forward to Bali and land tomorrow. Weather is terrific with perfect blue skies and yesterday an absolute flat calm fortunately we are steaming not sailing otherwise we would be drifting just ... read more

Hello one more time from the Island Princess. We continued today on our cruise back to Florida. Earlier today they reported that we were about 50 minutes off the coast of Cuba. Anyway we should arrive on schedule. This morning we slept in until almost 8:00 – tomorrow will be a much earlier morning – so we wanted to be well rested at the end of our cruise. We went up to the breakfast buffet and had our usual breakfast. I guess we haven’t described that process as much as the dinners, so here’s our chance. Each person starts with a platter which is much larger than a full-sized dinner plate. There are virtually every kind of breakfast item you can imagine and you can take as much of everything as you want. Then you can ... read more