There was no doubt about how I was going to start today’s post: What a difference a day makes!!!
Captain Ravera had warned us, in his sail away announcement last night, that we were heading into a monsoonal flow, and that the seas, which had been very kind to us of late, would grow angry over the next couple of days. He was certainly right; we could feel some minor bouncing in our cabin when we awoke this morning. But we were unprepared for how quickly the weather turned cooler. Almost overnight, this ship cooled down, and when we walked across the Lido Deck on our way to breakfast in the Horizon Court Buffet before 8am, the shorts and T’s and sandals we’ve lived in since we arrived in Dubai over a month ago suddenly left us chilly.
I should clarify here, that by chilly, I mean our temperature topped out at 78F today. That 78F marks a big cool down tells you just how hot we’ve been in Southeast Asia. The real feel temps are nearly always over 100F.
We lingered over breakfast. I’m not sure why we were up so early, particularly after we moved clocks ahead an hour last night (we are now 13 hours ahead of EST), but we were asleep in about 3 seconds last night, so I guess that makes sense. In fact, I watched the Rod Stewart tribute act and typed last night’s blog post with literally just one eye open at time. I learned years ago to convince myself I’m actually sleeping when I do that and it served me well during overnight work and study sessions.
Following breakfast we attended Destination Expert Narelle Froude’s lecture on Hong Kong. Narelle continues to do a yeoman’s job on these lectures, and she is surely one of the very best at what she does. I was at the Shore Excursions office a couple of days ago and saw the long line of people waiting to talk with her during her desk hours which she has each day, and after every lecture she is swamped by people with questions. Today we were among them. We have learned to not try to see everything we want in these cities, but to choose two or three things on which to focus our time and energy. They are simply too large and too crowded to move easily between the different sites.
British Pub Lunch was offered in the Savoy Dining Room today, and we ate there, and then returned to the cabin. I wanted to watch the movie, The Man Who Invented Christmas on TV. Thankfully it is VOD, because I kept falling asleep and had to back up and resume viewing. It’s main draw for me was Dan Stevens as Charles Dickens, but Christopher Plummer as Scrooge was fantastic, too. G was in and out of the cabin, preparing for this cruise’s egg drop contest. Once again his egg survived the drop from Deck 7 to Deck 5 in the Piazza; I think he has perfected his technique, but he likes to change it up a little each time to keep it interesting.
We ate lightly at dinner, just one course, and went to the late Captains Circle party this evening. We were honored to be this cruise’s third most traveled guests with almost 1100 days. Number two had less than 100 more and number one just under 1800. A couple from Australia that we had met last year on the Golden Princess came up to say hi. They won the bottle of champagne that we donate back each cruise for another drawing after the three usual bottles are raffled off.
We skipped production show Let Us Entertain You tonight and instead went to the Horizon Court Buffet for coffee and dessert and are now back in the cabin watching another movie. It’s a bit rough tonight. Captain Ravera said we’d be in 50 knot winds overnight, and the seas are the bounciest they’ve been in Southeast Asia. We don’t get seasick, but it does make us feel tired.
Or maybe that’s due to the fact we’ve now been at this for 70 days. ;-)