Day 2 - we're all at sea here

We gained an hour last night, so we were both wide awake at 5:30. Here’s a kind of mind-blowing thing to think about: we all know that at the top and bottom of the world the lengths of the days and nights and the path of the sun through the sky vary greatly with the seasons, hence Alaska’s high midnight sun in the summer and low noon sun in the winter. The converse is that near the equator the sun rises pretty much at 6 am and sets at 6 pm, and has a very vertical path as it does those things, hence the fast nightfall in the tropics. We’re also not that far from the equinox, which has the same equal day/night lengths. So sunrise and sunset will be close to 6 for much of our trip. All this to say that Dave got up and went to the stern of the ship to see the sunrise.

I went off the the gym at about 7, thinking it would be mostly empty during stretch class, which is now held up in the crow’s nest because it outgrew the tiny floor space in the gym. My assumption was completely wrong, but I managed to get in a bootcamp workout before it was time to go up to the crow’s nest for Tai Chi. I enjoyed Tai Chi very much; we did things I knew but I really like Jorge, the instructor. He is from Columbia and his pronunciation of “pickleball” (peekaboo? we all thought to ourselves) is the best thing.

It’s early in the cruise so I’m still in rushing mode. I headed to the Lido to grab yogurt with nuts and seeds for breakfast and ran into Jorge getting the exact same thing. A quick breakfast and then back to the gym for cardio, then back to the cabin to change my sweaty body into a sundress to join Dave for a talk on Hawaiian geology & geography by Kainoa, one of our Hawaii ambassadors, which was good if not novel (I hit 10,000 steps on the way there). There was a talk right after that about basically the same thing by William Beerman, a former professor of anthropology and linguistics (!!!) from Brown University, but I had to rush off to Hula dance lessons on the Lido with more of the Hawaiian ambassadors. Hula lessons were excellent. We learned two steps: Kahalo and Hele, and I had a nice time chatting with Barbara of the purple hair, who is a very experienced cruiser. Note to self: wear a hat.

After Hula lessons I zoomed up to the Crows Nest for the talk on charts and navigation, which turned out to mostly be a Q&A with the Navigation 1^st & 2^nd officers and their 3 cadets. We are taking a great circle route to Hawaii which saves us 7 miles.

Then it was lunchtime. We sat with Gregory & Linda from Nebraska and had a pleasant time. I ordered 3 small plates which was a perfect lunch, but I don’t know if there’s a way to make them not all come at once. We went back to our cabin and discovered that our Kauai shore excursion had been cancelled due to hurricane damage. No time to think about that now, because I had to leave for beginning ukulele lessons.

Beginning ukulele lessons did not begin well, because the instructor started by saying, tune your ukulele to this note. Which is not a beginner thing I don’t think. I almost left but I am trying to do new things, so I stayed and Marie helped me a lot and I signed out the ukulele so I can practice in private because that  is what first children do. We learned 2 chords – C and C7, and tomorrow we will learn two more so we can play our theme song, “Morning on the Zaandam”. Later on we will learn to play the Hukilau song that was on a CD that the boys & I listened to on repeat, and I have high hopes that by the end of the cruise I’ll be able to play it. Barbara of the purple hair was there but we didn’t get to sit together.

I brought my Uke back to the cabin where Dave used his tuning app to make it sound less awful, and we booked a new shore excursion for Kauai, and then Dave took a nap while I did some blogging. Then Dave went for his afternoon beer on the Lido with Hawaiian music and dancers, and I took a shower and got ready for dinner.

Dinner was good. Our table is starting to gel and my lamb chops were excellent. We were having such a good time talking and laughing that Adi our waiter needed to kick us out so they could get ready for the second seating. We took so long, in fact, that we only had time for a short stop in our cabin before it was time to head over to the Captain’s reception in the big theatre, the World Stage. The Captain is very young and word on the streets is that this is his first command. He was a little wooden but managed to get through all the introductions.

