Today was a special day for many as it was Good Friday and the evening for the Seder Dinner in the Lido. That means that Easter is around the bend. And we will not be here. So we will wish everyone a most Happy Easter ahead of time.
Today there was a special presentation and a Question/Answer session with Orlando Ashford and Gerald Bernhoft in the Queen’s Lounge at 2:30pm. We had spent some time at the Seaview Pool, and were having our Dive-In Grill lunch at that exact same time. Knowing that the entire talk would be televised later, we felt it not necessary to squeeze into the lounge. We heard later that the folks filled deck five after 1pm just to get seats.
So we did get second-hand reports about the news of the day as delivered by Gerald, Captain Mercer, Orlando, and Henk Mensink. The most interesting details were given about the 2020 world cruise. We understand it will be the itinerary that goes down to Antarctica again and also include South Africa. This has not happened on the Amsterdam since 2012. That’s nice, and we think everyone was happy about it. It will be a long one with 120 plus days.
We spent the afternoon packing for our overland trip to Kruger National Park. We are leaving tomorrow in Maputo, and returning on April 4th, the second day that the ship will be docked in Cape Town. This will not be our first time going to this camp, so we are excited to go back. But there is not any internet there, so we will do our best to keep up with the reports and pictures, then post when we get back. Hopefully, we will be able to share some good adventures with everyone.
Around 4:15pm, we went to the front desk to mail some cards. We heard applause coming from the lounge, and realized the talks were still going on. Gosh, that was almost two hours for the presentation. Guess the questions kept coming to the panel. Since we always take the big seats in the atrium, we happened to catch some of our buddies who attended the big show. For an hour, we got the low down on some of the questions that were asked. Some were pretty funny.
Tomorrow, we should be able to gather our passports once the Mozambique officials have cleared the ship. This has been one moment that we have had some worry about. Now we are very glad that we had gone the mile and gotten our visas ahead of time. Now we keep our fingers crossed that all will work as planned.
Dinner originally had empire chicken on the menu, but it was changed to whole roasted chicken. Darn. You would think chicken is chicken, but the empire one is far superior, we think. It was still good because we added lots of cranberry sauce. Two of our tablemates were missing tonight. Ken had attended the Seder Dinner, and Brenda was not feeling well. Seems she has been under the weather ever since her Indian excursion.
We will be back soon…….so stay tuned.
Bill & Mary Ann
Happy Easter to all!!
