Monday: July 7
At Sea, Checking Out the Ship
Today gives us a chance to experience a slow day on the ship. It is the only day on this cruise where we will not be at a port, and hence where there will be no excursions. To make up for this, there are a lot of activities scheduled throughout the day.
This gave us a chance to have a slow, mellow morning. We had breakfast at the Restaurant, which was a more elegant and a more sedate affair. The plus side was that the orange juice was fresh and tasted good (not watery). Unfortunately, due to excursions on the remaining days, I’m not sure that we would have time to do it again. It would be good, however, if you had no excursions in the morning and were planning to sleep in and do something in the afternoon.
After breakfast, I started a load of laundry. I thought I would get in early, before it got crowded. Unfortunately, a lot of other people had the same idea. The good news is that the laundry is free. The bad news is that there are only 4 machines for an entire floor.
I checked the status of the machines, and they were all in use, but one woman’s was due to finish in about 4-6 minutes. I put in a claim to her for that and went to the room to gather my laundry. It was a good thing that I did, because when I returned, her machine was just ending, and she said that someone else had already tried to claim it, but she told them that it was taken.
While it was washing, I did something that I forget. I set an alarm to get back a few minutes before it was finished, but when I got there, it was finished already. I don’t know if the time on the machine wasn’t exactly minutes, or whether I set my alarm wrong.
Fortunately, there was an available drier, so I put my clothes in there and got it going. I set a timer, and then I went to a talk about the history of the Roman Empire. I caught most of it, but I missed the beginning and the end.
When I returned to the launderette, my clothes were not quite dry, so I restarted the machine, went back to the room, and reclined on the balcony. There was nothing to see but sea, but I found a corner that was out of the sun, and in the shade. It was rather nice. I think it is in the mid-80’s, with a nice breeze. I stayed there a short while, checked my clothes, went back to the balcony for a short while, and then got my clothes.
I finished the laundry, and Amy returned from what she had been doing. She went down to watch a description (“sales pitch”) for other ocean cruises. I thought that this would be a good time to check out the pools. On other days, I’m too busy running around to excursions to visit the pools. I changed into my swim suit, and went up to the main pool. It was medium sized pool, with a shallow and deep end. I swam around a little, but hanging out in a pool is not my thing, and without things like water slides, I very quickly got bored.
As someone had told us earlier, the deck in the sun was very hot. It hadn’t felt that bad when I had gone in, but it seemed a lot worse when I got out. Maybe having my feet wet enhanced the thermal conductivity between the deck and the soles of my feet. I had to quickly put on my sandals, and then I could start drying myself.
I then we back to check out the “infinity” plunge pool. That is a smaller pool at the stern. I found that it was not in “infinity mode” at that time. There was a thick Plexiglas back wall that apparently could be raised and lowered. At this time, it was raised about 8 inches above the water level. At other times, I’ve seen it lowered so that it was even with the water surface, so that the water slowly dribbled over the edge. In theory you saw no edge, and so it looked like it went to “infinity”. I was curious about what the “infinity” aspect would look like, but unless I try again, I won’t know. There is a railing about 3-4 feet away from the pool, so it wouldn’t look like the pool extended into the ocean.
I only stayed there a short while as well, and then I went back to the room, showered, and changed back into my clothes. Normally, I wouldn’t do that until closer to dinner, but I don’t plan to do anything this afternoon that will make me sweaty.
I’ve found that as I’ve gotten older, I’ve turned into a sun-phobe. Back in college, I would have thought nothing of lying in the sun and baking, but now the thought of doing that seems hideous. I would have to cover myself with sunscreen, and I can’t really see the point of trying to protect yourself from the sun so that you can lie in the sun. At least on this trip, I think it is also because it is rather hot in the sun. I think it was perhaps cooler, I would be a bit more inclined to sit in the sun and warm up.
I went down to find Amy at the theater, but when I got to the elevator, I saw that the program had just ended, because people were streaming out. It was 11:30, so we went up for an early lunch. There were some tables set up outside, along the side of the cafe. These were under an overhang and thus in the shade. It was nice outside, with a decent temperature and a light, refreshing breeze (we were cruising at about 15 mph), so I grabbed one of the few unoccupied tables, waited for Amy to come back with some food, and then I went in and got some food. The theme for today was Greek, presumably since we had just left Greece.
Amy went down to see a movie. I wasn’t interested in that, so I grabbed the iPad, and found a table that had one seat in the shade (the other three are in the sun). I’ve just been sitting here, drinking water, and writing up the day’s events so far.
We are cruising SW along the base of the Italian “boot”. It is a bit hazy in the distance. We can see a hazy outline of mountains toward our starboard side, but it is more like a dark smudge.
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I have about an hour and a half to kill. Then there is a talk about Vesuvius at 3. Then from 4-5 there is afternoon Tea. At 4:30, there is the Port Talk, and then at 6:30 there is another talk by Russell Lee which we definitely want to catch.
