Prelude
This Ausflug really began on Christmas before we left. Both of our sons had taken special thought about our delayed anniversary cruise and gave us really great gifts for it. Judson and Sarah gave us a large folio-sized leather-covered photo album with "Anniversary Cruise" engraved in gold on the front cover. They both knew how much we like to put together albums for our trips that combine pictures, mementos, and the first-hand narrative of our adventures, and now we had one before we even took the trip! I debated whether to take this album along on the trip to complete it as we went along -- seeing the album take shape while we were traveling might be a lot of fun--but we finally decided to collect everything on the trip and make the album when we returned

For his gift, Martin had composed special "traveling music" on some customized CDs that he made especially for us. Monika's was called "Brille, Muff, Gesang Buch -- We're on the road again". The first part is German for the glasses, muff, and hymnal that Christmas carolers in Germany would take along for singing in the Yuletide season, and is a colloquialism for getting prepared for a trip. The title was particularly appropriate since we were in fact taking sheet music for songs with us that we would sing on the road, and, if the cruise passengers were really unlucky, also on board ship. We were not really doing that because we were social sadists, but rather to keep our voices and songs in training for a digital tape that we were scheduled to make with our voice teacher Laurie when we returned from our trip. My travel mix was called "Fogiedelic groovin'", which turned out to be a great mix of "oldies" that suited me to a T.

We spent the day before Christmas baking a gingerbread house and dozens of different kinds of cookies with Sarah, which was a real blast. Making the gingerbread house was not easy, and we had to cook a new wall when one unexpectedly crumbled on us. Sarah used leftover gingerbread to make gingerbread cookies, I experimented baking low-fat peanut butter cookies, and Monika made German-style black and white cookies. We used the "anniversary heart" cookie mold that Sarah and Judson had given us to make some large heart-shaped cookies, and then I found it so pretty that I hung it up as a decoration over our stove. I really got into the icing routine while gluing together the gingerbread house and decorating it, so I decided to use up the icing by writing people's names on some of the larger cookies and just generally putting icing over all the cookies. Boy was that fun. We sent the gingerbread house to the Bockweg's so that Sarah's nephew Colin would be sure to have some, but we kept a couple dozen cookies to take along as provisions for our journey. I really don't think you can find better kids than ours.

While Sarah, Judson, and Martin celebrated Christmas day with the Bockwegs, Monika and I got serious about preparing for the trip. We had a backlog of laundry to do, so that took us a good part of the day. We tried to minimize our usual problem of forgetting things when we go on trips by making a list (and checking it twice!). We had a separate suitcase for the trip down, a suitcase for the cruise ship, a garment bag with my tuxedo, Monika dresses, and so forth, and a bag full of snorkeling gear that we had purchased just as the Sports Authority was putting them away for the winter. Fortunately we had had a chance to try out our masks, fins, and snorkels in a swimming pool during our previous Ausflug to Williamsburg a couple weeks back (see Ausflug 18), so we were pretty sure that it would all work. Packing it all required another couple of hours, and what with one thing and another we didn't get done until almost bedtime (9 p.m. for us).

We tied up loose ends over the next couple of days, and finished preparing for the trip. The weather was beastly cold in our area (15 to 20 degrees below normal), and we both felt it would be a relief to drive south where things were warmer. Packing for warm weather when it's extremely cold is difficult. We were trying to guess whether it would be cold or warm on the deck of the cruise ship during the evenings -- on the one hand this was "winter" and it should be cold, on the other hand we would be in the middle of the Caribbean Sea and it should be warm. So what's it really going to be? In the end, we took along some sweaters, our medium-weight caribou jackets, raincoats, and ski jackets and hoped that would cover it. As it turned out, we used everything except the sweaters.

Thursday, December 28, 2000
Despite being so excited that I had a hard time sleeping, we both slept in to about 5:30, which is late for us. We had a quick and simple breakfast of cereal and juice before throwing the last boxes and bags into the back seat of the Spirit and heading south. What with showers and all, we left about 6:30 and charged down Interstate 95 thru Richmond. In Richmond we turned onto I-85 to head directly toward the Raleigh, arriving around 11:30. Since we had very light traffic along the way (possibly because we were quite early), w could play CDs of oldies and sea shanties and enjoy singing along with them with great gusto!

Raleigh Volksmarch: The starting point for the Raleigh Volksmarch is a medium-sized Victorian house which has a Visitor Center. The folks there were quite helpful, and even gave advice for a good local cafe for lunch. Even tho the cafe was early on our walk, we decided to eat as we were both quite hungry (cereal doesn't last too long). The "Sidestreet Cafe" was on the corner of Bloodworth and Lane streets and turned out to be a really nice restaurant (cloth napkins, real silverware, excellent food) despite having a quite plain exterior. The Visitor Center lady had explained that they had wanted to renovate but found an old Coca-Cola sign and were prevented from demolition because this was a historic building. We were fortunate to get there early and order our meals because it soon filled up with local patrons. I had a tasty mixture of tuna, walnuts, raisins, and been sprouts in pita bread and Monika had a "Hawaiian sandwich" which featured ham, pineapple, and bacon on a toasted bun with honey Dijon mustard--both sandwiches were excellent and accompanied by a good potato salad.

In fact, the entire district we traversed was the historic area and had many fine examples of restored houses. Some of the Victorian houses were restored to their original colors--I saw gaudy examples of pink, yellow, and purple houses along our walk. The trail consisted of three basic loops with some additional dipsy-doodles. the first loop went thru the historic Oakwood community and Oakwood Cemetery. The cemetery is quite old, having a Civil War section with 2,800 Confederate Soldiers. Many of the monuments from the mid-1850s were quite elaborate. I photographed one that had a particularly fine sculpture on it that was dazzling white in the sunshine. We also saw the tombstone for Senator Jesse Helms, which had no date because he's still in the senate, and I had to repress a very unkind wish that he would use it soon--he is such a nasty man.

The second loop was out to the Mordecai historical district, which was distinguished by old houses and a museum. One of the old houses was the birthplace of President Andrew Johnson--supposedly it was an old kitchen. He was born in 1808, and as befits a kitchen of that era, It was a very modest affair but I took a picture anyway for history's sake.

The final loop was around the State Capitol, government buildings, and several interesting museums in the middle of town. The architecture was good, but quite modern, so I didn't take any pictures. We returned to the starting point thru City Market, a historic set of stores with cobblestone streets. One largish building had many art studios and galleries, reminding me of the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria--nice stuff but we were tired and did not want to accumulate things so soon in the trip, so we kept on walking back to the finish. Our reward was to be able to stamp books for Volksmarch Events, Distance, States, Capitals, and the original 13 Colonies--a 5-for-1 deal!

Greatly refreshed, we continued driving into the early evening although the clouds were threatening. We stopped only to reserve a room at the South Carolina Welcome Center and have dinner at a Shoney's in Florence before coming to roost in Santee, a town of hotels and restaurants catering to the I-95 trade, as far as I can see. The rain and sleet held off until we were only 20 miles from our hotel, so we arrived in good humor around 7 pm, which gave us time to unwind a bit before going to sleep. We've found that it can be hard to go to sleep if you drive all day and then basically jump out of the car and into bed for the night. For relaxation, Monika did some knitting and I wrote in the trip journal.

Friday, December 29, 2000
We slept pretty well but awakened early, hitting the free breakfast line about ten after six, which allowed us to pack, check out, and start our drive south around 6:40 am which is pretty early for us. It had sleeted extensively during the night, so I had to use the scraper that I had accidentally left in the car to break ice off the windshield wipers. The sidewalks were also glazed with ice, which we found out in no uncertain terms as we walked to breakfast from our room! Thank goodness the roads were clear and occasionally wet, but never icy, as we drove towards Savannah, so we could keep a steady 70-75. We found out during this day's drive that the speedometer and odometer were about 8% low, which explained two mysteries. The first was why I was passing everyone in sight when I thought I was only going slightly over the speed limit. The second was why our gas mileage was surprisingly low for a 4-cylinder fuel-injected car--here I thought it was just my lead foot!

