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Cabin P-217
Seen from Window At last we have sailed. Ft Lauderdale seems to be a nice place to visit, but we have other places we wanted to see during this vacation too. Fortunately, the ship passed its tests and we sailed just after 8:00 AM this morning. We were having breakfast in the dinning room, and a small cheer went up when we started moving past the shore-side estates.
One small problem in our cabin was that the batteries wore out in door lock. We reported it to the main desk and they sent someone to replace them, but for a short time there we were locked out of the cabin. I guess that was not part of the refurbishment in drydock. The cabin itself seems to be smaller than we had on the past two cruises – it has a large porthole instead of a balcony, and the bed is directly in front of the window so you can only look out from across the room. There is no sofa but there is a large desk area. The closet is about the same and the bathroom may actually be a little larger, but overall the cabin seems small to us. It will be
Cabin P-217
Seen from Door fine, but next time we will probably go directly for the balcony instead of hoping for an upgrade.
This morning’s activities included more exploring of the ship and then a very interesting lecture on the Azores. Although we are only going to Ponta Delgada on Sao Miguel, there are actually 9 islands with many different attributes and histories. So we soaked up as much information was we could but we will only get to see one small section of the archipelago.
The internet turned into a frustrating exercise. First the time kept getting postponed when it was going to be available. Then they said the wireless network was working but we were not able to connect to it. Finally David was able to get their IT person to help with his laptop setup, and you can see that the results were ultimately successful. That is one real advantage over the Royal Caribbean line which was entirely self-help on internet – here they have a technician working with specific “office hours”.
Then it was time for lunch in the Horizon Court (the 24 hour buffet line on the 14th deck). This also seems smaller than on the Navigator of the Seas, but they have a lot of different specialty places (burgers, pizza, ice cream, international, etc), so that kind of makes the difference. Each of the breakfasts and lunches has been with whomever we can share a table with, but dinner is at the same table with the same folks each night.
Jumping ahead to dinner, we are at a table for 10 so we expect to get to know several other people pretty well before the cruise is over. The first night though 3 people showed up and immediately started complaining that they had requested a small table (since 2 of them did not speak English) – they left and never came back. Two others joined us from South Carolina (Mary and Ray) and they seem like interesting folks. The others did not come to dinner last night – maybe because of the late boarding and therefore late lunch. Tonight we had 10 people and started getting to know them, which will be nice.
Back to the afternoon, Janet went to the High Tea at 3:30 and then we met up for the afternoon trivia session at 4:30. She brought some “tea people” along and we made a team of 6. We were at least competitive (answering 16 or 20 questions), but the winners had 18 correct answers.
After dinner we went to the 8:00 show in the main theater and heard an excellent Welsh lady sing a wide variety of songs. She had a very strong voice and we enjoyed it a lot. Janet went back to the cabin afterwards but David went to the 10:00 show in the smaller theater and heard the same comedian who had done a short piece the previous night. It was very funny and well worth waiting up for it.
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