When we arrived in Antigua at 8am, we were still in bed after a mostly sleepless night. We're just not getting good sleep, and it's starting to take its toll. Even after hearing the announcement that the Emerald Princess had been cleared by the local authorities and passengers were welcome to go ashore, we lingered a bit, slow to start our day. Therefore, we arrived in DaVinci Dining Room for breakfast shortly before it closed at 9am, and I kept my order to just cereal and mixed berries...and stollen, of course.
Internet was still out this morning, and I was beginning to have visions of Mom falling on the ice while making her way to Mass, and still lying there and...well, the mind can start playing tricks on you when you're sleep deprived. We needed to get off of the ship today if for no other reason than to find wifi.
We walked first over to Redcliffe Quay to find the wifi that's usually available at the Big Banana restaurant, but either it wasn't working, or we couldn't get on it because so many crew members had beat us to it, because we got no where there (but it was certainly peaceful and pretty in that little courtyard this morning). 
We next headed back towards the ship a different way, cutting through some of the cobblestoned alleys that date back hundred of years, but still finding no wifi along the way. We thought that Kings Casino was closed on Sundays, but saw someone coming out of it and so walked in. Finally, success. Their wifi is never fast, and several crewmembers were already there making Internet calls home, but at least they had it, and immediately 57 emails popped up on my iPhone to be read, and I honed in on those from Mom, who is fine and didn't appear to be one bit worried that she hadn't heard from us since Thursday. She's a busy woman! ;-)
We sat there for a couple of hours, and I was able to publish the blog posts I'd written for the past two days. We checked things at home (all fine) and financial accounts (all fine) and heaved a sigh of relief.
We had no real plans for the day (frankly, I just wanted to be on a non-moving surface), and, though it was mostly sunny, occasional brief showers passed through. Being Sunday, we didn't want to risk trying to take a local bus anywhere, and it wasn't looking to be the best beach day. Instead, we dodged some rain drops and returned to the ship and our cabin, where we opened the second box of mail from home that arrived on the Emerald Princess on turnaround day (thank you Martha!). Great fun...we had a few early Christmas cards, including one from Mom with a picture of herself that was taken recently for church- just beautiful, and it's fun to have a photo of her with us on the ship.
(Shayla...OMG such amazing news about Zak! Congrats; as you once said about G, Zak's mother raised a good son! Please email me...I don't have a good email address for you. It's only fitting that you're cruising along with me; I think of our world travels so often when I'm here!)
We were in the mood for food by then, and since a brief rainshower was passing over at that very moment, decided to go down to the International Cafe (IC) for lunch instead of up to the Lido Deck for pizza. While we get our coffee (actually, G's been getting hot cocoa) in the IC every morning, we don't generally go back there to eat again later in the day. Well, lucky us! Today they were actually preparing penne arrabiata right there, and so we started with that, and then I had some of my favorite shrimp and fennel salad, and decided to splurge and have that chocolate pudding (that used to be call Gianduja pudding) for dessert. Well, thankfully, what used to be like eating fudge in a bowl was now horribly disappointing, which makes it just that much easier to stay away from it.
G stayed behind to talk to Andre and Angela, on for 50 days and last cruise's most traveled passengers but this cruise's second-most traveled, and I returned to the cabin for a bit of iPhone charging and took advantage of that time to call Room Service for the trade out of some of our minibar items. Every cruise (so, for us, every ten days) we get delivered to our cabin a complete complementary minibar setup, including...oh, I don't know for sure, but I think it's 8 tiny bottles of liquors and two beers and four sodas and two Perriers and two bottles of water. Something close to that, at least. Well, we both also purchase, every cruise, either an unlimited soda package for $4.50 a day or the Ultimate Kids' package, which includes the sodas plus unlimited virgin drinks and milkshakes and hot cocoa for $7 a day (G got that one this cruise). So, aside from a few beers that G tries to drink, and the water bottles that I use on the islands, we really don't drink a lot from our minibar. It helps that we can exchange items...the four cans of soda, for example, were traded for water bottles, and the liquors for beers, but I'm here to tell you, this stuff is piling up and taking over the cabin. I think we will have to skip it next cruise in lieu of two coffee cards, and try to get caught up. We're falling horribly behind ;-)
Once I had a bit of battery life, and the minibar items were taken care of, I made my way up to the Sanctuary. I might have enjoyed one of the NFL games being shown on MUTS:
2:00pm: Panthers v. Saints (I needed my sports advisors to tell me who to cheer for)
5:30pm: Patriots v. Ravens
9:15pm: Bears v. Eagles
but I'm a bit leary to venture out based on the reports of physical altercations (really) over deck chairs. There's a reason G wanted me safely ensconced in the Sanctuary this cruise. So I went up there, and it was quite nice, but still surprisingly windy even with the Emerald Princess docked.
When will the winds finally end?
I stayed long enough for tea time (not that I needed more food, but it's just so very decadent to be lounging back while tea and sweets and sandwiches are delivered), but returned to the cabin by 4:30pm to shower and change for dinner. We wanted to watch sailaway from Skywalkers, as Antigua is one of the prettiest sailaways we see on these itineraries. It wasn't until we got up to Skywalkers that we remembered there was no Elite Lounge up there tonight because of the Captain's Circle parties being held tonight in Club Fusion. That's ok...drinks and hors doerves or not, I love being in Skywalkers for Antigua sailaway. Even though it was a rainy one, it was still beautiful. 
Then it was dinner with Darko and the Captains Circle party. We're waiting for the 9:30pm show by comedian Peter Sasso to begin, which will be followed by (weather permitting) the Bears v. Eagles game on MUTS and a late bedtime. Captain Nick promised us tonight that the Christmas winds would start to die down over the next five days as there was some weather system in the northeast US to affect them. It's funny to think that snow in New England might allow us to get some sleep.
:-)
