Day-12 (Oct 31) Cruising - Happy Halloween

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Today is another 25-hour day, with the clocks being reset at 3:00 PM. This gives everyone an opportunity to take a one hour siesta without missing any of the scheduled activities. On the other hand, if you want a little snack at 2:30, your can have another an hour later when it gets to be 2:30 again.

Our group all seems to have slept in late this morning. The first planned activity was not until 11:00 this morning when all but one of our tour group met for a short service by Father Mike in the Skylight Chapel. Then it was off to a lunch. Afterwards we all went our merry ways for basically a day of rest (good plan for a Sunday - according to the elevators).

David spent a couple of hours at the pool. There is an interesting effect as the ship gently rocks from side to side, the water in the pool sloshes back in forth with an effect somewhat like waves coming to the shore.
Jim and Rich went to attend an afternoon lecture about the History of Pirates. Janet’s head cold has become more of a persistent cough, so she rested in the cabin most of the afternoon. Kathy visited some of the shops on the Promenade. So it was a very self paced - slow paced - afternoon.

Dinner dress this evening was “in costume” (for Halloween) or just causal wear if you did not bring a Halloween outfit. There were a lot of people who must have had excess suitcase capacity because many folks were wearing some kind of costume. Main course at dinner was Steak Diane, Fettuccini, and Sea Bass. As usual the meal was delicious.

After dinner (at 8:00), Jim had been scheduled for a 20 min session to walk on the treadmill. He did a mile & a half, walking for Make-a-Wish. Then a quick change and we were all off to the Metropolis Theater again for one of their production dance shows. Frankly the best thing that could be said is that the dancers had lots of energy, but it was aimed at a much younger audience than what we see around the ship (maybe they mistook everyone as being in their 30s since they were in costume). Hopefully tomorrow will be more to our taste.

After that show, we all went to the movie theater to watch Hocus Pocus. Many on the ship seem to be night owls and stay up late in the lounges or dancing in the clubs, but we are comfortable in more restful environments. But that brings up an observation - it seems pretty clear that we are still in the younger half of the cruisers. There are a lot of people considerably older than us and many of them do as many or more activities than we do. But we are having fun and enjoying this leisure stage of the cruise.

There are only a couple of new photos today, so we will try to attach a previous movie clips instead. We have not tried this before, so if nothing is attached, then it just didn’t work. This was shot inside the Vatican Map Room and shows the ornate ceiling and the tapestry maps hung in this long room. The Tomorrow we will try to capture some snap shots around the ship.

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