January 19, 2013 (Sea Day)

Today was a quiet day of relaxation after two weeks of going, going and going. Most days we are up by 7:00am and do not get to bed at night before 11:00pm at the earliest. There were 64 activities of things to do on the daily bulletin although we did very few. Kent went to the movie theater and saw Barbra Streisand in “Funny Girl” while Mark napped.

People We’ve Met:

Staff—There is Christopher in the sundries shop.  He is from Alaska and has been quite “lucky” meeting people on the ship and off.  He sometimes gives us the scoop on attractive passengers and crew.  There is Pedro, from Chile.  He manages the Jewelry shop and sales events.  He is going to give Kent some Spanish lessons on sea days.   Tom is the techspert on the ship and is quite friendly.  Adele is the Hostess on the ship from South Africa and is fun, especially when we attend the Good Morning, Amsterdam talk show.  Bruce, our gay Cruise Director is also very friendly, but he called Kent “ma’am” yesterday, so Kent isn’t a fan.  Our dining room staff are mostly very helpful and are largely from Indonesia and the Philippines and work around the clock.

Fellow Passengers—We’ll start with the gay ones:  There are Stephen and Patrick.  They live in Boston now and own and run an antique shop in the Jamaica Plaines area and two guesthouses.  Patrick is originally from Ireland.  They have been together 26 years.  Patrick just turned 50.  They will only be on the ship until Auckland.

Ken and Fred are now living in Ft. Lauderdale.  Both were living on Long Island and were married with children, but are now divorced from their wives and have been together 12 years.   Fred was a teacher and Ken was a banker.  They are members of our Cruise Critic group.

Ron and Dave are living between Colorado and Florida and are Republicans.  They seem to know a lot of people from previous cruises.  We plan to hook them up with two German fellows (Allan and Mattias) who want to meet some Republicans (see explanation below).  They are from Stuttgart, Germany and have taken a year off to travel.  They sailed the Queen Mary to NYC, drove across country to San Francisco, Vancouver and back through the lower states to Ft. Lauderdale, then on to South America.  They got on the ship in Lima and plan to travel the world until July 2013.  In all their time in the USA, they had not met Republicans.  After watching the election results during their travels, they are most interested in talking with a Republican to get another point of view.

Jim and Ernie are from Vancouver and have organized a tour on Easter Island for us.  They saw it last year on their 2012 world cruise, but wanted to do it again with the tour guide they had last year.  They recommended that we buy Carnival Cruise stock, as with only 100 shares, you get cabin credits from Holland America….to help pay for your bar bill!

Jan and Jan are two retired librarians from outside Denver.  They love reading and eating cotton candy served before dessert in the Canaletto Italian restaurant on board.

Some singles are Tom, from Lake Como, Italy.  He is doing very will with a painter worker on the ship.  Horace is from Vancouver and is an avid photographer.   Ken is from Detroit and just enjoyed a trip to the Galapagos from Lima and rejoined the ship in General San Martin.

Mature ladies—Maureen lives in Berkeley but is from England.  She runs the craft courses on board and is supplemental ship staff.  Verna is from Canada, but now lives in Hilo, HI and also just returned from the Galapagos.  Charlene, from Chicago, spends the winters usually in Spain, but decided to do her first world cruise this year.  Leslie is from Florida and is one of the most striking and stylish women on board.  She will join us for a tour on Easter Island.

Cabin:  Our cabin is about 200 square feet.  We were happy that we could put all of our clothes away in the closets.  We have a sofa, chair and cocktail table, along with a desk/makeup table/chest of drawers.  The bathroom is adequate and we don’t think it is too small.  We have a window and someone comes to clean it everyday!

Laundry:  We purchased the unlimited laundry package for the entire 4-month cruise for $600.  We have been on the ship for two weeks and we have submitted about $170+ worth of laundry.  So we think the laundry package was a good deal.

The entertainer this evening was a comedian and impressionist by the name of Scott Record. He had an incredible talent for impersonating famous singers from Frank Sinatra, Elvis Pressley and Michael Jackson to Roy Orbison. He was very funny and entertaining.

It was a formal night for dinner, which also meant that we would have a gift awaiting us when we returned to our cabin after dinner and the show. On this night the gift was a digital picture frame which you can load your photos into and they will create a slide show with the photos rotating.