On Board the Rotterdam

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Sun Jan 27
Well I’m now aboard the Rotterdam. Last night I spent a quiet evening at the hotel finishing the recovery from the flight and today I’m pretty well adjusted to the time. At least I hope so since I have an 8 a.m. tour tomorrow morning. I spent some time on the balcony last night watching some people play Beach Soccer. Our guide on the shuttle this morning told us that is the big thing here now and they hope to get it into the Olympics someday like they did Beach Volleyball. I then watched a bit of TV which was interesting. Obviously most of the channels were in Portuguese but there were some Movie channels playing in English, a CNN channel in Spanish, and a rather mixed US channel all with subtitles in Portuguese. The US Channel was playing some of the American Idol auditions, then an episode of Little People Big World, and a Makeover type episode. It was odd to watch with the strange subtitles but killed some time so I didn’t go to bed too early and not adjust to the time. We had to have our bags out by 8 this morning so I did that and went down to breakfast. I ran into RuchC from the cc board so had breakfast with her. We had both signed up for the 10:30 bus and it took off pretty much on time. It was close to an hr drive to the ship but we had a great guide pointing things out and giving us the history. Some of the roads on the beaches were closed because it was Sunday so we had to work around them. They said this was the first day in 3 weeks that it was sunny so that was good and we finally did get a view of the Statue though it was clouded over later this afternoon. Hopefully the view is ok tomorrow on my tour.

I got my luggage a couple of hours ago so have everything pretty much put away and organized. There’s plenty of space so not a problem there even with all the stuff I brought. My cabin is on the lowest passenger deck and almost all the way to the back (4 from the aft). Won’t be able to tell how much noise I’ll get from engines or anchors until we sail tomorrow night. It’s strange not to have a life boat drill the day you get on but I supposed that will be tomorrow before we sail. Well that’s about it for now. I have about 2 hrs until dinner so hopefully ended up with a good table.

Talk to you all soon.

Sharon

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Photos

Samba Costume
They had several Samba Costumes on display throughout the hotel. They were really interesting but I forgot to take pictures until we were ready to leave so only got a couple

Rio Beachs
We drove along the beachs of Rio from the hotel to the ship including Ipanema, Copacabana, and Le Blanc.

Christ the Redeemer
We finally got to see the Statue of Christ the Redeemer (it was foggy when we arrived yesterday and again this morning) once we were on the ship. It clouded up again in the afternoon. Hopefully it's clear tomorrow for my tour which goes there.

Comments

[Janet]

Getting table
Hi Sharon, Good to hear from you. Hope you got a good table. Hope you don't get to much noise from the ship. It is actually 43 here today. Enjoy. Catch you later. Janet