A great sea day

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Geo: 15.85, -96.32

Another sea day...and every sea day I worry what to write about. I mean, after all, what is there to do all day on a floating hotel? But somehow we manage to amuse ourselves.
This morning Jeff gets up early, or early for us, and goes to the workout room, and wakes me up when he returns. I am such a slug.

We go downstairs to get fancy coffee. On board the ship you can buy a punchcard for fancy coffees...lattes, cappacinos, espressos, etc. but we've never done that. Well, for Christmas, Jeff's son, Derrick and his wife Jenn, gave us "cruise credit" and we've spent that money on this special fancy coffee card. Jeff and I share a chai and it is WONDERFUL! We take our chai and hurry to the Princess Theater to attend the second Enrichment Lecture which is on "Plagues of the Ancient World."
This lecture is just as good as the first one and we're enjoying the series very much. When it ends we stay in the theater because right after that Humberto is giving his destination talk about San Juan del Sur, Nicaraqua. Though we have plans already for San Juan del Sur, we're really interested in what he talks about, though it looks as though any ship excursions people would take would be long bus rides.

Well, apparently this is our morning to sit in the theater! After the destination talk, we watch a Princess video about the Panama Canal. The video is good, but if you really want the history of building the canal, the war that was won without firing a shot, and the challenges of working in a tropical climate I HIGHLY recommend the Pamana Canal documentary by Ken Burns.

We finally leave the theater about 12:40 having only had our shared chai as sustenance and think about finding some food. Exiting the theater we see Trish and Mary. Because tomorrow is a port day we think it would be fun for all six of us to have dinner together tomorrow night to talk about our different shore excursions.

We walk over to the "anytime dining" restaurant to ask if that's possible since they, Eve and Leroy have set dining. The waiter says it is okay and tells us how to make reservations (because sometimes there can be a long wait for a table at our restaurant). Perfect.

We go back to our cabin and Jeff looks up the phone number for dining reservations and discovers - tah! dah! There is an afternoon tea!!! It is listed beside the restaurant hours, but not in the calendar of daily events. I'm super excited! Jeff calls and finds out that you have to call for dinner reservations the same day so we make a note for him to call at 8am tomorrow morning before we go on our excursion.

We, (Jeff, Mary, Trish and I), want to continue our Phase 10 game today, but I want to go to an arts and crafts thing. I never do stuff like this, but today the project is a travel journal and I'm interested in learning what it is all about.
What was I thinking? This is a scrapbooking thing and I am awful at stuff like this but I really have fun. The staff hands out these packets of material and I'm pleased to see that it is a nice quality journal and we just decorate it however we want. I sit at a table with 3 other women who are happy to help me, because I keep saying things like "WHAT is THIS??" I am creative in many ways but when it comes to artsie stuff, I want instructions or pictures to work from. There is lots of glue involved and pretty soon several of my fingers are sticky and apparently I've glued a pair of scissors to our work table. Geez, this is hard!

I am making this journal for Mary and I think it turns out okay. I hope she likes it.

My arts and crafts time is crowding my game time so I pitch everything into a bag and hurry off to the card room. Mary and Trish are there but no Jeff and hence, no game. The three of us sit and chat and I give Mary her little present along with the stickers , letters that I didn't use and the weird little doo-dad things I was clueless about. She is very gracious and does not mention that it looks like it was decorated by a crazed preschooler with a glue gun.
Jeff arrives - he had fallen asleep. The four of us play until their dinner time.

Tonight there is a special show and, since it is special, it is being performed three times. The show is called "Encore" and ALL of the musicians and dancers on the ship and a guest soprano are in it. It is described as a pop opera. Jeff and I go to the 5:45 show - we figure it will be less crowded and we can have dinner afterwards.
The set and the costumes are spectacular! The music and dancing were good and this was obviously a huge a huge production. An enjoyable hour.

At dinner we encouraged our tablemates to see the show, too.
After dinner we head upstairs where Jeff takes up his post on the deck, wine glass in hand, to watch the ocean go by. First though, he takes a photo of my blog writing workspace...now you know where the magic happens. HAHAHAHA!

We have to get up early for our excursion tomorrow and go to bed early.
I hope you come back and read about Huatulco.

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Comments

[Bev and Wen]

I assume that the video on the Panama Canal mentioned Richard Halliburton who swam coast to coast via the canal - including going through the locks as the "SS Halliburton" and paying 36 cents to do so since ships were charged by weight. I w
as enchanted when my 5th grade teacher read us that passage from his book.

[mjanesmith]

Yes! His trip has been great!Oh, and I added photos and a video to the Jan. 10th sea day