After the Captain’s toast we sequed right into the big show, which was the Neil Sedaka songbook. I had gotten Neil Sedaka transposed with Neil Diamond in my head and was a little disappointed when I realized what kind of music it was going to be, but the singer was very good and also there were recorded interviews with his dad giving pearls of wisdom, such as “I have a chair, you have a chair. I have a TV, you have a TV. I have a car, you have a car. Add a bowl of spaghetti and that’s all you need.” And “If you’re healthy when you die, you’ll be pissed. Eat the cheesecake”.

Our tablemates Dennis and Louise had recommended the piano bar (they’ve been on the ship since mid-September) and we thought we’d check it out. It turned out to be a rollicking good time with lots of singing and even some cat meowing and dog howling, We stayed through two sets and then it was late and time to get the blog out and go to bed.

Cruise note: tonight we had a huge haul on our bed when we got back from dinner! Our first towel animal (we never know what this one is supposed to be – leave your guesses in the facebook comments), old style (fabric, not plastic) HAL bags and two mugs which is excellent because I was just about to buy one in the gift store because the ones in the Lido are tiny. And of course chocolate.

We are feeling very happy & lucky to be on this ship having this adventure!

 

We're Cruisin'

We flew into San Diego the day before and the hotel shuttle was waiting for us, so we got to the hotel easily and after check in it was already time to head out to dinner. We’d had good food and a good time with Josh and Jen at Queenstown Public House, so we went back there again and while the food was still good (especially the lamb skewers!) the time was not as good without J&J, which will be a bit of a theme here I’m sure.

Back to the hotel for reading and bedtime, and the next thing you know it was after 6 am and Royal Caribbean’s Serenade of the Seas (bigger than our ship, but not one of the monster ships) was pulling in. About 15 minutes later the beautiful Zaandam came into view, and we watched the sky lighten as it pulled in. Yes, our ship had come in.

Last time we went to Queenstown there was an Egg Tuck breakfast place under construction and it looked yummy. We had breakfast there this morning and are here to report that it was yummy, delicious soft scrambled eggs with bacon and cheese and a super yummy sauce in a pita-shaped piece of buttered grilled Texas toast. We split one and it was plenty of food although I would happily have eaten a whole one.

Then we headed to Ralph’s grocery to get a large bottle of hand lotion for Dave and some other sundries; note to self the CVS probably would have been a better choice for more variety. We walked back along the bay and it was already getting hot. We were hoping to find more bucket hats, but the vendors mostly weren’t open yet.

We got back to the room and grabbed a luggage cart so Dave could take all the checked bags (two medium roller bags and a very large, heavy garment bag without wheels) to the front desk where they have a stapler for attaching the HAL luggage tags. This is always an extra step and one of these times we are going to BRING A STAPLER. And not one of those mini ones, either, because they don’t do the work. With the amount of stuff we bring, it will barely be noticeable.

When Dave got back he changed into lighter weight clothes (he didn’t freeze on the airplane like I did) and it was pretty much time to walk across the street and get on the ship. Because we’re now 4 star Mariners (woohoo!!!) we get priority boarding and early cabin entry (and free laundry!), so we were through the check in process and in our room by 11:30. We had a small hiccup where they got our dining room assignment wrong, so we stood in two different lines for a while and got it taken care of. This is a pretty classic HAL move and everybody was pretty chill in line.

Lunch at the Lido was fine – not as memorable as Egg Tuck, that’s for sure, but few things are. We spent the rest of the afternoon reacquainting ourselves with the Beautiful Zaandam (we were on her for the Panama Canal and also the Vancouver-San Diego repositioning cruise) and getting our heads into cruise mode. Dave had a Portland Recorder Society board meeting, which he took from the comfort of our stateroom. Of course in the middle of the meeting our Captain had to do the testing of the emergency alarm, but that’s life on the ship.

