Day 5 - Fri 12/09/18 - At Sea to Funchal

On this first Sunday of the cruise I was finally able to get 8 hours of sleep. After breakfast, we headed down to the Hudson Room to attend the interdenominational service that I didn't know whether or not I would be a volunteer leader of. On the elevator I met Bill, a pastor from Florida, who was also headed there and prepared to preach and lead the service. I deferred to him and we both didn't know if there would be hymnals there or not. Fortunately there were! We had 40-50 in attendence which was pretty good.

After church we attended Lance's presentation on The secret language of Ships  ( all about markings and flags). Following a light lunch, we joined other 5 Star and President's Club members for the first presentation by Drake of America's Test Kitchen on the World Stage. While it was good, the real stage set will be loaded once we reach Fort Lauderdale.  

I spent the remainder of the afternoon backing up yesterday's Canon camera Malaga pictures and tried to upload some but the system was miserably slow. This followed the internet being totally off yesterday for some 8-10 hours. The slowness continued throughout the day and I finally reported it to the front office who said "It is because we are at sea." To which I responded that we were just on the Maasdam in one of the most remote places on the planet in the South Pacific and the ship's internet was fine and relatively fast although not nearly as fast as RCCL's Voom Internet.

We enjoyed dinner in the Tamarind with friends William and Carolyn we met several years ago while cruising. It's a favorite venue for both couples and was especially nice because it was free because of our 5 Star Mariner status. We have one more free dinner which we'll likely eat in the Pinnacle Grill to try it out.

Since we missed the 8pm World Stage show (a comedian), we ended up listening to the dueling pianists (packed), and after they were finished the Rolling Stone Rock Room band started up. They are super loud and just not my taste in music, but they are quite popular.

Earlier in the day I went in search of the carpet varieties on the various stateroom floors and determined floors 7 and 10 have a viola/horn pattern while all of the other floors have a tulip pattern. Trivia, I know!

Our final activity of the day was to attend the English comedian/magician, Neil Austin who was delightfully funny. Tomorrow we'll be at Funchal,Madeira, Portugal where we're doing a small group tour of the island. And tonight started the first of 6 roll back the clocks time changes. We're now on London time. Stay tuned!

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