We branched off I-95 onto Route 17 to take a more direct and scenic route to the center of the city of Savannah. Monika was driving at that point while I was trying to navigate, which is a much weaker assignment of personnel to tasks than having me drive (my strength) and Monika navigate (her strength). This arrangement was complicated by the fact that I was using 3 maps (AAA Triptick, a large projection map of Savannah and a zoom-in map of the city streets) plus a set of written directions to try to find our way. It was further complicated by the fact that the road signs all referred to route numbers which were not on our maps while our maps referred to streets which were not mentioned on the signs! In short, we overshot our exit, got lost, and finally found our way back into the historic district by getting off the interstate, finding a street sign for "Martin Luther King" street, and turning left and following it back to where our starting point was supposed to be (303 MLK street).

But of course we could not initially find it. We saw a sign for the "Whistle Stop Cafe" but could not find hide nor hair of it on either side of the street as we repeatedly cruised past the 300 block. Monika knew we were at the right place but was just puzzled. I was getting frustrated and finally had Monika pull into the parking lot for the Visitor Center where I went in to ask for directions. It turned out that the cafe was just in back of the museum part of the center. The center is a converted 1800s train station and the Whistle Stop Cafe is in an old dining car on the rails just in back of the building, so it all makes sense once you know what it all means. I grabbed Monika and we found the start box at the cafe, filled out the registration and start cards, and then set out on our walk.

Savannah Volksmarch: The Savannah Volksmarch heads directly into the historic district and winds a convoluted path thru the district to make up the 10 km. We first zigzagged back and forth in a mostly east-west direction to get to Forsyth Park and a memorial to Civil War soldiers, which was also the first and only checkpoint. Along the way I suddenly recognized the entrance to Mrs. Wilkes, a really great, but quite unusual boarding-house style restaurant I had dined at during my previous visit to Savannah. The entrance is very understated (1 tiny sign) and they don't advertise, so I wasn't sure I could find it again. I was so excited to find it and the food had been so good the last time that I decided then and there that we would have lunch there later.

After the checkpoint, we started zigzagging more north and south thru the historic district, traversing the many city squares along the way. Each city square has a distinct name and some distinct quality to it, often a monument to some person or group in the city's past. Many of them, however, have beautiful old "live oaks" that are covered in Spanish moss and green all year round. In the summer, I had found these squares to be oases of coolness in the heart of the city.

It is hard to describe the wonderful variety of architectural styles that we saw in Savannah. Homes, churches and businesses were in buildings ranging from colonial era to quite modern. They were all well kept and offered a kaleidoscope of shapes and colors. The unifying theme was that all the houses were of brick or masonry and usually at least two stories. The city squares, trees, and brick sidewalks and streets also gave coherence to otherwise disparate architectural styles.

The north-south zigzagging ended in front of the Savannah Town Hall on Bay street, the main thru street for traffic. Here we turned right to walk past the parks that line the top of the riverbank. At the edge of the historic district was a very small park with a very old lighthouse--more like a large "light lamp" about 20 feet high with about 10 gas mantles burning in it. That was probably quite a beacon in the late 1800s, but looks more like super streetlight now. At the end of the park we went down some very narrow, twisty, and uneven steps to get to the river level--hard to do when sober and I would not want to negotiate that stairway after drinking!

Down at the river, we walked along the shops at River Street and along the river walk that was right next to the water. Some Delftware in a shop window caught my eye and we ended up buying 3 trivets, a windmill, and a house all made of the beautiful blue-glazed porcelain (they were all half price and it was hard to resist). I also bought a Harley Davidson sign for the office.

On the river walk we passed two sailboats and two boats styled after river steamers (possibly diner cruises or gambling casinos?) before ascending back up the river bank and winding our way back the Visitor Center. We put our Volksmarching belts back in the car and, after a great lunch at Mrs. Wilkes, continued south on I-95 for Florida.

Savannah lunch: I convinced Monika to have lunch at Mrs. Wilkes after the Volksmarch, so we drove over there and found a parking space nearby. When we walked over, however, we found a line of about 15 people standing outside. For a long time the line didn't move, but people were coming out which was a hopeful sign. We decided to stick it out--I knew the seating was "boarding house" style where they seated an entire table of 12 persons at a time, so I expected we would be called in bunches. That turned out to be correct and we only had to wait for two tables to empty before our turn came (about 1/2 hour).

The food was well worth the wait. When we go to the table, it was fully laden with large platters containing all kinds of vegetable and starch dishes like sweet potatoes with raisins, mashed potatoes, potato salad, okra, green beans, lima beans, pork and beans, beans and rice, Cole slaw, and collard greens (I'm forgetting some, I'm sure). We started madly passing dishes clockwise so everyone could get a helping of each dish and the waitresses brought out platters with the meat dishes--fried chicken and turkey for this meal. There was so much food that even taking quite small servings of each one would not fit on my plate. The fellow across the table was a regular customer and had worked out a strategy for this problem. He simply resorted to making 2 complete layers of food on his plate to accommodate it all! Each offering was excellent quality and it was really hard to stop eating. During the meal, they also offered us either banana creme or fruit tarts for desert! Monika and I had one of each and then split each one and shared so that we could get a taste of each one--I recommend the banana creme.

Fully satiated after that wonderful meal (it caused pleasant daydreams while driving!), we drove over to I-95 and kept on heading south to a Ramada Inn near Cocoa Beach, Florida, where we had made reservations for the night. It was a long drive and we finally were hungry enough for a light snack around 6 pm. In penance for the wonderful dinner, we had our snack at MacDonalds where I had the grilled chicken and a salad with no-fat dressing. So in one afternoon we went from the culinary fantastic to fast food. It later turned out that exactly the same kind of culinary shift would occur later in this trip at the end of our Caribbean Cruise!

The hotel had our room reserved on a credit card, which is always a relief if you come in late at night and know that there are probably not any other rooms available. They also had a heated outdoor pool, which was so warm that steam was rising from it! We tried it with our hands and sure enough it was as warm as bath water so we decided to take our snorkeling gear and go for a swim after unpacking. The only hitch in these plans was that the air temperature was only 40 degrees and the wind was still blowing. So it was cold walking to the pool and really, really cold running back to the room while wet after swimming. I made one trip back to the room to get some other gear and remember yelling "Cold, cold, cold!" with each step outside of the pool and then "Hot, hot, hot" when I jumped in the pool. In between, however, the swimming was warm and a lot of fun and good exercise in preparation for our snorkeling.

Saturday, December 30, 2000
Our most important goal for this day was to get to the cruise ship on time--they usually don't wait for passengers and we didn't have any cancellation insurance! But first we wanted to do a Volksmarch in Cocoa Beach to get in a beach walk. So after having the complimentary breakfast and packing we drove across the Intracoastal Waterway to the Cocoa Beach area and highway A1A. Since the beach islands on this side of Florida are narrow, there is only the one main drag and it was easy to find our checkpoint, a Burger King.

Cocoa Beach Volksmarch: The Cocoa Beach Volksmarch was very cold--the temperature was about 38 but with a wind of 25 mph the wind chill was really something. We bundled into the ski jackets complete with the stocking caps and gloves before heading south along A1A for about a mile and it probably would have been a pleasant walk in normal Florida temperatures! We then turned right into a small, but exclusive, subdivision on the bay side of the island. One small, 4-bedroom home facing the water was for sale and had advertising circulars out front--they wanted $530,000 for it!

After that branch, we continued south on A1A to Lori Wilson Park that is a small, pocket park right beside the beach which features a nature trail thru a "hummock". They had all the trees and shrubs carefully labeled. It was a curious piece of wild, natural Florida amid the acres of asphalt and concrete, but a nice change of pace. From the park we curled around thru a huge Holiday Inn with a large central pavilion to get to the beach and then turned back north to return to the starting point.

Unfortunately for us the tide was coming in and for this Volksmarch it really made a difference. The waves were coming up gradually farther on the beach so you had to either walk in the soft sand above the high tide mark or walk on the wet sand with the waves lapping at your heels. Monika got her feet soaked twice and our pace was very slow, so we decided to bail out and return via the alternative route on A1A. The final part of the Volksmarch was a small loop north of the Burger King that passed Ron Jon's Surf Shop, a beach emporium that had interesting sculptures of beach scenes out front. Overall, we thought this Volksmarch was interesting mainly for the Lori Wilson Park and beach stretches, and could be a lot of fun when warm, but was otherwise a "do once" walk.

