Day 10 - Fri 12/14/18 - At Sea to Florida - Day 4



Today started just like any other day. But it turned out to be anything but just like any other day.

After our customary LIDO breakfast, we attended the coffee chat where a female third officer was interviewed. Following that, Robin Ross presented a talk on visiting Cuba. His simple message was go!

Today was the Mariner Reception where normally medallions signifying attainment of cruising levels of cruise days are presented. However, there were no medallions to be presented. Oops, the medallions were sent to the Bahamas in error and couldn't catch up with the ship. So photos were taken with the sample medallions and the real medallions will be mailed to the recipients. That had to be pretty embarrassing for the CD.  

The Mariner lunch was really good and we were able to sit with four friends that we have previously cruised with on 3 different sets of cruises. Don Mings presented his talk on French Colonialism and I finished my Joshua Quinn thriller, and I photographed a number of areas around the ship where one could read. I was also able to upload my movies of the cabin crawl and post the links on Cruise Critic.

Dinner was in the Lido and we elected the Indian cuisine (quite good), We tried to watch a poolside movie but the audio was so washed out, we gave up and went to see the comedian, Neil Austin, who was really funny with his magic tricks.

We capped off the evening by attending the Orange party on music row on Deck 2. Everyone was encouraged to wear orange and it was literally a sea of orange, The ship even donated beads, hats, & wigs. I went a bit over the top wearing an orange shirt and ballcap and a paste on Orange mustache which generated a bunch of comments. We spent most of our time at the dueling pianos who played a set of request tunes.

During the evening and day, there was definitely motion to the ocean.  

Tomorrow starts the second half of our trans Atlantic crossing and it's a light schedule. Stay tuned.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 2 - Thu 12/06/18 - At Sea to Cartegena

Jet lag continues to be an issue for me and I was wide awake at 3am. The ship has been amazingly smooth and quiet even in this 10th floor forward SPA cabin.   Breakfast in the LIDO was quite nice. The lines were short and I got my eggs cooked to order (over broken). On this ship the accompanying mushrooms and English Bacon are at another station so I'll need to readjust my routine. Our Cruise Critic gathering at 10am was well attended by around 100 people out of 200 who signed up. It was a good chance to put screennames and faces together. Our first lecture was delayed by 1/2 hour due to technical difficulties hooking up the presenter's MAC. Eventually a PC was used to save the day. I'm sure the technical staff will get this sorted out. The first speaker was a radio host who spoke about the various people he had interviewed. Jet lag got in the way of enjoying this lecture. After a very nice sushi lunch in the LIDO, Orlando Ashford, President of HAL spoke on the cha
Read more

Day 1 - Wed 12/05/18 - Boarding the Nieuw Statendam

Boarding day was finally here. I slept most of the night with the exception of 1-3am. We started our day by walking up to the market to do a little shopping before returning to our B&B to enjoy a leisurely breakfast with some other passengers who are sailing on the ship. We checked out of the B&B and walked 10 minutes to the port shuttle pickup point. After a brief wait, a shuttle bus came and soon we were transported to the cruise terminal to begin the boarding process. At the terminal we made our way upstairs for our first time checking in as 5 star Mariners. We were initially given a boarding group number 15, but that was taken away by the check in person. We didn't have to get new photos taken, and we were escorted over to the VIP lounge where we met up with Sherita who we had traveled with before on the Zaandam. She was keen on being the first one on the ship, and when the boarding door opened we were off like a shot and she got to be #1 paying pa
Read more

Day 18 - Sat 12/22/18 - Nassau, Bahamas

Image
Overnight it was a bit windy. At 11pm the ship was rocking and when we woke up, the ship was circling off the entrance to the Nassau harbor. While we were the first ship to arrive, the pilot wasn't willing to come out at the scheduled time. Once he was on board we proceeded into the harbor, rotated 180° counterclockwise and backed into our berth just after 8:30am. We were shortly followed by the Disney Wonder and then the Carnival Victory, and RCCL Enchantment of the Seas. Later in the day, the RCCL Mariner of the Seas joined the lineup. We planned a self guided walking tour for the day starting with a walk to the Queens Staircase and Fort Fincastle. The fort is also marked by a large water tower. We approached the fort using Prison Drive and missed the staircase. However we used it to go down. We then walked through the main part of town using Bay Street and out to Fort Charlotte and Fort Stanley. It about 3 miles between Fort Fincastle and Fort Charlotte
Read more