Three Days at Sea

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Geo: -31.0529, -92.7246

The trip started with three days at sea. We spent our time going to lectures, port talks, and shows, exploring the ship, trying all the variety of dining venues, and getting in lots of walking and reading. My goal is walking 10,000 steps every day. Philip's goal must be to read every book he has loaded on his iPad.

There will be eight formal nights on this cruise. The other nights are called "informal" and the dress code for them requires a jacket for men, but not a tie. The women's dress on informal nights is a cocktail dress or “smart separates”. Two of the formal nights were the second and third night of the cruise. The captain had parties to meet the guests on those nights. The first one was for the Grills' guests and the second for the other guests. Classed society is alive and well on this ship. On the second formal night, Robin was wearing a red bow tie. I don't remember why it came into the conversation, but he commented on his red “dicky bow”. I'd never heard that term before. I guess we still have some British English to learn.

One of the lectures we attended was entitled "America's Next President". The lecturer was British. He talked about each of the candidates that are still in the running for nomination, their backgrounds and his analysis of each ones' likelihood to be nominated and elected. At the end of the lecture, he predicted the outcome. He said he predicted it reluctantly, but I don't know that it was very reluctant. He had a slide prepared showing his prediction of Hillary Clinton, president, and Michael Bloomberg, vice-president. Hmmm? We'll see.

A lot of people want to talk about the American election process and what we think of it and the candidates. Seems like most of the passengers we have talked to are either Australian or British, but they all know a lot about our election.

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