After thankfully hopping back in the car and starting the engine to get the heater going, we drove further south A1A looking for a discount store to buy more underwater cameras and film. Having no luck, we went across the causeway back to I-95 and after stopping for gas at a likely interchange we followed our noses and found a Wal Mart nearby. This was a Wal Mart Superstore, which was essentially a full-sized grocery store grafted onto an enlarged Wal Mart and was truly HUGE. This was so much larger than the ones in our area that we had to ask for directions to the camera section! But they did have the underwater cameras, film, and a pair of swim goggles I wanted so we grabbed them and headed for the check out.

We tossed our booty into the car and raced southward on I-95 to catch our ship. It was past 2 o'clock and we were starting to get antsy about getting to the ship on time. After all, we were only guessing about the pier at Port Everglades that the ship was leaving from, and we had to leave some margin for error in case we had to back up and drive to some other area of the port. Fortunately, when we arrived the approach road was clearly marked with the name of our ship (Sea Princess) and the pier where it was anchored (which reassured us that we had the right place), so we got to the correct parking garage on the first try.

After a final sort of "things to go on the cruise" versus "things to keep in the car", we carried our baggage to the terminal next door to drop it off and then went thru in-processing for the cruise. Monika was puzzled that our cruise ID cards had a strange name on them, but I had a ready explanation and reassured her that the name was probably that of our room steward (dumb Bob, I should have known better!). She checked our shore excursions and they were correctly made out with our name, and our steward had our nametag on the outside of our room (D 703), so she was reassured and we started to hang things up in the closet. But we were interrupted by the required boat drill, and that turned out to save us a lot of wasted effort.

Since our dining seating had not been specified, we went to the maitre d' right after the boat drill and got the early seating for dinner. By that time it was dinner so we went right in and had a marvelous meal with Ted and Joann, professional bridge instructors who exchange instruction for free cruising. Since they have cruised extensively, they had a lot of stories to tell.

The New Room: After dinner we returned to our room where our steward intercepted us to tell us that we were in the wrong room and have to move immediately! We were confused but it turned out we were upgraded to a stateroom with a balcony 3 decks up. We were happy with the exchange but had to repack in a hurry--we threw everything into our bags willy-nilly, emptied the safe, and gave all our luggage to the steward who trundled it up to A722 on the Aloha deck. (We later found out that Princess Cruise Line had automatically upgraded our cabin for some unknown reason.)

Sunday, December 31, 2000
We slept in until 6:30 and then headed off to the breakfast buffet after watching the sunrise from our balcony. The buffet had skim milk and cereal to go with the more tasty, high-fat options (like scrambled eggs with salmon), so we had a good and reasonably healthy breakfast. The waiters hovering about made me nervous--they would whisk the plates away as soon as we showed signs of being done and I'm simply not used to that much service.

After breakfast we sat on the deck with the GPS for determining our position and speed, and used our binoculars to watch the Bahamanian island of Eleuthera slide by. While doing this I used the Palm Pilot and keyboard to type the journal. The Palm Pilot and keyboard caused a lot of excitement--several people stopped by to examine it and ask about it. (As I write this we are at 24 deg 36 min North latitude and 76 deg 3 min West longitude and heading 240 degrees at 20 knots).

The ship moored off Princess Cay around 9:30. Princess Cay is a very small island barely separated from the south end of Eleuthera by a small channel. In warm weather, all the passengers disembark and take part in various water sports during the day until the ship departs at 5 pm. This was NOT warm weather. I was somewhat concerned about that when a crisp, cool breeze was blowing as we went ashore in a ship's tender. I got even more concerned when I saw that the local folks who were employed as life guards, food service, and so forth were all dressed in parkas with the hoods drawn over their heads! This was a bad sign.

We persevered, however, and dragged our snorkel gear to the designated reef snorkeling area. There we sat and waited for the sun to come out from behind the clouds so that it would be warm enough to swim. Unfortunately there were two layers of clouds hiding the sun, a low puffy layer of cumulus and a high, wispy layer that looked like cirrus. These layers were traveling in different directions due, no doubt, to the winds aloft and they teased us by alternately hiding the sun, and then just when we thought it would break thru one or the other cloud layer would rotate in to cover it again.

We passed some time by having a nice buffet lunch and laying in the deck chairs waiting for the sun, but we finally tired of this and took a walk north along the shoreline. The shore alternated rocky outcroppings of old coral reef and sandy nooks of beaches which were very pretty. I was wearing Tava sandals, which gave good grip on the coral and also allowed me to easily wash out the accumulated sand. I still had trouble with my footing where the coral at the high tide mark had grown a slippery layer of algae, so we tried to avoid that. Monika went barefoot on the sand and donned her sandals for walking on coral, so we both made out OK and had a nice walk. The island was longer than it first looked, however, and the walking was slow so we turned back after half an hour to the life-guarded recreation area.

The sun still wasn't out, but we were warmed up enough from our walk to chance the swim. We put on the gear--I was awkwardly splashing around in the shallows trying to put the fins on my feet and succeeding only in falling over and filling the foot cavity of the fins with sand. This probably looked comical to any observers, and I would have found it funny also if I weren't getting so darned cold in the process. Monika finally sat on a rock a little ways out in the water to put her fins on, which worked, and I followed her example.

The water was 74 degrees (supposedly--how would we know if they lied?) but the air temp was only 60 so we were slightly cold in the water and very cold when we popped up out of it. Nevertheless it was fun to see the fish and some coral formations--cold fun, but fun. The only other folks in the water were some people who I think were crazy Canadians and one other group who had the foresight to bring their wetsuits! We took pictures, but without the sun lighting the scene it is anyone's guess how they will turn out--they may just look like colorless fish on a gray background. After 30 minutes, we were both cold soaked and headed for shore. For a wonder, the sun beamed brilliantly on us for the 5 minutes it took to dry off and re-dress, thank heavens. Altho it was only 2:30, almost everyone else had already left to return to the ship. The area that was designed to accommodate at least 1,000 guests had less than 50 and felt deserted, so we also packed it in and returned to the ship.

New Year's Eve: We were thoroughly chilled, so the first item on the agenda after returning to ship was to jump into the hot tub to warm up for a few minutes. There are several hot tubs on board ship, but quite a few people had the same idea we did and we had to squeeze into one with 4 other folks. The water was quite hot and in short order we were, as my mother used to say, "toasty warm and cozy". Unfortunately the water had a high chlorine content and after a short while Monika started to get a burning sensation in her eyes. It didn't bother me for some reason, but we quit the hot tub to return to our stateroom and take a short nap before the New Year's Eve festivities. We didn't nap more than an hour, but it was just enough time to give us energy for the evening.

Since this was a formal dinner, Monika was wearing a nice dress and I my tuxedo, and we decided to have our picture taken before the meal. This took rather longer than we expected since each couple was posed in several different ways, so we had to skip the introductory cocktail party and go directly to our early seating in the Sicilian dining room.

We were at a new table this evening, and we met George and Maggie from California, who were on their 9th cruise! They seemed to be retired and enjoying every minute. So we chatted a bit about their cruising experiences while we savored a gourmet meal. They had been in the Mediterranean, down the Danube, up the Amazon, across the Panama Canal, North to Alaska, along both coasts of the US, and in the eastern Caribbean, but this was their first trip to the western Caribbean. Being veterans, their cruising experiences were informative. Apparently you still can get Yellow Fever shots when taking the Panama Canal cruise, which is something we had not considered.

After dinner we went to the Vista Lounge for a half-hour of dancing and stayed there to take in a show by a multi-instrumental performer named Mark Donaghue, which was a lot better than that bare description suggests. He seemed to specialize on the violin--Monika said he was quite good and she should know--but he also played a harmonica, a balalaika, and something that looked like a super-sized electronic ukelele as well as singing a couple of numbers. His voice was good but we both felt his violin/fiddle playing was the strong point of the act.

We returned to the cabin for a quick rest, but felt ourselves falling asleep (our normal bedtime is 9 pm), so we dragged ourselves up to the New Year's Eve party on the Riviera Deck that went from 1030 to midnight. They had a Jamaican band that played some Latin music and a lot of oldies, which was appropriate for the crowd! At least we could dance to about every other song, which we did. They handed out streamers to everyone in the crowd just before midnight and did a count down modeled on the one in Times Square, but on a much smaller scale, of course. At the stroke of midnight, streamers went flying everywhere and a large "2001" sign in front of the rear funnels lit up to the accompaniment of fireworks on each side of it. Then we sang "Auld Lang Syne" and kissed in the New Year. The party kept going afterwards, but we were exhausted and returned to our stateroom where we unfurled our last 2 streamers from our balcony and watched them drift slowly away in the sea before going to bed.

