Boy, these report numbers are racking up fast now. We have less than a week left and must seriously start packing. Not just thinking about it.
It sure was nice having that extra hour back on the clock last night. Even though, that can be deceiving. Most of the guests are simply waking up earlier, as we do because you cannot adjust that quickly. It is one of the downsides of traveling so rapidly across "The Pond". Those who live on the east coast will be able to handle the frequent time changes better than the west coast folks. We gain three more hours just by flying back to California.
There was an invitation in our mailbox for a private kitchen tour at 9:50am this morning. A general invite for everyone was at 9:30am, followed by complimentary sparkling wine. Once again, we had another meeting with Chantall, and missed both time slots. Oh well, we have had excellent tours on other ships just as recent as last fall. The Zaandam crew gave us a thorough tour of their main galley, and we did not feel a need to visit again.
Lectures continued and Kimberly delivered her talk all about San Juan, Puerto Rico, our final port on the world voyage. The problem we had getting those our port talks to work on our TV has to be one of the biggest disappointments of the cruise. The tech department never figured out the reasons why it worked sometimes, and other times…..nothing.
We all received another letter from Henk regarding the Shops onboard. We do not ever remember them closing some of them down for several days like this. Effy's jewelry has remained opened, but the watch section as well as the clothing side have been locked down since April 30th. The Captain's Collection will close tomorrow and re-open on the 5th. And the main shop will open their doors on May 7th, giving the folks two full days to shop.
So later in the day, we made a visit to Effy's since we had some shipboard credit we had to use or lose. We got the lowdown on what's happening with the Shops not only here, but on all of the HAL ships. The current duty-free shops had ended their contract with HAL, and had to pack up and leave while the ship was in Portugal. Effy's stayed as they were a separate entity. The new duty-free people came onboard the same day with their merchandise. It will take a few days for them to stock the shelves and displays. The watch section has already made the transition, but we sure didn't see much of a change there. They still sell a variety of the top brands. We never priced any of the previous watches, so we do not know if the cost is comparable.
Doing some homework online, we read some interesting remarks concerning the new duty-free shops. Not all of the comments were positive, but we shall judge for ourselves. We did have our eye on some of Effy's special limited collection, and they made a nice sale today with us. One of us got to ring the bell, while we were served cranberry mimosas. It was a good thing that we were there during the early dinner seating, because there were no customers in the shop but us. We did not need any fanfare as to what we do or what we buy.
The voice from the bridge, Captain Frank, said we had smoother seas and calmer waters – making him happy. We still have a total of 1971 nautical miles to reach the pilot station in Puerto Rico. The skies were pretty sunny most of the morning, then turned cloudy later on. We are sailing in waters 10,000 feet in depth and with a sea state of 5 feet. The temperature at noon was 68 degrees and the sea temps were 70 degrees. The winds were gone and now we had light breezes. And the clocks will go back one more hour tonight.
There has been some heavy-duty cleaning happening around the ship. Now that we are getting closer to San Juan, we think there are going to be health and safety checks in every nook and cranny of this ship. The aroma of disinfectant was heavy in the air in most public places. It has also come up online about norovirus traveling around the guests and crew as well. We sure hope that if it is true, they are able to contain it. No one wants to go home sick.
Dinner for us was in the Pinnacle Grill. We went at 8pm since Tina told us that tonight was going to be very busy. We did get a nice booth and the service and food were perfect as always. This time we ordered our salads to be served on a larger plate with the clothes line bacon on the same plate. It worked much better. Then we both ordered the lamb chops and one side of French fries to share. The meal was fine and filling, so we passed on the dessert.
A violinist by the name of Claire Gobin was the entertainer this evening. She delivered a sophisticated rock symphony.
One more hour back on the clock tonight just like the Captain promised. And so ended day # 3 at sea.
Bill & Mary Ann
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