One sort of scary thing that Amy told me: she heard about 2 (maybe 3?) cabins down on the 4th deck that have no A/C! They have some fans there, but it must be frightfully hot there. She said that the people in those cabins couldn’t sleep at all. I don’t think I would be sleeping without the A/C. I wonder if the ship is completely booked. If it wasn’t, I would have thought that they would move them to some other cabin. It seems a bit strange that the A/C would be broken on the maiden cruise for a brand-new ship.
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Finding lounge chairs in the shade that are unoccupied is almost impossible, so I went back to the cabin, found that our balcony was mostly in the shade, reclined one of the chairs most of the way, grabbed a pillow, and sort of half dozed for an hour.
That brought me to 3:00, when I went down to hear the talk about Vesuvius. The guy who does that seems very much like a professor. He is knowledgeable and informative, but rather on the dry side. Out of the three speakers, he is my least favorite.
After the talk, Amy and I did a lap around the track on the promenade deck. Then it was 4:00 and time for afternoon tea. The scheduling was a bit awkward, because tea was 4-5, but the port talk was at 4:30. They were extremely busy with the tea, so one would have had to really rush to get the tea down and make it to the port talk. We decided we could catch the port talk on the video replay, so we stayed at the afternoon tea.
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At this point we were sailing west, just south of the toe of the “boot”. I ran down and got my camera, but I’m not sure how good the pictures came out. After tea, I tried going out, but the wind made it very hard to keep the camera steady. We wandered around, lounging a bit, and taking pictures periodically.
At one point, I went forward to the explorer’s lounge, and I went out to the front to try once again to get some pictures. They have a double door, sort of like an airlock, to get outside. Unfortunately for me, whoever went out before me hadn’t closed the outside door. That meant that as soon as I opened the inner door, I had a wind tunnel howling past me. I tried to keep the outer door from slamming open, while at the same time keep the inner door from slamming shut. I was cursing to myself about the idiot who hadn’t closed the outer door.
The wind outside made pictures almost impossible. I tried a few anyways, and then came in. When I did so, I closed the outer door, then I opened the inner door. It worked *much* easier and safer than when I went out.
I went up to the top level of the explorer’s lounge. I have a seat facing forward, where I can watch our progress as we sail north towards the Strait of Messina. At least from the distance that we are at now, it does look quite narrow. The Italian side is nicely lit from a low west sun. The Sicily side is just shades of gray, being back-lit or in the shadows of the mountains.
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I decided to get changed before the talk, so I went down to the room and did so. Then I came back up to the Explorers’ Lounge to see the straits. As advertised, we were passing it just about 6:30. I was amazed at how narrow it is. I’m guessing it is maybe two miles wide. It is narrow enough that there are electrical towers on both sides, and power lines strung between them. I got a bunch of pictures, but it was somewhat challenging in the wind. I stayed there until 6:28. We weren’t quite at the narrowest spot, but we were close. Then I hurried down for Mr. Lee’s description of The Odyssey.
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We found out that his next talk partially overlapped our next Chef’s Table reservation. We’ll have to try tomorrow to change the reservation.
Amy had had some of the BBQ (in the pool area) before the talk, so I went up to The Restaurant by myself. They were going to sit me at a table that happened to be a few tables away from Paul and Mary, but the table next to them was open, so I got moved to sit next to them.
I called Amy, but for some reason, I couldn’t get through. I tried again a while later, got through to her, and a few minutes later Amy joined us (she just had some dessert).
We chatted again through dinner and until 8:52. Amy wanted to see a broadcast of Rigolleto, which started at 9, so we said our goodbyes, I ran my camera up to the room, and I joined her in the theater about 8:59.
We watched for about 45 minutes, then Amy suddenly realized that she had left her book in the restaurant, and that the book had the ever important key card. Without it, she couldn’t get into the room or off or onto the ship. She left to get it. The restaurant sent her to Guest Relations, and she got it back there.
It wouldn’t have been bad to watch the whole thing, but that ran until 11:30, and we didn’t want to stay up that long. After Amy came back with her book and card, we left. At that point, Amy remembered that we were supposed to be passing by Stromboli (a semi-active volcano) about now, so we went out to look for it.
Not surprisingly, it was very dark out. There were a few lights off of our starboard side, and I found that if I cupped my eyes to block out the ships lights a bit, I could just make out a cone. Some people nearby told us that it was, in fact, Stromboli. There were no lights from the summit, but around sunset, you could see some plumes of smoke from it.
Amy and took some pictures of it with our iPhones. I had not much hope for them, as I could barely make it out as a shadow. To my surprise, the photos came out not half bad.
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Now it is time to hit the sack. Tomorrow is a long day visiting among other things Pompeii. We will have lunch in town, so we won’t be back until the late afternoon.
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Having the house wine with dinner is free. They have a "Silver Beverage" package that gets you free alcohol throughout your stay, and a better selection at dinner. I wouldn't pay for it, but we got it free as an incentive to book. The waiters must have the Silver Beverage status avaiable or something, because instead of asking me “red or white?” they just hand me the wine list and ask for my choice.