010101: New Year's Day, 2001--Happy New Year!
I saw a beautiful pink dawn break over our balcony around 6 o'clock and couldn't restrain myself, so I got up and took pictures. This awakened Monika irretrievably so we dressed to take in an early breakfast before our first walk of the day. We dined looking over the bow at the sun rising out of the Caribbean Sea (22 deg, 1 min N, 76 deg, 22 min W, 15 knots heading East). I was awfully hungry (all that exercise dancing the previous night?) and had a big breakfast.

We then rested in the cabin a bit before doing a "deck walk" on the Promenade Deck which is a complete circle around the ship. We were given tickets worth $.50 for walking a mile, which is 3 circuits. It was a good excuse to get out and walk and that morning we walked 2 miles just to get some exercise. We then put on our bathing suits and went to the pool area amidships to just laze around by the pool for a while before our next exercise walk at 1100. I worked on the journal while Monika wrote her sister Heinke until it was time for the next walk. We completed 6 laps (2 miles) in under 30 minutes, so we kept a good 4 mph pace and kept in some kind of condition for doing the additional Volksmarches we planned to take on our way back north to Fairfax.

Exercise sometimes suppresses the appetite, but not always as we found out when we entered the lunch buffet at 1130 and found Hungarian goulash as a featured entree. We both decided we like the buffets for breakfast and lunch much better than the formal dining option that the Royal Caribbean line used on our first cruise. Princess Cruise Line does have formal dining available for breakfast and lunch, but we prefer the flexibility for time and exact selection of food that the buffet option provides (besides, that was really good goulash!).

We had only had 6 hours of sleep, so after lunch we crashed and took a nap, sleeping right thru our planned 230 pm deck-walking session. But we did awake in time to attend the wine-tasting session we had signed up for the previous evening. Monika found the wines palatable while I was less sure, but we had fun and learned a lot.

To close off the afternoon, we checked some books out of the library and visited the ship's bridge. I checked out a book of travel stories starting with the Egyptians and a book on cruise ships. Monika checked out an Anne Perry mystery and "The Cat Who Robbed a Bank". After depositing these in our room we went forward and observed the operation of the ship. The ship's radar displays, autopilot, and control mechanisms reminded me strongly of a commercial aircraft cockpit, only much larger, with room to walk between the duty stations. Two helmsmen were on duty at all times, one stationed on each wing of the bridge. When the ship is on autopilot, they serve as traffic lookouts, which is reassuring. This ship has an experimental system for displaying electronic charts, but because the system is not officially certified, they still plot courses and officially use the standard paper charts.

After dinner we saw a show called "Life in the City", which was a loosely connected pastiche of dance and song numbers. The dancing was very good, the singing was all right (Monika was firmly of the opinion that our voice teacher Laurie's advanced students would do much better), but it was totally lacking any thematic connection that we could discern. It was almost a shame to see that much talent go to waste when they could have done a musical very well. Nevertheless it was fun and very relaxing before bedtime.

Tuesday January 2, 2001--Anniversary Day!!
We spent our 31st Anniversary in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, on a mountain-biking adventure and climbing Dunns River Falls. After breakfast and the "Walk-a-Mile", which we did twice, we disembarked to the pier for our tour. We departed on a mini-bus with our guide Lovelin and the driver Lucky out of the town and up into the hills. Ocho Rios is a small town (about 10,000) and appears poor, but the Jamaicans seem proud of their schools and education system. Lovelin said the major problem was a lack of jobs since the Reynolds Aluminum bauxite mine closed down in 1990.

We drove thru a splendidly verdant valley called "Fern Gully" which had really spectacular ferns (large and lots of them) and some tropical trees. It is a protected area and I would have liked to hike it, but we didn't stop. Along the way we saw roadside vendors dressed in fern costumes and even walking around on stilts. Altho this was the main road to the capital of Kingston, the road was just a narrow 2-lane blacktop with no shoulders and no painted stripes. Since tolerances were close and they also used the British left-side driving system, the drive itself was rather exciting, perhaps more exciting than it should have been.

After Fern Gully we soon turned right off the main road along a private gravel road to Murphy's Hill, which appeared to be an old plantation house--it still had fish ponds with some sad looking goldfish or carp of some kind. We watched the first group set out on bicycles down the hill, but our group had to wait over an hour for them to bring up more bicycles! The main rabble-rouser of our group had just called a meeting to start a revolution and issue non-negotiable demands when the Calvary arrived with more bicycles and we got back on track.

The bikes did not appear that old, but they were truly in sad shape. Almost all the chains were rusty, most shifters were stuck in one position, and many of the brakes were non-functional. I picked out the best of a bad lot for Monika, but I had to go thru 3 bikes to get one I could ride. The first bike I chose had an almost flat front tire and was basically unsteerable--I could not get it to track in a straight line. The second bike they offered had a front brake that broke repeatedly despite several efforts to adjust and tighten it. By this time everyone else had left and I was desperate when they offered me a third bike. The tires were inflated and both brakes worked, but it only had one gear and only half of the right-side pedal. Thankful to have something minimally functional, I jumped on it and pedaled furiously after the group.

At the first hill, Monika also found out she had only one gear, which was a relatively high gear, and I found out that even my one gear would slip with a sudden "ching" and totally give way with a lurch if pressed too hard. On previous bikes where I've had this problem, it indicated worn pawls in the freewheeling cluster in the rear. In any case, whenever I pushed hard on the pedals I had no gear at all, and there was no chance now to get a different bike. So Monika and I and a group of the other riders with similar problems (about 1/4 of the group) ended up pushing our bikes up any steep hill. Fortunately the route was mostly downhill so that wasn't as big problem as it would have been in normally hilly terrain, but the condition of the jeep track we were following was.

The track alternated between normal gravel, mud, grass, small rocks, medium rocks, really big rocks, and the slipperiest limestone I have ever experienced. The limestone was the most dangerous because it was the most surprising. It looked like a nice solid surface of rock and since there was no coating of leaves, sand, or gravel you expected to get a reasonably good grip on it. Wrong! The surface had some kind of algae or slime mold on it and was so slick you could barely stand up, much less ride a bike. I do not exaggerate when I say it was really just as slippery as glare ice would be up north. We ALL had to walk our bikes thru some sections and even the walking was treacherous.

Monika fell once when she tried to get off the bike at the beginning of one bad section but her foot slipped away when she put it down. It was slow fall into soft mud, so she got dirty but wasn't hurt. Others were not so lucky. One oriental girl fell on the stones and gashed her knee. Our rabble-rouser friend was apparently trying to be macho (he was in the lead) and crashed 3 times. Both his elbow and legs were torn and bleeding copiously by the end of the trip, and his shorts were covered with mud. I last saw him filling out an "Incident Report Form" with the tour director at the end of the bike trip, but the rest of us took the spills as part of the expected price of an adventurous ride. We all enjoyed it after it was over, but during the ride Monika was getting very anxious about getting down in one piece, and I heard her say things like, "Who's idea was this anyway? Mine?" I reassured her that it had been, in fact, her idea in the first place and she replied, "Well remind me in the future not to take any more tours labeled 'adventurous'!" But really we all had a jolly good time and had a fun adventure.

Climbing Dunns River Falls Jamaica: We then divided into a group that was going to climb Dunns River Falls and a group that was going to walk up the adjoining staircase and watch the first group fall down in the water. We, of course, were in the climbing group. We collected the required guide (named "Boswell"--the residual British influence appears in Jamaica in the most unexpected ways!) and descended the staircase to start our climb at the base of the falls where the river empties out into the Caribbean Sea. But then our guide suddenly disappeared and we saw him no more. What were we to do?