It had been a nice leisurely day and then suddenly everything piled up. Dave’s two suitcases had arrived, but my one suitcase had not. At about 4 they had taken down the net that goes from the dock to the ship under where the suitcases are loaded in giant bins, and my suitcase still hadn’t arrived. I went out in the hall and another passenger was in the hall clearly looking for her suitcase, and then Nyoman (one of our cabin stewards, the other is Zal) came by and we asked him and he said they had probably had a problem and we should go to deck A forward. So we did and I found my suitcase had been tagged as containing a contraband power strip, which is not allowed if it has a surge protector, but it didn’t. So I grabbed it and a baggage person put it in the scanner, at which point everyone in line started yelling at me for cutting in line, which I had not realized I was doing, so I tried to get the baggage guy not to scan it but it was too late, so I apologized profusely to the people in line and they seemed to forgive me. Dave helped me do speed unpacking and we went to the bow deck which was open for the sailaway, but then we had to go to dinner to meet our tablemates who will be just fine, and then we had to rush to the 3+ star Mariner welcome, where we talked to a bunch of officers in a very weird receiving line, and then it was off to the show, which was a cello soloist playing everything from Bach to Bohemian Rhapsody. She had an excellent sparkly dress and the show was fun.

Then we were exhausted even though it wasn’t even 9:00 and we’re getting an extra hour tonight, but it has been a big day!

No towel animal. It’s a big day for the hotel staff too.

Bonus Photo: This is Captain Lewie. He will be have the riddle of the day every day, and at lunch our cruise director Dario will announce the answer. He was hanging out for photo ops while we were checking in.

Cruise note: while our cabin seems smaller than the one we had on the Nieuw Amsterdam it has a ton more storage space – we actually have a couple empty drawers! 

Cruise Note II: Google Chrome won't do photos in blogspot, but Firefox will. 

Coastal Cruise - Going Home

We both woke up early and watched us dock, then went to the Lido for last breakfast. I ran into Scott and Linda, so they joined us for breakfast. We were done with breakfast by 7:15, and done in our cabin by 7:30, so we decided to go up to (you guessed it) the Tamarind Bar while we waited for it to be our turn to disembark, since it had a better view than our veranda. As usual it was deserted except for the occasional staff member.

Once our group was called (gray 2) we made our way off the ship, grabbed our bags, and got on the bus. The ride back was uneventful, and the road construction, while still ubiquitous, was not too bad. Once we got to the airport we stood in a lot of lines – they seemed to be checking things 3 or 4 times – but eventually made it through and were into the preclearance area, which means that when we landed in Portland we landed as a domestic flight. Once in the terminal we found Josh and Jen (they took an Uber, which worked very well) and had our last lunch together at a sports bar so Josh could watch the Masters. Then we got on our plane and flew home (it’s a 45 minute flight). Dave and I got upgraded to first class so that was very nice. We did the airport things and aside from some traffic got home uneventfully.  185 days until the next cruise!

Coastal Cruise - Victoria

We didn’t dock in Victoria until almost 10 am, so I got up and went to abs class. It was fine, but quite short – only about 20 minutes. Then I had my usual breakfast in the Lido and watched us dock.

We had a whale watch tour scheduled and spent a lot of time vascillating about whether to go on it. I decided to go but bring my laptop in case it was just a lot of driving around looking for whales, because it had an indoors with tables and I figured I could work on the blog while we were looking for whales. Dave vacillated even more but eventually settled on coming with, which was nice. It took much longer than usual to clear customs, so we sat in the world theater for about half an hour. 

The whale watch boat was docked just around the corner from our boat, which was cool. We were the 3^rd and 4^th people on the boat so had our choice of seats. It was feeling pretty comfortable out and we were hopeful, so we chose seats outside upstairs. This was the wrong decision, because the trip ended up mostly being driving around looking for whales, and it was cold, and all the inside seats were taken by the time we realized we’d made a mistake. We did see a grey whale, and in fact cruised alongside it for quite some time. It was my first grey whale sighting and it’s not the whale’s fault that they are kind of boring.

We finally got back to the ship and we were quite like icicles. Also it was after 2:30, but the Lido serves their reduced menu until 4 (after which you have to starve until they reopen at 5), including chocolate croissant pudding (warm and yummy) for me and chocolate ice cream cone (cold, brr) for Dave. We came back to our room and cranked the heat up as high as it goes, and I put on my HAL bathrobe and got caught up on the blog while I warmed up again.

