Sea Day 1 - Cruising by Cuba

It took a while to fall asleep, which is different from at home – somehow on the ship I just enjoy drowsing in the bed. We woke up a little after 7 and went up to the Lido for breakfast, which is Dave’s preferred way to do breakfast. We sat in the same area where we sat for snacks last night, which is undercover and protected by the wind but very much outside, which we like. There was a beautiful rainbow. After breakfast there was yoga (exactly as expected) for both of us, and then Dave went and sat on the Lido while I did the 45 minute BodySculpt bootcamp workout. In 2011 I first did this workout on the way to Hawaii, and it pretty much changed my life, since I became a fitness instructor when I couldn’t find a workout I liked as much. This is not the same program at all, but it is still a hard workout and there was a good group of women doing it. One of the women had to ask me if I was the Energizer Bunny, which is of course one of my nicknames.

After class I got changed and met Dave in the big Auditorium (decks 4 and 5 forward, called The World Stage) for the cruise director Ryan’s talk on the history of the Panama Canal. He’s a history buff and really got into it, so it was a very interesting and engaging talk.

Lunch in the dining room (deck 4 aft) at a table for two was a nice interlude. The lunch menu (she says after two meals) seems to mostly be the same, with a few variations each day. My suspicion is that they’d really like to close the dining room for lunch and have everyone head up to the Lido, which is much less staff-intensive, but they fear a rebellion from long-time cruisers if they do. As seems to be a theme, the flavors were very good but the food doesn’t get to the table in time so it’s a little soggy.

We had the Mariner reception at 1, but the invitation said drop by any time between 1 and 2 so we got there about 1:10, just in time to hear the end of the introductions. We got a our welcome aboard champagne and had a nice chat with Helen from Toronto, whose travelling companion didn’t come because she’s not yet a mariner.

Afterwards I stopped at Guest Services to see if it was safe to swap my internet to the laptop, that is, would it swap back to my phone when I wanted it to. They said yes, so I am able to blog. Standing in line about half the people were there with internet connections issues. The people behind me in line were originally from India, 4 brothers and their wives taking a cruise together. They were interesting to talk to and made the wait go quickly.

It's the beginning of the cruise, so I’m overscheduling myself – Dave has been doing a much better job of just relaxing. There was a class called “Permission to Dance” which sounded interesting. I was a little nervous because I can’t remember more than three steps at once and get really frustrated, but I shouldn’t have worried. Estefanie, our teacher, was just great. She started with a very simple line dance (Cuban Shuffle), and after we went through it once she said “That was good, but this isn’t called permission to move, it’s called permission to DANCE. And she got us all shaking our hips and waving our arms and we looked good. Next up were Mambo #5 and Danza Kuduro, both songs I like very much, and a 4th song I didn’t know, a merengue. Everybody was dancing and having a great time, I was really impressed. A funny thing that happened before Estefanie got there, I was sitting chatting with Chi from bootcamp and there was a woman sitting behind her who I was sure was Helen from the Mariner reception, so I asked her if she was Helen and it turned out she was Helen’s friend and roommate, who was supposed to meet Helen there. Why did I think she was Helen?

Even I was ready for a break at that point, so Dave and I headed up to our corner of the Lido for refreshing alternative (code for non-alcoholic) beverages. The skies had completely cleared up, so it’s wall to wall blue sky and blue water, with just enough breeze to make it about perfect for sitting outside. Then there was more relaxing, and even some knitting. I had managed to score a salon appointment for a haircut at 5:45 (a big advantage of late seating) and had really wanted to cut it all off, but after chatting with the stylist we decided that the partially grown out perm made a short cut not a possibility. So she cut off all the raggedy ends and blow dried it, and it looked GOOD. When I met Dave in the big theatre (The World Stage, technically) his first comment was “Wow!”. The entertainment was a guitarist in a multi-media spectacular, which made us feel old – we both would have been happier if he’d just played.

It was “dressy” night, which used to be a big deal but isn’t anymore. We got dressed up, of course, and looked pretty spectacular if we do say so ourselves. Sadly, dinner at our table was not excellent. Joel had met a guy at breakfast and invited him to our table, but he didn’t add much to the vibe, although he had a very interesting bowtie that I thought might mean he’d be a good tablemate. Sid and Loraine complained about everything, and conversation never got going. We’ve decided to try to switch to the early seating.

After dinner we hung out in the Ocean bar and it was wonderful to see that the dance floor was crowded the whole time – it is definitely the party place to be. I know you won’t believe this but I was actually too tired to dance! We stayed through one set and then headed back to our cabin, where we had our first good night chocolates and towel animal We were concerned that towel animals had been cut from the cruise. I fell asleep very quickly and slept well. A funny note is that I woke up in the middle of the night because the ship had started to rock and roll. I’m pretty sure it was when we came out of the passage between Cuba and Haiti. I fell right back to sleep, but both my fitbit and Dave’s recorded us getting almost no sleep. Mine showed me waking up at 2:16 and not getting back to sleep. I’m pretty sure the fitbits can’t tell the difference between tossing and turning and the ship’s motion. Stay tuned for more exploration of that question.