At Sea

April 9^th, 2024

Well, after all of the excitement of yesterday, it was nice to have a typical relaxing sea day.

I have clients who dislike sea days intensely, and I have to book cruises for them so that there is the minimum amount of time spent away from the hustle and bustle of ports.. For me the minimum is alternating sea days and port days, but if you give me 7 sea days in a row I am a very happy camper.

I suppose it does depend which ship you are on. There are certainly more than enough things to keep everyone stimulated on Emerald Princess. My only complaint is that there is often more than one thing I would like to go to going on at the same time. It reminds me of the days when I would go to professional meetings and I could never decide which talk to go to when there were several that looked interesting happening simultaneously. I would end up going from one talk to another, never satisfied with any of them because I just didn’t stay long enough to become engaged.

Sea days can be like that if you are not very careful. I have to be very strict with myself that I have to stick with what I chose, and resist the urge to move on. Sometimes that means I don’t get to go to anything at all.

Today was a bit like that I must confess. But I did get to the vegetable carving demonstration (although they were also carving fruit) and signed up for the steel drum class. Many ships offer ukulele opportunities, so I am excited that this will be something completely different.

There was a production show tonight, and I was looking forward to seeing it. We thought we had arrived in good time to get good seats, but the Princess Theater was already packed by the time we got there, so failing to find space for us, we retreated to the Crooners Bar and hoped that they may repeat the show during the cruise.

Initially we couldn’t see any available seats, but then we did find a table, and settled down to have a nice quiet drink. However, the other patrons in the bar were an excessively noisy bunch, and the piano player was very loud and not particularly tuneful (oh boy, I am really missing Carlo from Queen Victoria), so it turned out to actually be an unpleasant experience. We left Crooners and moved to the Wheelhouse bar, but it was also so loud there that you couldn’t hear yourself think. That wasn’t working either.

We found some seats in the corridor and it was a bit more peaceful there, then Brian remembered that there was star gazing tonight, so we hurried up to deck 19 at the back of the ship, away from the overstimulation of deck 7.

It was a warm, muggy night. For once I didn’t need a cardigan.

There were quite a few of us escaping the rowdy crowds many decks below us.

One of the enrichment speakers, Fred Cink, was pointing his excessively powerful laser towards the heavens and waxing lyrical about the constellations to the north of us. Who knew that what looked like 1 bright star to me, was actually 7 stars?

There was a bit of a breeze, and I could hear the sound of  the water in our wake far below us. There were stars in the sky, well there probably were, it was hard to see much with the steam belching forth from our funnels, this was so much better than being indoors.

When you are on a ship with 3000 other passengers, there is a lot to be said about getting away from the crowds for a little while, and embracing the sensation of what it is like to be out in the Pacific Ocean in the middle of the night. I do like that feeling. I do love being at sea.