While we slept in a little bit later this morning, there was none of that languishing in bed until noon stuff going on. Our cabin, on these five northbound sea days, is on the sunrise side of the ship, and our brightly sunny weather continues. By 5:30am the sun had lighted our cabin, but we manage to sleep on, curled up like cats in its warmth. However, by 7am it was getting downright hot, and we learned our first lesson about these five sea days in a row: turn the AC temperature way down before retiring for the night. By 3pm today, we were turning it back up, but it became a little oven in here this morning.
As for a rundown of our activities today...as I mentioned, it will be short because I was not feeling at all participative and G was only mildly more social. We met for breakfast in the Club Restaurant, and I returned to the cabin to catch up with hand laundry. I also took the time to throughly clean my mask, snorkel and fins, as I kind of doubt that I'll be using them again before we return home. I had neglected to mention in yesterday's post that the water temperature at Matira Beach was 88F. Somehow, I don't think the water in the Hawaiian islands will come close.
We both made it to the BIG!!!!!! $500 Treasure Hunt Drawing*!!! (*must be present to win) at 11:15am in the Cabaret Lounge (we won NOTHING!!) and then stayed to use our free bingo cards in the first bingo session of the cruise (ditto, but we were kept highly entertained by dancer/cruise staffer/ bingo caller Michael who is a party waiting to happen). We managed to squeeze in a quick lunch in the Club Restaurant before G had to head off to the first ukulele session of the cruise. Hawaiian duo Tui and Maile came onboard in Papeete and will be offering the usual Hawaiian music but also cultural activities, such as lei making and hula and ukulele lessons.
I wanted to go to line dancing in the Pacific Lounge at 2:15pm, but...well, it was the Pacific Lounge and I wouldn't have lasted five minutes in there. Instead I sat on the Promenade Deck (only one side was open; the other was closed off due to the wind and sea spray) and read. G joined me there for a short time, but we eventually returned to the cabin and napped (yes, even me!). Unfortunately, that had me sleeping right through dancer Harry's first craft session (it was the card/bookmark project today, so...sorry Mom!). G went to the Elite Lounge at 4:45pm, alone, because, again...Pacific Lounge.
I joined him for dinner at 5:15pm in the Club Restaurant. Regardless of whether we're hungry or not, we cannot bring ourselves to miss even a single lunch or dinner in the dining room this cruise, simply because we're seeing menus that are either new to us, or that we don't see very often, due to this being a longer cruise. Tonight we both had watermelon with a yogurt topping, a salad with blue cheese and walnuts and ravioli with a roasted walnut sauce. Wow, what a great meal!
G is out attending comedian David Deeble's early show in the Cabaret Lounge. We had a brief calmer period late afternoon and during dinner, but the ocean is once again pitching a fit. I won't venture out any further than our low, midship cabin tonight. Someone mentioned during dinner that we are forecasted to have these tempestuous seas all the way back to Los Angeles. Oh joy.
I was going to continue with the GPS-worthy portion of today's post, where my stream of consciousness finds it way onto my iPad, things about the new internet system and the missing wine package and laundry turnarounds, but the ship's shudders and rolls and the sound of slapping waves have disinclined me to write anymore tonight.
To be continued...