Monthly Archives: April 2023

Since we missed Bermuda, we had six sea days. These are lazy kind of days. The ship has plenty of activities and we did some of them. I went to a needlepoint group and discovered that my eyes need some help to do the fine work. Bob exercised every day, I walked but not on the tread mill. Just on the way to and from activities.

One surprising thing is that we both have been sleeping in. I am usually up between 6 and 7 AM, have been sleeping until 9:30 daily. I guess the gentle roll of the ship has helped.

We have been playing bridge daily, some days even going to the bridge lessons. There are some pretty bad players, and a few really good ones. So far it has been fun.

The evenings are spent having fancy dinners and then attending the shows. They have had a really good pianist and comedian and those shows have been great. The ones with the ship’s company have been OK. I have also been playing the slot machines and I am even ahead!

Today we had some excitement. They had to airlift a passenger off the ship due to a health emergency. It was interesting to watch.

Tomorrow is our first land since Nassau and I think everyone is ready for this.

About 2 hours after leaving Nassau, the captain made an announcement to the entire ship, we were not going to our next port of call, Bermuda. There was some bad weather in the Atlantic on the way to and around Bermuda, so we were going to start directly across the Atlantic to our next port of call, Punta Delgada in the Azores.

We will now have 6 sea days between ports. We have been busy: lectures, needlepoint, walking, reading and bridge. So far we have “lost” 2 hours in our travels. A little easier going to Europe this way, no big 6 hour time change all at once.

There was no big celebration on the ship for Easter, but there was a big display in the atrium of chocolate Easter eggs and we had a little chocolate bunny delivered to our suite.

The entertainment in the evenings have been quite good, a pianist and a comedian and also the usual shipboard entertainers.

Probably no more posts until we get to land. We have not seen any other ships for the past 2 days. Very weird feeling.

We sailed over night and woke up in Nassau. We actually slept in a little which surprised both of us. After breakfast, we left the ship. We had not booked any excursions since they were mostly beach things. I had found a self guided walking tour and so we were off.

We made it to the Queen’s Staircase, built in the 1700s and is 66 steps and climbed all the way to the top. Near the top was Fort Fincastle, shaped like paddle wheel steamer. We then headed towards some other sites, but we were walking in a shady area of town, lots of broken sidewalks and we decided to just head back into the main part of town. Because it was Good Friday, none of the nice stores were open. The straw market was open but we were not interested in shopping there.

After lunch on the ship we went to see if there were any bridge players. There were some, to include a director who will be running games on the sea days. We did not really play, just sat and talked to some of the players.

Tonight is the Captain’s Welcome party. We are meeting Donna and Jerry for a drink before dinner to catch up since our last cruise together. Tomorrow will be a sea day.

We had a car service bring us to the port of Miami on April 6. Check in to our ship, the Oceania Marina was quick and easy. Lunch in the Terrace Cafe and then our suite was ready. On the way to our suite someone was calling my name. It was a couple we had met on the last cruise we did on the Marina from Venice to Athens. Small world.

Our suitcases arrived one at a time, which was nice because I could unload them and put everything away and then the next one appeared. We walked around some to reacquaint ourselves with the ship. After a relaxed dinner we waited to sail away. I had been looking forward to sailing past some of the area in South Beach where I grew up. Unfortunately we were delayed and left well after dark so it was hard to see anything.

We went to the show in the lounge and then off to bed.