We waited around at the base of the falls for a while, but then one of our group who had done this climb before suggested that we would just go for it and do it on our own. Emboldened by his confidence, we agreed despite the signs disclaiming legal liability for injuries unless you were with a licensed guide. Having just had some of our party injured on the bike ride, I can assure you that we took the possibility of injury seriously! The walk up the falls was, in fact, rather treacherous so that we all had to be quite careful and help each other thru the critical places, but it was whales of fun. The water was warm so that even slipping and falling into one of the many pools was more refreshing than dangerous. Falling on the rocks, could however, have been quite serious and stepping in the wrong place could have sprained an ankle, so we were very careful. Monika did in fact sprain her thumb while trying to hold to some slippery rocks on while she was falling, and I barked my shins on some underwater rocks while stepping blindly into a deep pool, but neither of us broke anything. It started pouring rain at the end, but we were already soaked and it was a warm rain, so we didn't mind it a bit--as one person remarked, it just kept down the number of solicitations that we would normally have to endure to get back to the parking lot. We returned to the bus to dry off and were thankful that we had survived an adventurous day without serious injury!

We were ravenously hungry when we returned on board and had a meal at the buffet line around 4 pm. This rather spoiled our appetite for dinner, but we couldn't help it--I don't have much willpower. At dinner, we had wonderful hand-made pasta and were presented with a special anniversary cake with the waiters singing "Happy Anniversary" which is exactly like "Happy Birthday" but with changed lyrics. We were too tired after dinner to attend the evening entertainment, so we just quietly read our books and turned in early. But it was very memorable 31st Anniversary indeed!!

Wednesday January 3, 2001
After a quick overnight cruise from Jamaica, we docked at Grand Cayman about 8 am and found out our diving tour was cancelled! High wind and waves probably made it too dangerous. So we scrambled around and checked for other tours, but all snorkeling on the windward side of the island were cancelled and the snorkeling tours on 7 mile beach on the leeward side of the island were all full. In desperation we signed up for a short bus tour of the western side of the island that left about 11 am. Then we gathered our walking things and embarked on a ship tender for shore. The tender ride was one of the most exciting parts of the day, as it turned out.

Finishing the cards, we went to mail them and were surprised to find that the Post Office refused to give change in US currency. This was official policy, but seemed to be some kind of political statement rather than a practical necessity as all the other stores in town except one were able to give us change in US currency. This sensitivity is particularly curious since Grand Cayman is well known to be the money-laundering capital of the world. I'm sure that they had a tremendous amount of US currency available in small, unmarked bills! I had forgotten about this until I was marveling at the astonishing number of large banks in such a small city. Scotia Bank and Montreal Bank from Canada, Bank of America from the US, and Dresdner Bank AG from Germany were the ones we saw on our short walk and they were BIG branches. After posting the cards we returned to the dock for our tour.

The tour essentially was a drive up 7-mile beach and back with 2 stops, a turtle farm and a place called Hell. Seven Mile Beach was spectacular and really does extend 7 miles up the west coast of the island. What we didn't realize was that it started just outside of the downtown area--we could have brought our snorkel gear and simply walked to the beach and dived in, but we didn't know that of course and so had not brought our gear.

Our first stop at the turtle farm was really very interesting. They raise greenback turtles there in a series of tanks. The tanks are refreshed continuously with seawater, which is facilitated by being located right at the shore. The little turtles were really cute and I found out that the gender depended solely on the temperature during incubation--they kept it at 82 degrees to get a 50-50 mix of males and females. About 3/4 of the turtles were sold for food and 1/4 released back into the wild, possibly to compensate for taking some wild animals each year for breeding purposes--I would guess to enhance the diversity of the gene pool in the population and avoid inbreeding. Our guide claimed they could stay underwater for 2 days due to a slow metabolism, and that they could live for a 100 years--a long life in the slow lane!

Our next stop was Hell, which turned out to be a weirdly eroded rock formation near the northern tip of the island. We stopped at the Inferno Night Club parking lot and walked thru the club to the rock formation out back. It was, in fact, quite desolate-looking and had apparently inspired someone to describe it as hellish, so the name stuck, or at least that was the story our guide told.

Walking around Georgetown, Grand Cayman: From Hell we drove back along 7-mile beach to the edge of the downtown area where we stopped at a rum cake store. Manufacturing and selling rum cakes seems to be a major Cayman Island industry. Somewhat like fruitcakes as Christmas time, they are everywhere you look in Georgetown. We started to wind our way back to the center of town by taking all the side streets so that we would see everything, and along the way we found a genuine, honest-to-god English bakery. Everyone was speaking with real British accents (I think) and this was the only other place that refused to give us change in US currency as official policy. Despite this nuisance factor, the sandwiches looked good and we needed a snack, so we ponied up an amount of cash as close as we could to the price of a ham salad sandwich for Monika and a turkey salad for me. The store was apparently patronized mostly by locals because the cashier had a really hard time calculating the price with the exchange rate of 80 cents Grand Cayman = 1 US dollar. We got some Cayman change back, which was essentially useless so we kept it as a souvenir.

The sandwiches were not what we expected--"salad" did not mean a meat and mayonnaise mixture but rather that they put lettuce and tomato on top of hunks of meat. Since I didn't need the fat of the mayonnaise, I was just as happy. We contentedly chewed on the sandwiches as we zigzagged back to the center of town thru all the byways. Almost all of the shops were expensive boutiques and we got the strong impression that this was a very wealthy society--our guide had said that there was 0 unemployment but that the cost of living was so high that he needed to work multiple jobs just to live. That was the same song-and-dance we had heard from our tour guide in Hawaii, and it may have been a ploy for bigger tips, but the nature of the shops, the cars, and the dress of the people suggested a society based on a high average level of wealth. We finally broke down and bought a Pina Colada rum cake at a store in a small shopping center that had a column-shaped aquarium with live coral and fish. It was good I took some pictures, because despite my best efforts that was the best view of a coral reef I would get on the whole trip.

We curled back around to the dock area and found a Cayman Museum right across from the dock in a historic old house where we watched a short, impressionistic film and then toured the open exhibits. The natural history exhibit was quite small but very good. The map of the ocean floor showed the unbelievably steep drop-offs on all sides of the island. This drop-off is so steep that the bow of our ship was anchored in 80 feet of water but the stern was perched over water 1000 feet deep! The cultural section consisted solely of the art of local residents, which was interesting but mostly mediocre quality. I would have liked more descriptions of the culture itself, but that may have been in the one room that was closed off for refurbishing. What I could read from the doorway gave some information on the other 2 Cayman Islands, which are much smaller than Grand Cayman and have a lot fewer people.

I saw a map that I liked and wanted to purchase, but the gift shop was closed for inventory. However, the attendant said that it would probably reopen around 3 pm. We said we'd be back and went across the street to buy a bottle of rum (make rum cake at home!), but we weren't prepared for the fact that they would only give it to us on the tender back to the ship! So we decided to take the tender back to the ship, drop off the rum, and grab the next tender back to shore to buy the map and then tender back to the ship. After all, the tender rides were the most exciting thing going on that day!

Getting back off the ship turned out to be a bit of a problem because the crew was very reluctant to let us go back to shore so close to the return deadline--they kept asking if we were sure we knew we had to be back by 3:30. We assured them we did and jumped on the last tender to shore, ran to the museum shop to buy the maps, and found out that the museum had the cheapest prices in town for the 4 oz size of rum cake! Go figure! So we also bought another rum cake and ran back to the dock to catch the last tender back to the ship.

The Captain had the departure organized to a "T". Apparently he had charted a local tender for the last trip back to the ship, and while we were traveling back we saw the ship's tenders all hoisted back onto the lifeboat davits and secured. So by the time we embarked on the ship everything else was read to go--he had the ship underway within 5 minutes of the time the last of our party came aboard.

We had a nice dinner again with George and Maggie, but our communication was hampered by the fact that apparently English was not their mother tongue, so we occasionally had trouble understanding them, especially George because he spoke so softly. He dressed, however, very nattilly and had a big gold pinkie ring, looking like nothing so much to me as a Mafia Don. But they had a son and daughter in their 30s who had degrees and careers in computer science and business administration, respectively, so who knows? After dinner we saw a part of the C'est Magnifique show from the ship's dance company. This was more thematic than their previous presentation, so we watched it for a while but the sound amplification was turned up so high that it literally chased us out. So we turned in early to prepare for a big day in Cozumel.

Thursday, January 4, 2001—Cozumel
We were up early for the "Walk-a-Mile" deck-walking session. We had already walked a mile when Trent, the crew member running the exercise classes, arrived on the starboard side aft. He was really nice about giving us 50 cents for each mile walked, and taking our word for how much we'd already walked! We had our goals set on at least 1 free T-shirt by the end of the cruise. Then we ran back to our stateroom, gathered all our snorkeling gear, and joined the folks in the Vista Lounge aft who were waiting for their tours to begin.

