World cruise 3

January 5

There were another 5 ships docked at the port when we got up ths morning. We headed over to the passener terminal about 11:30 or so arriving at the same time as several hundred other passengers. That just meant an exercise in "hurry up and wait," but it didn't take more than about an hour until we were in our cabin. We were originally supposed to sail at 5:00 p.m., but didn't actually sail until about 10:00 p.m.

We had some lunch then wandered around a bit. I enjoyed seeing the ship agan, but I probably thoroughly confused Margaret since it is all new to her. Back at the cabin, we spent most of the afternoon until dinnertime unpacking our suitcases. Everything including the ones we shipped back on December 19th arrived in good order, although some things were pretty wrinkled after being packed for 3 weeks.

I'm sorry I don't have any good photos of the cabin, but there isn't really a good view point to do it justice. The cabin is pretty good size with more closet space than I expected and a reasonable amount of drawer space. However, I am glad that we brought along a shoe bag thing to hang over the bathroon door for more storage in there. I picked up that tip from someone on the Facebook group for this voyage. It really helps keep things controlled...especially with all the stuff two women want to have available. One of the best parts of having a handicapped accessible cabin is that you don't have to step up to get into the bahroom...no cracking your toe in the middle of the night because you forgot to step up.

We have the cabin's beds set up as twins with both nightstands in between. That makes things a little tight in the entry area, but generally gives us more moving around space and less claustophobia. The portion of the cabin toward the windows has a desk with tv set and dvd player, a lot of drawers, and a bar area. There is a partial wall and curtain between that area and the sleeping area. Also there is a love-seat-sized couch in black leather, an end table that houses a mini-fridge, another chair and a coffee table that goes taller if you want a dining table. Our balcony is huge and has one chair, one small side table and one lounge hair.  However, the balcony extends past the width of our cabin almost to the back of the ship. With all this, we managed to get everything stowed away including the suitcases most of which are under the beds serving as additional storage.

January 6

Lazy day at sea. Anyone who has followed my blog on other trips knows that means sleep late, putter around or read in various locations for most of the day, talk to people, have dinner and read some more or go to one of the entertainment venues. Today the choices were read, nap, and dinner followed by a bit of classical music by a piano/violin duet. M added in a good bit of wandering around the ship and one of the guest lecturers' presentations.

The red roses we were given at dinner last night have opened nicely. This evening when we got back to the cabin, we found a lobster made from a towel on M's bed and a very nice travel journal for each of us. Tomorrow I plan to figure out how to get my internet access set up. At least I get a strong wifi signal in the cabin.

January 7

I did get hooked to the internet this afternoon, but there just isn't a whole lot exciting going on as we are still headed toward our first port in Colombia. We did have a pretty good view of Cuba as we passed through the Bahamas Channel. I hope that someday I will be able to sail on a ship that stops there.

Project Linus (a nationwide organization that makes and donates blankets to sick children from babies up through teenagers) is alive and well on board. In addition to a number of folks working on their own projects, there are several huge boxes of yarn to be made into hats and blankets. So I started a corner to corner double diamond blanket and now several other ladies want me to teach them the pattern.

I spent a good deal of time in consultation with one of the Shore Excursion staff going over all the various tours I've chosen. She's trying to talk me out of a bunch of them as being too strenuous. Also, at a number of the islands in the South Pacific the vehicles they use for the tours cannot accommodate my walker. Most of those are also tender ports where we will have to go ashore on the ship's small boats. I can do tenders if the seas are calm, but am not fond of the "tender high jump" when trying to get back onto the ship if the waves have picked up. Will have to think about all of this.

The Captain's Welcome Champagne Reception was this evening. Of course that meant formal dress. As we were waiting to go in, we met up with Mike who is one of our tablemates. He's a retired school superintendant from South Carolina on his first long cruise...nothing like starting off big! There's another couple at our table, but I don't have their names down yet. I think they are from Long Island. Tonight we were joined by one of the guest lecturers and his granddaughter who is a lovely young woman who recently moved from Hawaii to San Francisco. It was a congenial group.

I still haven't taken any photos of the cabin, mostly because it's almost always in some degree of disarray.