Eventually I was warm enough to head up to the gym, where the instructors were strongarming two nice ladies into purchasing their arch supports. They were using all the chairs and the mobile cart, but my instructor from the boot camp saw me looking and brought over a chair with my to use. I had a nice workout and it was especially nice when a guy who was stretching told me I have incredible energy.

I went down to the cabin and decided to start the packing process, since there’s not really room in the cabin for two people to pack at the same time. I was pretty much done by the time Dave got back, so he worked on his packing while I got showered and got ready for the evening. He finished packing just in time to come with me to trivia.

Jen was already sitting with our partners when we got there, and we all made a big deal of introducing ourselves since that was a bit of trivia we’d skipped. The trivia subject was movie music, and Jen and Scott were really amazing with Dave getting a few and consulting on others. Linda and I were mostly there to add wit and charm.  We ended up missing only one (Avatar, which I had even seen) but sadly one team got them all correct and received the coveted Holland America Tulips. I think they cheated. Dave enjoyed the trivia and it’s possible we might even do it again on our long cruise.

We had to run from trivia to our last dinner with Arta, and he started us off with a different kind of sambal and an extra shrimp appetizer. Because of Canadian liquor laws some of the bars weren’t open, which meant that the drinks in the dining room (and the two upstairs specialty restaurants) were extra slow. Dave and Jen took that into account and ordered their wines for their main dishes early, and they showed up exactly when their mains were served. It was a very nice dinner, not too long. Josh had spent what he called the perfect day, which meant watching a lot of golf and bringing sushi and hotdogs and a rusty nail cocktail up to his room to enjoy. Jen had gone to the Natural History Museum (not as good as San Diego) and Monkey C Interactive's ARTCADE which she thought was pretty terrific. It was the first day on the cruise that we’d gone our separate ways and it was fun to catch up at dinner. I will miss having dinner with them every night!

After dinner we were pretty much done for the evening. We went back to our room and finished the packing, then tagged our suitcases and put them outside. We told each other the story of Bubby’s friend Sylvia who forgot to leave out clothes for the next day, and checked our laid-out clothes frequently and obsessively. We put on our bathrobes and went outside to watch our final cast off around 9:30. It was odd to leave port that late, and it was also kind of magical as the ship left the dock and all the city sounds faded away and the only sound was the occasional wavelet shushing against the side of the ship.

We saw this adorable one -person tugboat

Coastal Cruise - Astoria

 It’s Bubby’s Birthday!

Pilot Boat

The fearsome Columbia Bar

We woke up around 5:30 to get ready to cross the Columbia Bar – the place where the widest river in North America meets the mighty Pacific Ocean, the Graveyard of the Pacific, the place we’ve been waiting for. The Pilot came on board a little after 6, and Dave and I bundled up and went down to the Promenade deck (there are no open forward facing decks on this Dam ship) to watch us cross the bar. It was forecasted to be a beautiful day in Astoria – sunny and 55 – and the Pacific was living up to its name. We crossed the bar as the tide had just started going out, and it was about as unexciting as it is possible for a thing to be. Like, unnoticeable. Shortly after we crossed we saw the Cape Disappointment lighthouse, a lighthouse which they put there because they knew how we’d be feeling.

I was cheered up by breakfast at the Lido with Jen and Dave (one guess about where Josh was) and then it was time for our Behind the Scenes tour, a fun excursion through the working sections of the ship. It was lead by our cruise director Simon, and took us to all the places you can’t usually go, including the engine control room, which was pretty cool. The tour lasted about two and a half hours but went by super fast, and there was bubbly at the end. I was wearing my David Hill sweatshirt on the tour, and we met someone from Hillsboro who knew the winery, which was fun. Photos will be in a separate blog.

Bridgewater Bistro left, ship center.

After the tour we disembarked and went for lunch at Bridgewater Bistro, a 10 minute walk away. (You can see our ship from here!) We had a super corner table and lunch was delicious, especially the outstanding crab and artichoke dip that Jen got. (The dip replaces the fabulous crab cheesecake, which is sad). After lunch Dave and I decided to continue walking towards the Maritime museum, while Josh and Jen headed back to the ship. Josh had been getting notifications on his watch all through lunch about how his favorite players were doing in the Masters golf tournament, so he needed the downtime for sure.