Princess had this as well organized as the other shore excursions we had done. We walked straight across the pier to a local catamaran ferry that carried us across to Playa Del Carmen on the mainland. The ride across was only 45 minutes but it was moderately rough and several people became seasick, and one person apparently had a seizure, but we didn't know about that until we returned later that day. At Play Del Carmen we were carefully directed onto a bus and had our guide Jose chat with us about Mayan culture on our way the ruins at Tulum, which was interesting--he showed us a reproduction of a Mayan book made from tree bark paper.

At Tulum, a second guide named Juan conducted a 25-minute tour of the highlights of the ceremonial area, which was a rectangle about 1/4 to 1/3 of a mile on a side, clearly demarcated by a large stone wall. We entered thru a very narrow portal and walked very short distances to the major temple sites for each part of his presentation. The Mayans had the concept of a flat, square earth with about 40 gods who were instrumental in making it all work. The "upside-down" god could be clearly seen in some of the bass-relief over temple doors. Chac, the rain god, seemed particularly important and a large altar out front was used for human sacrifices. Apparently being a sacrifice was a great honor--at the end of the ball games, the Captain of the winning team, not the losers, was the person who was beheaded as a sacrifice since he was the most worthy.

The Mayans purposefully deformed their babies' heads with attached boards to flatten them. To get the cross-eyed look that they prized, they would hang a bright object just in front of the nose of the baby so that its eyes would become crossed--here I had thought there was something genetic about that characteristic. But the worst was the use of babies to sacrifice to Chac for ensuring rain. The guide blamed the Toltecs and Aztecs for introducing human sacrifice to the Mayans, but it sounded like a convenient external attribution for the tourist trade to me; after all, the historical records are extremely sketchy from that period (mostly due to the Spaniards destroying them, I'll admit).

We were also intrigued by the tall bearded leader who appeared in this period--our guide suggested he was a Norseman and said that an engraving of this man clearly showed a Viking ship in the background. It was fun speculation, but I find you have to take the guide's stories with a big grain of salt--the plaques at Tulum said the ruins were from 1300 AD while our guide had claimed it was from about 900 AD and was well over 1000 years old. Still and all, it was plenty old and very interesting to see. The ruins are right on a cliff right above the Caribbean, and a path led down to the beach. A lot of people were swimming and it was really very inviting, but we had to get back to the bus, so we reluctantly took a last few pictures and headed back.

The trip from the ruins to the lagoon at Xel Ha was very short as the distance is only about 10 miles or so. We had bag lunches from Princess Cruises that came in the nicest blue nylon cool packs with shoulder straps that I had seen. The lunch was canned tuna and fruit cups since nothing fresh was allowed to enter Mexico, so I ate all the tuna and Monika had all the crackers (Jack Sprat and wife). The lunch bags seemed so handy that we fervently hoped they would not take them back at the ship, and it turned out we could keep them so we were happy.

Xel Ha lagoon: Xel Ha is a big lagoon at the edge of the sea that has brackish water. There is no real beach, but a lot of stairs to enter the lagoon. Rows of beach chairs surround each entrance. We only had about 2 hours there before the bus was to leave for the return trip, so we hurried in and set our bags beside some chairs near an entrance into the lagoon. We had, however, picked chairs where we had to walk across some of the rocks to the lagoon, so we gathered all our snorkeling gear and carefully eased our way over to the stairs with many "ouches" for our tender feet. At the stairs I donned all my gear and slid into the water, and then held Monika as she put on her fins--her sprained thumb made this far more difficult (see Ocho Rios).

After we had on all our gear, we snorkeled off the stairs across a narrow part of the lagoon. The lagoon is dotted with dead coral where you could find most of the fish. Our first encounter with the coral was an archway where we saw a medium-sized deep blue fish. Thus encouraged, we swam on and came to a large coral formation where we disturbed a really LARGE fish--it appeared to be 2 feet long and at least 8 inches wide, surprisingly plump (grouper?). Monika tried to follow to get a good picture, but gave up the pursuit quickly as the fish was much faster and disappeared.

We decided to swim across the lagoon, which is about 1/4 mile across, and passed by a pile of stones. When we looked closer there was a school of at least 100 fish that were swimming just above it, almost like a living layer covering the stone pile. That was weird, but very interesting and we watched for a while and tried to take several pictures of it. I found that I could not simply exhale and sink to the bottom as I can do in a freshwater pool. The saltwater and possibly the buoyancy vest and stuff were holding me up, so I had to do a true surface dive to get under and take the picture. Continuing across the lagoon, we headed into an arm that had a flag on a float, I think a Mexican flag but I'm not sure. Just before we reached it, we popped up to discuss the amount of time we had--I could make simple words or phrases clear by talking thru my snorkel, but any complex conversation had to take place at the surface. We weren't sure how much time we had and Monika was getting cold, so we turned back.

Monika was holding onto my hand, and she thought we were going in circles. I occasionally was popping up to check our direction, however, and reassured her that we were going in the right direction. I headed for a set of stairs that went directly from the water to the sandy part of the beach so that we would not have to walk over the stones again. Besides all the fish we saw on the way back, a bonus at the end was a large school of what I would call small "neon" fish at the shore, each of which had a bright blue fluorescent stripe on them. The only other times I have seen such fish were in aquariums, so seeing them in the wild was quite a kick.

We got out and had to walk a bit to find our chairs. We had chosen 2 chairs next to a tree, but all the trees looked the same. We finally found them and stripped off the snorkeling gear. Checking my watch, we found we had less than 1/2 an hour left and we wanted to see more of the lagoon, so we took a quick fresh-water shower and headed for the changing rooms to change into our dry clothes. After changing, we looked at a map and found there was a great circle path all the way around the lagoon, but it looked a lot longer than the 15 minutes we had left! We just had time to walk a little bit toward the head of the lagoon and then retrace our steps to the entrance.

Along the way we passed the dolphin basin where they have "swim with the dolphins" during the day. At the moment nothing was happening but we wanted a picture so I gestured at the dolphins in the tank. Nobody was more surprised than I was when they started jumping around and doing some tricks. Monika had her camera out in a flash and started taking pictures, but they didn't always jump precisely when I raised my arm, so we don't know how the pictures will turn out. But we had fun watching them for a while before we returned to the bus. The ferry trip back was smoother, thank goodness, and we were only slightly late for dinner. We both felt that Cozumel would be a place to come back to as we hadn't really seen anything of Cozumel Island (it looked nice from the pier, though). We would also like to definitely revisit Xel Ha and another natural park area in that region that featured wild animals as well as a small spring for swimming.

Friday, January 5, 2001
Friday was our last full day on the ship and was an "at sea" day where we were returning to Ft. Lauderdale thru the passage between Cuba and Key West. Our main goal was to do enough exercise options to earn enough "cruise dollars" to get the special T-shirts, and our secondary goal was to relax and enjoy the day at sea. So we alternated between doing the "Walk-a-Mile" (three times at 2 miles each), stretching exercises ($ .50 each), and aerobics with periods of lying motionless in the sun next to the pool.

Monika decided to attend a cooking seminar and galley tour in the Vista Lounge. It was held by the main Chef of the ship, the maitre' de Mario, and our headwaiter Vincenzo. While the chef was in full regalia, Mario and Vincenzo were wearing paper hats with big "Food Excellence" labels, which immediately gave her the impression that this would not be all that serious.

The cruise director Peter tried to introduce them while Mario and Vincenzo would take picture poses anytime a camera was pointed in their direction and yell "Picture" while making a big smile. When Peter asked Mario where he came from, Mario said, "From the kitchen!" Peter also asked Vincenzo about what they had to eat when he had recently visited Mario. Vincenzo said, "Chicken Ding". Peter asked how that was prepared and Vincenzo said, "You put a chicken into the microwave and when it goes DING it is done!" This gives you an idea of the type of broad humor these guys were doing.

For the cooking demonstration they handed out a leaflet with 3 recipes, and Mario started the first one, which was sautéed pasta and vegetables. Any time Peter would read the directions to "carefully measure" something, Mario would simply dump in a bunch of it. When he had a pan full of pasta and vegetables he would stir it by tossing it in the air, not catching all of it in the process. While they were clowning, Peter told them that their next trip would be to Alaska. They asked how he knew that and Peter said he had heard the Captain saying it would be a cold day before they had another trip on this ship.

