Thursday 20 June 2013 At Sea

I don’t know if the bed is especially comfortable or the vibration of the ship is soothing or if there is some other factor, but we both slept soundly until 9 this morning, then rushed down for breakfast.

Today is a day at sea with no stops. We find these days pretty slow. Although there is plenty to do on the ship, much of it is stuff that we aren’t that keen on doing. There is the casino, the spa, the art auctions, the shopping (especially for watches, jewelry, and perfume), the wine tastings (additional charge), and other such activities. We like using the ship as the vehicle to get to the various ports for the shore excursions.

One activity we took in was a presentation on how to use Microsoft PhotoGallery, their version of Picasa. Microsoft has an agreement with Holland America whereby each ship has a Techspert who gives classes about Microsoft products, computers in general, and other technical subjects, like getting the most out of your digital camera. It was informative learning about the latest photo management software. It has lots of convenient features. Maybe we will go that way.

After our computer class we found a place by a window and sat down to bring the blog up to date, followed by lunch. The seating area was quite crowded, so we sat with a couple from Victoria. They were about our age, so we had lots in common. We talked for well over an hour about retirement, kids, family, and life in general. We finally took a break to have a look outside by taking a walk around the deck, but it was quite cool and windy so that did not last long.

Celeste quite enjoyed playing trivia on our last cruise, so we went up to the Crow’s Nest bar to play again. We partnered with two women who weren’t very good at it. We missed a couple that we knew, but they thought they knew better and we weren’t insistent.

Tonight was a formal dining night in the main dining room. We sat with couples from Kingston and Nanaimo and had an enjoyable time. We broke away at 8 pm to take in the performance in the live theatre. After that we went up to the 50s and 60s dance party in the Crow’s Nest. Celeste thought it would be a good idea to dust off the old dancing shoes in preparation for Shaela and AJ’s wedding. We watched for a while, then got up and shuffled through a couple of numbers. Before long we were really flying and worked up a good sweat. When the band took a break, we joined in a game of name that tune (& artist). We were surprisingly good at naming the tunes, but had trouble with a lot of the artists. When we heard the answers, we still didn’t recognize the names of a few of the one-hit wonders. We didn’t win.

We headed back to the snack bar at 10:30 and then off to bed.

Weather: Very low overcast, sometimes fog, misty, occasional light rain. Temperature in the low teens.