Barbara J. Hamby

sign-up for our email list

Monday - Second Day at Sea

Unlike Sunday, Monday morning we awoke in time for breakfast and enjoyed a few of the great variety of foods available. Ripe melons, along with a huge assortment of breads and pastries, cereal, eggs, bacon, sausage and other usual breakfast foods, were available.

After breakfast, we went to the library and Internet Cafe’, which are combined. Floyd worked on a jigsaw puzzle with another fellow and I sent an email to all of my relatives. Today, Tuesday, I’ll try to send one to Floyd’s family if the system will bring up their email addresses. The computer setups on this ship are much more efficient and user friendly than those on other recent cruises I’ve taken. Once you learn the drill, it’s easy to navigate. There is also wi-fi available, but I’m not proficient enough to use it. The instruction language is Greek to me.

Another thing I’ve observed on this ship is a huge improvement in sanitation. Food handling practices noted in the past, are passe’. When the young man serving ice cream set down a clipboard he’d been writing on, he put on a clean plastic glove to get my cone. On some previous cruises, I had never seen gloves changed, even when food was placed on plates by hand. The glass sneeze guards are so large one needs long arms to reach the back bowls of fruit and other food. Fortunately, I’m so equipped.

In the afternoon, we walked around the decks, where my cap blew into the sea. I have a spare, however, and the one I lost, although a favorite, wasn’t the one I got on the Norway, a sort of a collector’s item, since that ship is no longer in use. We had been admonished not to drop items overboard, but I couldn’t catch the hat.

I had a short swim and tried to do some exercises in the afternoon, but gave up because the motion of the ship slapped my face as waves splashed in the pool. But I enjoyed the hot tub.

The captain’s champagne reception, formal, of course, didn’t tempt us and we found we could not navigate through the crowds on that deck to use the library or other facilities available, so we hung out on the deck in the late afternoon.

After a rest in the cabin and dinner, we decided to attend the late show and went back to our room to watch Rear Window on the television (sans commercials). A good movie will be so forever, and it is.

Shortly before ten, we went to the ship’s theater to hear the entertainer of the evening, a multi-talented man. He played the ukulele, sang, yodeled, and told fair jokes—told them well. The backup band wasn’t bad, either.

We passed up the parties on several parts of the ship, and went to bed.