Steve and Cathy's Blog

Photo above is the Teatro Amazonas, the most familiar symbol of Manaus. Of course we are up early (5:15am), as usual. Another striking sunrise greets us. Sunrise at 5:30am We are still heading upriver to Manaus, which we are scheduled to reach at 10am. Brazil (Manaus located at confluence of the two largest rivers) Location of Manaus in Amazonas state To our stern, a beautiful sunrise is visible. Steve can’t help himself, and takes more photos

The day starts out routinely. Even without an alarm, Steve awakens at 6:45am, and scolds himself for not waking up sooner (unbeknownst to him, it’s actually 5:45am, but his iPhone hasn’t automatically accounted for the time change during the night as it would at home). As has become a daily occurrence, he sees another beautiful sunrise. Sunrise on the Amazon River Still on autopilot, he heads for Horizons on Deck 10 four our customary wakeup cappuccinos.

We awaken pretty early to a beautiful sunny day, and we are still heading upriver. Our scheduled arrival is noon, and we aren’t due in Insignia Lounge to begin our excursion, Maica Lake Nature Cruise, until 1pm. We are the first ones to arrive for breakfast at the Grand Dining Room, and one of our very favorite wait staff members, Okta, takes our order.  After a couple of hours in Horizons, we head for Waves to

For some reason, we both wake up simultaneously at 5:43am, look out our veranda window and see an awesome sunrise. We get up immediately take it all in. Steve takes this photo above. Not two minutes later, the sunrise has disappeared, and a partly cloudy sky appears. This is a phenomenon of being near the equator, where the earth beneath the sky is moving way quicker than it does farther north or south due to the

This is going to be a short post, frankly because there isn’t much to talk about. Our routine is pretty established, but we have decided to join one activity on each of these two days: a winetasting. Why? Well, we had dinner at Polo, one of the specialty restaurants, a few days ago. Our sommelier was a delightful woman from the Philippines named Elaine. Not only does she know a great deal about wine, but she

We are awakened once again with beautiful sunrise photo opportunities, and Steve takes full advantage. So, we start this post out with six photos of the constantly changing sky, all taken within twenty minutes.  5:43am 5:45am 6:01am 6:04am 6:06am 6:08am We are approaching Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, which is on the island of Trinidad, the much larger and more urbanized island. Trinidad is just under seven miles off of Venezuela, and, as is that

The title of this post belies our actual activities, because we stay on the ship, which anchors a couple of miles offshore at the scheduled 8am. We had signed up for a one-hour tour of the island by mini-van, but it was canceled. When we went down to Destination Services to see if there were other excursions we might like, we found out that it was canceled because of so many complaints from previous guests.  Jose,

Insignia pulls in to Fort-de-France right on time at 8:00am after a beautiful sail in to port. Our four and a half-hour excursion, Clement’s Plantation and Balata Garden, is to begin at 8:15am, so we have had breakfast at Waves. Four other excursions are beginning at the same time, so Waves is jamming and appears to be understaffed, as there is only one young staff member, whose name is Okta, running around madly trying to take

We are very excited to be visiting Puerto Rico, even if it is just for a few hours. We know so many people who came from there to the Wallingford-Meriden area, and are anxious to get a glimpse of their homeland. Granted, this is such a short time, and we will only have an opportunity to be in part of San Juan, but this is still special to us We are scheduled to arrive in port

After writing this, we agree that this is so boring that perhaps we shouldn’t even have bothered making a record of two such uneventful days. So, again, those of you who might be looking for something interesting to read will not find it here. November 16: The distance between Miami and San Juan, Puerto, our first port of call, is 924 nautical miles. This means that the first two days of this cruise will be Sea