Meanwhile we walked up the waterfront trail, which runs for about 5 miles from the cruise ship pier up past the museum. There’s a trolley that runs along it, but the timing was exactly wrong – we saw it pull out from the station when we were maybe 40 yards away, and it takes about an hour to do the whole loop. That was fine because it turned out to be a stunningly beautiful, completely wall to wall blue sky day, with temperatures in the low 60s – T-shirt weather on the sunny walk back to the ship. At the Maritime Museum one of the American Cruise Lines riverboats was docked (180 passengers) so Astoria was full to bursting for an April Thursday.

On the dock there was a cute little makers market with 8-10 local vendors. I almost bought a souvenir but our suitcases were too full. On the way back, we saw the Captain and his dogs – he’d told us at the coffee with Simon that his dog sitter was driving them down from Seattle for a visit.

Once we got back to the ship it was time for some blogging again – it has felt more like a chore than usual on this trip, because we’ve been so busy. I did a little blogging on our verandah, but eventually decided to head up to, you guessed it, the Tamarind bar, stopping at the Lido for my usual fizzy water. I learned today that ordering a sparkling water gets you imported San Benedetto, while ordering soda water gets you a domestic. Now we know.

Astoria-Megler Bridge from the Tamarind Bar

After blogging I showered and got dressed for Dressy Night and picked up Jen for One Hit Wonder trivia. Our partners from yesterday were there and were happy to team up again. We got to talking about kids, and she told a very sad story of her son marrying a woman with 6 daughters, and then his wife died of a brain bleed and now he’s engaged to a Samoan woman but the girls don’t think he should remarry. We still don’t know her name. Anyway, they were thrilled to have Jen along because the theme was one hit wonders and Jen is a hit at that category! We got a lot more things right but still didn’t win.

The timing worked out that it made the most sense for us to go wait in the Tamarind bar, since dinner was in about 25 minutes 9 floors above where we were doing trivia. Fortunately I was wearing heels so we took the elevator. Josh and Dave joined us and at 7:30 we headed in to dinner at the Tamarind Restaurant, which was a flop.

First off they hadn’t realized we were a 4 top, not 2 2-tops, so we ended up at a table smushed in a corner by the kitchen. The food was just ok, and we didn’t get out of there until almost 10 – at 9:00 we hadn’t yet gotten our entrees, which were just ok. If we were to go back, we'd remember that the medium is too mild. We tried making conversation but eventually it was past all our bedtimes and we just sat there. Apparently their grill had died shortly before service began, but that doesn’t explain why everyone else was gone an hour before us. We slunk back to our cabins, grabbing our nightly mint tea on the way, and for us at least everything got better!

Many of you know that we took this cruise to get our 4-star mariner loyalty status, but what we haven’t mentioned is that this cruise also put us over 100 days on board HAL ships. So when we got back to our cabin not only were our 4 star mariner pins and congratulatory letter waiting, but our incredibly gaudy and fabulous 100 day “bronze” medallions were waiting for us as well! And a towel swan! We went to bed as happy & proud as can be. (Photo was taken the next day)

Also it was cold crossing the bar.

Bonus Photo

Coastal Cruise - At Sea, at last!

We were up early because that’s what we do, and I had my usual breakfast in the Lido (Josh, Jen and Dave had a slightly more leisurely version shortly after) and headed to the gym for a quick workout. The instructor I did the bootcamp with gave me a huge smile when I came in and set up my laptop and didn’t make me move when it was time to set up the exercise bikes. After a nice session (well, productive) of upper body resistance it was off to the “Coffee with the Cruise Director” feature. Today it was our Simon our cruise director and Capatain Eric Van der Wal, who was LATE. We’d be sure he wasn’t Dutch except when he talks it’s very clear that he is. He was entertaining, and very focused on the HR side of his job – creating a strong team to give customers a great cruise. Dave was able to ask him to explain a little more about why we had to change our San Francisco arrival time, and we now understand the combination of booking error, currents, and narrow docking area. We also got a chance to ask Simon how many people are on board. The answer surprised us – the ship is pretty much full, but it doesn’t feel crowded.

