SUMMARY Our third At Sea day. More of the same activities - exercise, laundry, adult beverages, food, food, food. And, oh yeah, we almost froze to death getting out of the hot tub! - Karen
DETAIL Today’s the third of our four ‘at sea’ days. Often when traveling, we’re ‘go-go-go’ trying to see everything, and do everything (and eat everything). We tell ourselves “we should build in more ‘down days’”. These ‘at sea’ days turn out to be just that, so ‘Yay!’. Our big event for the day is doing our laundry.
Upon waking, it’s cool, 58°. How warm is it supposed to get? All the way up to 60°. Brrr. At least it’s sunny (for now).
We clean up and have breakfast. We join others in the “Living Room” (Front, top sitting area) for watching the ocean (Norwegian Sea?) go by. Many other had the same idea.
Later, back at our cabin, we gather our dirty clothes and join the gang at the laundry room. We time it during lunch so we are able to find one empty washing machine. These poor washers and dryers are used 12 hours a day, every day. We pity the poor repairmen who have to keep them limping along.
As I wait to collect our almost dry clothes, an older lady, about five foot nothing, comes in to get her clothes. It’s all she can do to reach partway into the upper level dryer to retrieve her clothes. In the process, an ‘unmentionable’ falls on the floor and I feel obliged to mention it. She comments on not being able to tell if she has gotten all of the clothes out of the dryer. I offer to help, look in, and see a dozen or so socks and underwear. I ask if she’d like for me to retrieve them. She’s happy to have the help. I retrieve socks and some embarrassing unmentionables, adding them to the pile of warm clothes she’s clutching to her bosom. More excitement than I thought I’d have today.
With the laundry, blog entry, and two meals done, we head to the pool deck for some hot tubbing. It has indeed warmed all the way to 60°, but the fierce north wind makes it feel much colder. The sun balances it, somewhat. In the hot tub we are nice and warm, but on the inevitable exit, we’re quite cold as we towel off.
Around us are others out enjoying the day. A few are in down coats, and others are wearing less, but are double wrapped in a dry towel and then in one of the plaid blankets they have for us. Once fully wrapped they lying down in a fetal position, conserving warmth. We wonder why they’re out at all. Vitamin D?
At dinner they seat us next to an older couple from Tallahassee, Florida (on this ship everyone’s an older couple, including us). We wonder, have we seen these two around the ship previously? It’s easy to know. He has lots of snow white hair and a full matching beard which goes down almost to his belly button (ZZ Top-style). Some men tuck their tie into their shirt to avoid food stains. This guy tucks his beard into his shirt for the same reason.
After hellos and semi-tense small talk (venturing too close to politics), we get onto cruising and get along swimmingly. It turns out they’ve been on a zillion cruises. He has them catalogged in a big spreadsheet that’s accessible on his phone. If you ask about dates and ports of call for any trip, he reaches for his phone and immediately has the answers.
This Norway trip is discussed and we compare notes about cruising around the Baltic. We get some good advice for our possible trip back to Japan next spring. We also talk about our upcoming trip back to the states, on Cunard’s Queen Mary 2. They’re not such big Cunard fans, he says, since each evening they expect for you to be quite dressed up. Whoops! What have we gotten ourselves into? We’ll need to do some more Googling.
Post dinner Karen retires to the room to attend to her reading. I head down to the Cabaret Lounge for the ship’s singers-and-dancers’ final show: Crooner’s Corner, or some such title. They do all the classics: ‘Fly me to the moon’, ‘They can’t take that away from me’, and ‘All of me’. They preform half a dozen more before finishing with ‘Somewhere beyond the sea’. It a good place for their show, and my evening, to end.
Photos
When we wake it looks nice enough out, but 58 degrees is pretty cool.
At breakfast my phone tries to helpfully let me know that some of our digital posessions are no longer close by. Just head back to the Arctic Ocean and you can find them. Hm.
In the "Living Room" we watch the motoring progress, and 'sail' from sunshine into rain and back into sunshine.
Karen working to get some kinks out.
The laundry room. Seemingly one of the most popular rooms on the ship. These poor machines really get put through their paces on a regular basis.
Back at our room we see sunshine, so time to high tail it to the hot tub.
Afterwards though, the cool breezes necessitate turning one's self into a human eggroll to stay warm.
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