Subject: Report #114 Sailing Towards Ft. Lauderdale, Florida April 23, 2016 Saturday Partly cloudy & 68 degrees
Well, here we are, sailing Transatlantic towards the point of the trip where we began…….Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. The Amsterdam has sailed a total of 34,527 statute miles to our final port of Funchal, Madeira yesterday. We have a few thousand more miles to go, and seven days at sea to get to the shores of Florida once again.
Although Captain Mercer had said we may have some rough seas and some rain today, it was not all that bad. There was some overcast, but several times during the day, we hit clearings where the sun came out, and it even turned warm. During his PM talk, the Captain said that he had dropped south in order to avoid the rough seas from a storm system further north of us. Must have worked, because we never did get rain. There was wind that carried sea spray across the starboard side of the ship, but not enough to keep us from walking.
It was not going to be a boring day. None of them are that actually. As well as all of the usual activities, the guest speaker, Mike Raick, gave an amusing talk about great TV moments we all remember. Definitely took us back in time when we were little.
There was a cooking demo on how to prepare Mami's soup in the Culinary Arts Center. At the same time, the first champagne art auction was held in the Explorers Lounge with a flute of complimentary bubbly with a raffle entry. If you brought the flyer with you that was delivered to the staterooms yesterday, you would get 20 extra raffle tickets. Also at the same time, they held a spotlight on shopping presentation in the Queens Lounge to learn about the upcoming specials on jewelry, watches, and so much more. They gave away $1000 of prizes throughout the talk. We expected the sales to come on hot and heavy towards the end of this cruise, so we are not surprised. And for the folks that like these offers, then it's a good thing. This is one activity we can say….been there, done that.
At 3pm, there was a special matinee show of the Indonesian Crew Show. Held in the Queens Lounge, we heard many of the old-timers had gotten their self-reserved seats by 1pm. The lounge did fill up to over-capacity for the traditional music, songs and dances from Indonesia. Our group of fellows and gals did an outstanding job, and drew giant applauses from the passengers. Our biggest gripe was that being in the back of deck five, it was hard enough to see, but when a bunch of clueless people held up their ipads or whatever to film the show, we could not see a thing. Clueless some people are. We were not alone with this problem, because folks even down on deck four said the very same thing. Perhaps filming like that should be banned. It is on other cruise lines…….
Another subject that drew attention with the passengers is hearing that someone won $21,000 in the casino yesterday on a $5 slot machine. The bad news, or the good news, is that the money would go towards losses that have occurred on this ship. Expensive hobby gambling is. Glad we have never had the interest in it.
Even though we will be sailing on after the world cruise, we still had to take care of our luggage shipment details. We had been given a letter saying that we had to meet with the luggage rep, Sarah C, who comes on the world cruise every year. Our luggage has to stay with us until we debark in San Diego, so our tags had to be printed differently than everyone else. Hate to even think about packing yet, and even though we can put it off until next week, we may get a start on it now.
By the way, after reading some of the posts on Cruise Critic, we found out that another port on the upcoming Panama Cruise has been cancelled…Santa Barbara. Now that makes two tender ports cancelled, so something is wrong. Discovered there is a problem with our tender landing platforms. This should not affect our stop in Half Moon Cay, as we will be able to use the local tender boat to tender us ashore. An interesting twist to the story is that San Francisco has been added for a substitute port on their way to Seattle. We cannot stay onboard to go home in that port, because it is not a designated segment end. And besides, we already have our flight plans for San Diego, so we will stick to the plan.
At 7pm, we had an invitation to our final cocktail party with our travel group and three hosts. As always, we had a great time visiting with friends, old and new, and our great hosts. There were special canapes with breaded shrimps, crispy egg rolls, prawns, and goat cheese treats passed around, and any drink we wanted. Not just house pours or their choice of wines. They treat us all well.
All but two were present at dinner. The menus have been creative once again, leaving only a few good choices for entrees. One of us had the Indonesian rustafel, while the conservative one of us ordered the pasta with diced chicken. Both were very good.
There was a choice of a movie in the Wajang, the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens, or the showtime in the Queens Lounge featuring a pianist, Judy Carmichael. We will more than likely watch the movie tomorrow on TV.
And once again, the clocks went back one more hour this evening. Always welcomed.
Bill & Mary Ann