Next for me was on the port talk about Astoria and Victoria, which seems to have been attended by most of the folks on board. In Astoria there are 2 taxis (not taxi companies. Taxis), 6 Uber drivers, 1 rental car company, and a single trolley car that shuttles from the port to the Maritime Museum on the other side of town. Fortunately there is not much to do, so most of the 2,100 passengers on the ship will not all be trying to get the aforementioned taxis and Ubers. There are several shore excursions, including one that does the Cannon Beach/Tillamook loop that Dave and I did last month. I had to leave about halfway through the Victoria talk because we had our Pinnacle lunch.

The Pinnacle is another of the specialty restaurants on board, and way back when we took our family cruise in 2009 we took the boys there and we all thought it was amazing. It hasn’t been as amazing since, and the lunch experience isn’t as good as dinner, so now we know. Jen’s hamburger was the standout. Jen and Dave had leave early to go to the Premium wine tasting, so Josh and I stayed and ate their desserts.

Next up for me was the Lido Fair, where I played the games but didn’t win any raffle items. I did have a moment where I was trying to knock over things by throwing balls at them and hit 3 out of 3, which made people clap and give me fist bumps. I will remember that as a triumph of hand-eye coordination, perhaps never to be repeated.

Then I went down to the cabin and slept for two hours. Cruising is exhausting! After I woke up I blogged for a bit, then headed to the Billboard Lounge to meet Jen for some live music trivia. It was a good time – our assistant cruse director Lauren teamed up with the piano bar performer for a colors-themed trivia session. We joined in with a couple sitting next to us and did way better than we would have by ourselves, but not well enough to be in the 4-way tie for first place which was too bad because Jen knew the answer. It was fun sitting in the bar watching people go by in their orange (it was Orange night), and our teammate had a particularly good deely bobber headband with orange cindy-lou who pigtails.

We went from there to dinner in the dining room. Arta our server was apparently overjoyed to see us again, and was even more pleased when Dave asked if the Bami Goreng was spicy. It wasn’t, but he managed to get some Sambal from the crew mess, which turned out to be delicious and enhanced many of our dishes. He was so overjoyed to see us that he kept bringing us extra food – 2 extra appetizers, 2 extra entrees, and an extra dessert. I have to mention the dessert, which was on the menu as a “molded Lindt chocolate tulip” and looked like a cross between a tulip and two lips and had a very strange almost rubbery consistency, but was delicious.

Because we have late seating (which I need to remember is called main seating) it’s almost 9:00 by the time we get done with dinner, so last night we got done and it was time to head to the Orange Party line dance, which was an absolute ZOO but of course I have to do the line dancing. Then as soon as it was over it was bedtime because the next day would be an early one to CROSS THE BAR.

Coastal Cruise - San Francisco 2

Up early breakfasted and out at 8:15 for our trip to Muir Woods NM. Thanks to Ben we knew about the required parking reservations and had our parking permit ready to go, and also thanks to Ben (and Joan) we had a car. Getting it out of the parking garage went smoothly and we were off to Muir Woods, which allowed Josh to point out the Skywalker Ranch General Store for the second time (he pointed it out on the way to B&J the day before as well). Josh drove smoothly and carefully up the twisty roads so Jen and I didn’t have any trouble. We found a nice route that was about 3.5 miles and really enjoyed our hike. 

Everyone else has been to Redwoods NP and apparently the redwoods that we saw were on the small side, but we saw redwood burls and fairy rings or family cicles, which they hadn’t seen in other places. Also lots of baby redwood trees, also something that they hadn’t seen. Since this was my first visit to redwoods, it was all new to me. I’ve put some information from the NPS at the end of today’s blog if you want to know more.

We ate lunch at the Barrel House Tavern in Sausalito, which had excellent views out one side and a mirror that made it look like they were on the other side, too. The baked oyster appetizer was so delicious we had to order a second one. Sadly the rest of the food was good but missing spice or heat or acid, so fine but not worth going back to. 

