Day 6- See the Sea?

We woke up this morning with a whole sea day stretching ahead of us.  We have worked out a nice little routine for days that we spend much of the day or all of the day on the ship.  Today was no different.  We get up and get dressed and head up to breakfast.  We eat at a table next to the windows in the casual café (in fact, we never ate a meal anywhere else).  Then, we go back down to our room, make any changes needed to our clothing (there is no way to know how warm or sunny it is until we have gone up to breakfast), pack our backpack with camera, binoculars, laptop if I’m blogging, nook, book, and Phase 10 and we head up to the top deck to our glassed in room with the comfy reading chairs.  Then, we spend much of the morning reading or blogging (which includes sifting through the tons of pictures, editing them, and deleting the unnecessary ones), and looking out to sea.  It really could not be any more relaxing and you can’t beat the view.  We saw a few more whales, which was exciting, and the sun was finally out, which was also exciting.  There are some other quiet people who also frequent this lounge but since we all come up here to hide from the noisy people, we haven’t spoken to any of them even though we sit next to them almost every morning! 

Amazing how cozy a night club can be during the day! 

At 1:00 we went to hear a question and answer session with the captain that Rich was very excited about.  On our last cruise they offered a tour of the bridge, which he really wanted to go on but somehow missed, and he was disappointed that they didn’t offer that tour on this ship.  They did, however, offer a “behind the scenes” tour for only $150 per person, but it didn’t include the bridge and we were a little bit scornful about that!  Anyway, the captain answered all sorts of questions from questions about the engine and fuel set up (there are four engines the length of school busses and two stories high) to what his own schedule is like (ten weeks on, ten weeks off…Rich really liked that!), to why ships are referred to as “she” (because they harbor living beings, like a woman).  It was mostly a very interesting talk.  Rich really enjoyed it and I enjoyed most of it.  The technical questions were pretty boring for me since I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about! 

Afterwards, we took the requisite afternoon nap/reading session in our room and then got dressed to come back up for dinner.  After dinner, we went to our table by the pool, as we have done every evening on the ship, and played Phase 10 (although, our regular table was sticky so we sat at the one next to it…living on the edge!).  I had wanted to go to the “Music from the ‘50s and ‘60s” trivia quiz and dance party (it was in exchange for the Captain’s talk!) but ended up needing to finish my book, play our game of Phase 10 (I lost, AGAIN), so we only watched the end of the dance.  Dad would have loved that dance!  We decided not to go down to the deck where it was happening but instead stood on a balcony above looking down.  It was a relaxing day with nice weather, couldn’t be better.  We also had the only sunset that we have had during the cruise and I took some pictures and experimented with the settings.  

Our only lovely sunset.  

Ouch, looks like my hair is on fire!

Paaarrrtaaayyyy!