The chef came next and made a serious demonstration of a sautéed shrimp dish. The show ended with Vincenzo demonstrating how to make cherries jubilee. Mario added a whole bottle of Kirschwasser and set it all aflame, which was pretty spectacular. The tour of the galley that followed was anticlimactic--an awful lot of very shiny stainless steel. After Monika told me how funny it all was, I was sorry I had missed the show.

The show also had a lot of flashing strobe lights and so forth. While Mario was cooking and the lights were flashing, the Captain's voice came on saying that the ship had stopped because of an electrical problem and they were trying to fix it. Being inside, Monika couldn't see whether the ship was moving or not, so she thought this was all part of the act. When she got back to the deck, she was surprised to notice the ship had actually stopped and asked me if the Captain had made an announcement about an electrical problem. I assured her that he really had done so, and in fact we remained becalmed at sea for about 2 hours. I later noted with amusement that the "Ship's Log" chronicle they distributed at the end of the voyage made no mention of engine failure or being becalmed for 2 hours, but did give our position at 1200 which was during this period. Since the power was still working and food was plentiful, we joked that having to spend an extra day on the ship wouldn't be the worst fate. But the interlude was only 2 hours and the Captain made up the time by cruising faster during the night.

This gave us time to work on our suntans. It was a bright, sunny, cloudless day so we actually had to be careful and use sun block to avoid getting burned. When got to hot, we would take a dip in either the lower pool or the upper pool near our chairs and then air dry. Monika was bored, but I found it a great way to relax and had some time to write in the trip journal.

When we got ready for the 2 o'clock walk, Monika convinced me to call it quits as we had to pack all our belongings and get our tagged luggage outside the door before 5 pm. We quickly changed out of our swimsuits and put on our walking shoes so we could start walking our 2 miles (6 laps of the Promenade Deck). We walked with the walking partners we had met earlier in the cruise, Bart and Joan, and told them about Volksmarching as they seemed to be avid walkers.

After our walk, we also attended Trent's stretching class ($ .50 each). As before, I thought the stretching did me a lot of good and was really trying to remember them for later use. We collected our last cruise dollars and rushed up to the gift shop to buy our Cruisercise T-shirts so that we could wear them to the 3 o'clock aerobics session. A couple from our walking group gave us some of their surplus cruise dollars because we were a little short for the price of 2 T-shirts, which we thought was very nice. In general on this cruise we met really nice people. The age mix was mainly couples from 40-60 with many families, so we fit right in. There were correspondingly fewer of the 70-80 crowed that we had found on Royal Caribbean. That was just as well by me as I found the most grumping and complaining from the folks in that age range. There were also fewer of the "swinging singles" 20-40 crowd that is commonly found on Carnival Cruise Lines, and that was also fine with me as it was quiet enough to sleep at night--we were never interrupted during the night even tho the folks next door had a baby! The cabins must have had good sound attenuation, at least on the Aloha deck where we were (A722).

Having bought and put on our T-shirts (Monika put hers on in the elevator) we rushed to the aerobics class with Trent only to find that we were the only ones there! He was reluctant to give a class for only 2 persons and we could understand that, so we tried out the treadmills. This ship was stable that it was quite easy to walk the treadmills, even at 4 mph with hands swinging they way I do it. The treadmills were first class and had heart rate monitors that worked by gripping two metal pads. Monika found it easy to use, but I had to bend over and it made my gait really unnatural. I was surprised to see her heart rate at 148, which I thought was very high. I tried mine and find my heart rate was only 113, which was not aerobic, so I increased the speed to 4 mph and the incline to 4 degrees, which is more than I usually do at home. When I tested again, my heart rate has DECREASED to 111, so I just gave up and kept it there until we finished. After 20 minutes I convinced Monika to slow down so her heart rate would get under 130. We both had a cool-down period after that and then returned to our cabin to pack.

Last night on board: We had a last dinner with George and Maggie and found out that he had owned a Mercury Comet for 22 years, putting 170,000 miles on it in the process. So it turned out he and I had more in common than we thought--I guess he wasn't a Mafia Don. The dessert was Baked Alaska. The assistant waiters carried the flaming trays in a parade thru the dining room, which was an interesting sight, and Maggie made a movie while George and Monika took pictures.

After dinner we went to the final dance show in the Princess Theater. The theme was "Glamour". This was another pastiche of song and dance acts very loosely woven around the theme of glamour and the quality of each dance was very good. But the sequencing of this show was even weirder than the earlier ones in that they interrupted the dance routines for 2 completely unrelated acts. First came a magician who specialized in making birds appear and disappear. He was quite good, but it was so unexpected that I didn't really think he was serious for a while. The second unrelated act was an acrobat who did some remarkable balancing and flipping around, especially considering that this was on a moving ship.

After the show we went to bed but awoke in the middle of the night when a beautiful almost-full moon came shining in over the balcony. We both grabbed our cameras and tried our best to take some shots of it, but I've wasted more than one roll of film taking moonlight shots, so we'll see how they turn out. Watching the moonlight streaming into our room over the ocean waves was a truly unforgettable sight--one that you file away in your memory even if you can't take a decent picture!

Saturday, January 6, 2001
The ship arrived right on time at 6 am just outside of Port Everglades, having made up the 2 hours we had been becalmed the previous day. Since it looked like a beautiful dawn, we both took our cameras on deck to take sunrise pictures. It was still mostly dark when we first arrived on deck, so we took pictures of the lighted ship until dawn. As the sun rose and they took the ship in to dock, we tried to find the nicest sunrise pictures with views of the ship or the harbor.

We had our last breakfast at the breakfast buffet and got ready for disembarkation. This was organized as efficiently as everything else on the trip. The people with early flights were in the "Red" category and disembarked first. We were in the "Orange 2" category which disembarked about 8:30, but we were very surprised that we didn't have to stop for immigration or customs. Immigration was apparently handled on the ship for all non-US citizens. Similarly, people who had to pay duty to Customs were apparently called to the Purser's office individually before we all disembarked. This made our exit go like greased lightening except for searching for our luggage in two rows of very similar-looking orange-tagged luggage, which took a few minutes. Regretfully saying good-bye to the ship, we walked 100 feet to the parking garage, stowed all our things back in the car, and were on the road back north by 9 o'clock.

For a mid-day break, we stopped in Winter Garden just north of Orlando to take a Volksmarch. The starting point had shifted from the Rainbow food store listed in our guide to the garage of a club member on the main street of Winter Garden, which we learned by calling the POC. After signing in and getting directions (no map for this one), we started on the trail.

Winter Garden Volksmarch: The basic route of the Winter Garden Volksmarch resembles a very large figure 8. The first leg was out a mile or so on side streets to an elementary school. We were astonished that this relatively small school had at least 15 modular classrooms parked in its yard--there must have been more trailer-type classrooms than normal school classrooms! It reminded me of my brother talking about how school bond issues were regularly voted down by the old folks in West Palm Beach when he lived there.

At the school we turned right past a pretty little pocket park and joined the West Orange Trail, a rails-to-trails conversion that crosses this part of Florida in an east-west direction. This path was nicely paved and about twice the width of the similar W & OD trail in our area, which made it easier for bicyclists and roller-bladers to pass pedestrians. So we had an easy walk straight out to the town of Oakland, where we turned right after traversing a picturesque trailside park.

We looped around Oakland and brushed past the shore of a nearby lake just to the north of town. The town itself is "old Florida" with modest bungalows and so forth. The "new Florida" was represented by two large walled and gated communities along the lakeshore that had much newer and larger homes. We saw several roadside ads for these gated communities, so apparently they are all the rage right now.

At the edge of town we closed the upper loop and rejoined the West Orange Trail back toward Winter Garden. After retracing our steps about a mile we continued straight on into town and then turned off the trail to loop around parts of Winter Garden. We rejoined the trail at a small museum located in the old train station, which had a brilliantly yellow caboose outside and looked very interesting. At the intersection beside the museum we turned right on the trail and followed it smack dab down the middle of the main street, which had an unusual collection of businesses including a dance and performing arts studio. At the edge of town we veered left a couple of blocks to return to the starting point. All in all, this was a very easy and interesting walk, and we only wished we had set aside enough time to tour the museum and maybe climb around in the caboose!