While at lunch we discussed our plans for the rest of the day. The original plan was to meet Ben at the Japanese Garden, but even though Josh never actually said out loud that he wanted (really, really wanted) to go to the Skywalker Rance General Store, his excellent wife understood what he wanted and suggested we accommodate him. It worked for Ben to meet us there instead, so there we went. In case you don’t know, the Skywalker Ranch General Store is at the headquarters of Lucasfilm, home of Star Wars (among other things). Josh was beaming the whole time, and found several things to bring home. Dave did not buy the Shakespearean versions of the Star Wars stories, but he was tempted.

Ben arrived while we were checking out the Yoda fountain and the Lucasfilm lobby, and after getting over his horror that nobody but Dave knew who Philo Farnsworth was, he drove us back to the ship. We dropped off Dave, Josh and Jen, and then he and I drove to Swensen’s ice cream (note to self: the chocolate raspberry truffle is good, but the sticky peanut butter is better) and had some cone and sibling time. It’s never long enough.

He dropped me off at the ship just in time to join Jen for trivia, although she might have been better off by herself – including our 3 bonus points we got only 9 out of 15 correct. She wrote 60%- D on the top in her best teacher writing, but we had a good time anyway. I went to the cabin to grab my computer and then joined Dave at the Tamarind Bar for a little blogging. Then it was time for watching the cast off and going under the bridge, which we managed to not get quite right and emerged onto the deck on 5 forward just after we’d passed under the bridge. We did have an excellent view of Alcatraz earlier in the afternoon. I blame the Captain, who had announced we’d be passing under the bridge 6:45 but it was closer to 6:20. We think he might not actually be Dutch. (It turned out that he’d said 6:45 with an on-time departure, but we ended up departing early, hence the early bridge-going-under. He’s Dutch.)

To console ourselves we went down to the explorer lounge and listened to Vivace, the classical duo of piano and violin. They were mostly playing old pop favorites, but they were very good and we enjoyed ourselves.

Then it was time to go up for dinner – only our second dinner in the dining room. Jen and I had the black bean soup, which 3 out of the 4 of us thought was delicious. Josh is not a fan of bean soup so this didn’t change his mind. I had eggplant cannelloni and was surprised to find that the eggplant sheets were the cannelloni. While we were eating our dining room section manager came over and I actually thought to ask him what kinds of Port they serve on the ship (we’d asked many servers and gotten several answers), and he sent over the sommelier, Jonathon,  who answered the question definitively by bringing over the bottles of the three types they serve – all ruby, one of them an LBV style, if you’re curious. Most of the excitement came with watching the beverage server take our drinks to other peoples’ tables. In the spirit of exploration (we just did the tasting on fortified wines at the winery) I ordered a glass of Harvey’s Bristol Cream [sherry], and watched it be delivered to another table. Mine never came, so I asked our server to cancel it, which caused the dining room section manager to come over and encourage me to stay and drink it, which I said no to, which probably made a black mark for the poor server, who is new. But it was time to move on.

We moved on to the Ocean Bar where the Dam band was playing jazzy music. Like most HAL bands they probably met a couple days before the cruise but were tight and fun to listen to. Dave stayed until they finished their set, but I went down to the Rolling Stone Lounge (formerly known as the Queen’s lounge) and danced both my shoes off. There was a group of 10-15 women and a couple reluctant spouses just boogieing our hearts out. It was super fun! I danced until 11 and then was wide awake and sweaty until about midnight. In case you’re wondering, my fitbit recorded 26,904 steps today.

About Redwoods:

“Occasionally, an almost perfect circle of redwood trees grows in the forest. Known as fairy rings, they are evidence of several bud-collar sprouts, normally of a similar age, encircling a long-fallen parent tree. Redwood trees are unique conebearing trees because they reproduce via burl and seed. If a redwood falls or is otherwise damaged, the burl may begin to sprout from the trunk or branch it developed on, sharing or taking over the established root system of the parent tree. Staying true to its name, the adaptations of Sequoia sempervirens (ever-living Sequoia) seem to bend time as it continues to prove itself one of the earth’s most tenacious survivors.“