Sea Day on June 19th

We haven’t mentioned this part of our day in months, so we will do it now. We start every day at 5:45am, when coffee, milk and a croissant are delivered to our stateroom. For the past few weeks, it has been brought to us by a very cute and energetic young woman named Jay, who is from the Philippines. First she calls on the phone, which is right on the wall next to Steve’s side of the bed. “Good morning, Mr. Knight. I’m coming now.” And in about thirty seconds, she is knocking on the door. Often she asks: “ Did I wake you up?” and apologizes, which seems kind of unnecessary since I’m the one who has asked for this daily delivery. She quickly parks the tray of stuff on the table and off she goes, all the time smiling. Seeing her with her radiant personality is a great start to any day.

Cathy is willing to put up with this early morning ritual because Steve has been using the Fitness Center almost every day during the voyage. It opens at 6:00am and he is usually there before 6:30 when it isn’t all that busy. If I waited any later in the day, I would dream up hundreds of excuses not to go.

Today we head up to Horizons to edit photographs and do needlepoint. I like to go there with Cathy because other needlepoint people come by and admire her work. Their comments are very affirming and well deserved. Right now she is working on a pillow and the design is places we have been on the ATW voyage. It was designed especially for the ATW people on the 2018 voyage: another nice little gift from Oceania! It is very complicated with all kinds of patterns and colors and takes dozens and dozens of hours, but Cathy has been very diligent and everyone comes over to appreciate how far along she is and what a good job she’s doing. A picture of her work heads up this post.

This morning we get our first real wildlife viewing from this ship. Dolphins are playing in the waves that are coming off the bow of the ship. We must have seen at least twenty of them frolicking in the waves for about ten minutes right below where we were. Apparently this is a frequent occurrence in this area. The dolphins see cruise ships all the time here.

When it’s lunchtime, we head for Waves Grill because it’s quick. But we run into Kari and Larry who left the ship in Rangiroa, French Polynesia. They went on a 7-day cruise on the Windstar sailing ship we saw there and then flew to Los Angeles where they rejoined the ship. That killed the idea of a short lunch because Steve especially wanted to know all about that Windstar cruise.

Peter Croyle has a lecture at 2:00pm on Mexico and Central America (Part 2). He concentrates on Costa Rica because he has already discussed Mexico. He is quite impressed with the country, its government and the progress they have made in the last thirty years. This is certainly quite unlike its neighbor to the north, Nicaragua, where the despot Noriega has been in charge.

We have dinner with Barbara and Brian O’Dell tonight in the Grand Dining Room. We make plans to dine with them on June 30^th, the last night of the voyage, which is most appropriate. They are the very best people we met on the ship, along with Pat Watt and the Rosenthals. There are others but the O’Dells and the Knights really hit it off.

We hit the sack after this very nice meal (pictures below of a shrimp dish, scallops and a creatively prepared dessert). Tomorrow we arrive in famous Acapulco, Mexico.