After the Volkmarch we continued steadily north on the interstate except when we tried to find the roadside shop that had sold cypress burls on our previous visits. We detoured a bit to track up Route 27 to Ocala but did not find any trace of it. We did find one store selling burls, but they were already closed, so we continued on past Ocala to Gainesville, Florida, where we stopped at a Motel 6 for the night. Dinner was at Shoney's that was good but paled by comparison with the ship's cuisine. We had again gone from Fancy Food to Fast Food in 24 hours, and the cruise began to seem quite dreamlike.

Sunday, January 7, 2001
We slept in until 8, possibly making up for the sleep we lost taking moonlight pictures! Still, we had breakfast at a Waffle House (waffles, naturally) and were able to hit the road by 9:30, which was a little late but not too bad as we didn't have a huge amount of driving planned for this day. Our main goal was to drive to Tallahassee and take the Volksmarch there as part of our "50 states and 51 Capitals" project, so we drove north to Interstate 10 and turned west to Tallahassee.

Tallahassee Volksmarch: We found the Maclay State Park, the site of the Tallahassee Volksmarch, after overshooting it the first time we turned off the interstate due to having absolutely no sign for the turn off. Missing road signs happened to us repeatedly during our driving in Florida. But we backtracked to the main gate and stopped to at the entrance station to ask for the Volksmarch box since the Starting Point had not specified the location of the box and we had no clue. It turned out the box was at the entrance station, so we paid the entrance fee, signed in, and took the map and directions for the walk.

This park was a quite sizable park located just on the northern outskirts of the city of Tallahassee, and the trail covered both major trail loops in the park. The pattern for the 10 Km walk was of a figure 8 with one loop circling a small lake, and an additional 2 Km extension includes a tour of the gardens. Almost all of the walk was on natural surfaces, mostly sandy soil or a forest layer of pine needles and old leaves, but occasionally packed dirt. Although the dirt part might get muddy when wet, it was dry when we visited and we had no problems at all. The forest trail was easier on our feet than pavement and a nice change of pace from city walks. The trail also accommodates mountain bikers and horse riders, but it is wide enough that there is no problem passing. Trail signs specified that bicyclists had to yield to pedestrians and they both had to yield to horses, which was good to know. The trail was very flat for the most part but had 2 minor "hills" which gave it a 2 rating, but we would consider that a "Florida 2" which would be a 1+ in Virginia and a 1 in Colorado.

There were several nice views of the lake on the second loop, but otherwise the scenery was mostly deciduous forest in the wintertime--that is to say, leafless trees. Except for being passed by bicyclists, it was very quiet and relaxing. All in all, this was a very nice forest walk and is a great change-of-pace for getting credit for a state capital. We were tired at the end and decided to skip the 2 Km option of walking thru the gardens, but the ranger said that when it was in full bloom in mid-March it was quite beautiful.

After we finished the Volksmarch around 2:10 we were so famished that we attacked the snacks we had in the car: fudge, old sweet rolls, licorice, and corn chips were all washed down with Coca-Cola (we were desperate). We dropped off our start cards and check at the entrance station and resumed our drive north in the direction of Atlanta. We stopped for the night about 6 pm when the sun was setting just outside the city of Macon, Georgia.

Monday, January 8, 2001
After sleeping in a bit, we packed up and left Macon around 8 am, which had us arriving at Atlanta shortly after 9 o'clock. Although it was the tail end of the rush hour, the traffic backed up solidly for the last 10-15 miles, reminding us of home (which was NOT a good thing). However, we were able to use the HOV lanes as they only required 2 people, and this saved us a tremendous amount of waiting plus aggravation. We found the Quality Hotel that was our starting point quite easily, but had to search out and pay for parking. The cheapest we could find was $2.50 for the first hour and $2 each additional hour. At those rates, we didn't want to tarry any longer than was necessary, so we set off at a brisk pace.

Atlanta Volksmarch: The Atlanta Volksmarch has 4 distinct areas of interest. The first loop was thru the park area developed for the 1996 Olympics. We also passed the CNN center and the Georgia Dome on this part of the walk. The highpoint was the Centennial Park, which was very pretty and more extensive than I remembered in 1996. There we saw the statue of De Corbitin, the father of the modern Olympic movement.

The second area of the walk was Georgia Tech University where the old Olympic Village is now used for student housing. We walked thru a tacky, run-down area to get back to the main business district, passing along the way the Fox Theater. This was a very large (4,000 seat) and unbelievably fancy movie theater that was originally built as a Masonic Temple in the 1920s. It was decorated in an intricate Moorish fashion with loads of gilt-covered gingerbread. After falling into disrepair, it was saved from demolition and renovated as a theater. I wish we could have seen the inside, which apparently has a ceiling painted to represent the sky.

The downtown district has many skyscrapers that created a wind-tunnel effect. Since the temperature was 46 degrees, having headwinds of 20 mph or more chilled us to the bone. The walk along Peachtree Street, one of the main streets of downtown Atlanta, ended at the Underground, which is a small mall built entirely underground. Besides giving us some respite from the cold, the mall had interesting shops and decorations including several antique automobiles with labels as to their year and model.

The final loop was around the State Capitol building, which had the de rigeur golden dome. Statues of famous folks in Georgia's history surround the building, but it was too cold to linger and read all the inscriptions! We curled back the car with 15 minutes to spare of the 2 hours and were happy to pay the parking attendant and leave Atlanta. Overall, we felt Atlanta was a big, dirty city with some nice Olympic facilities and Universities, but the people weren't friendly and seeing people yelling on the street or homeless huddled in doorways made it not much fun. It seemed to be a city where the wind was always against you, and we classified it in the "do once" category of Volksmarches.

We got out of Atlanta as fast as we could and headed on to Columbia, South Carolina, our next state capital. The drive east on I-20 was very relaxing due to almost no traffic, and we arrived at the downtown shortly after 3pm. We decided we had enough energy and time before sundown to do this Volksmarch, but had a little trouble finding the start point as the city had moved the Visitor Center.

Columbia Volksmarch
The Visitor Center for Columbia is now on Lady Street, and has information about the city as well as free calendars! The lady at the desk was very nice and helpful. We signed in and got both a map with directions and a separate pamphlet with information on all the historic buildings. We arranged it that Monika would do the map and directions while I was reading the information on the historical sites as we walked the route.

We went past the statehouse and then thru the University of South Carolina, which was founded in 1801 and thus predates the land-grant institutions of the Midwest. There we walked round the "Horseshoe" which was like the quadrangle of the original college and had a brick wall designed to keep the unruly students confined the college grounds. Apparently they not only drank like modern students but also liked to fire off their side arms! No wonder the city fathers wanted a wall. From the university area the walk led thru the adjacent historic area featuring many old mansions and houses.

One I found particularly interesting was a modest-looking cottage that was built by a slave woman named Celia Mann. She bought her freedom, walked from Charleston to Columbia, and built the house in 1850. She earned her living as a midwife and founded the First Calvary Baptist Church in the basement of that cottage. It currently houses a museum encompassing the history of that family and more generally slavery. I would have liked to learn more about that woman.

An interesting counterpoint to this was the Governor's Mansion. The pamphlet explained that it used to be a dormitory for an ante-bellum Arsenal Academy that served as a prep school for the Citadel in Charleston. Both institutions were created to prevent slave insurrections. Knowing this pro-slavery history, I would not want my children to attend the Citadel.

The dormitory of the Arsenal Academy became the Governor's Mansion in a round-about fashion. During the Civil War, the Union troops shelled the academy and destroyed all buildings except the dormitory. After the war in the 1860s, the dormitory was reconstructed into the Governor's Mansion and has remained in use to this day. Living in a relic of a pro-slavery institution would make me very uncomfortable, but my chances of becoming the Governor of South Carolina are very small, so the point is moot.

The walk ended with a very nice loop thru a park that had an artificial waterfall leading to a little lake. This was done so well that it basically looked natural and was very pretty. We circled the lake as the sun was going down, which was a picturesque ending to a very nice Volksmarch. From the park, we zigzagged a couple of blocks past Memorial Park to return to our starting point. Overall we felt that this walk was very pleasant and had more of a small town atmosphere than a large city. All houses on our route were well kept even if not historic and taking time to read about the historic sites added an extra dimension of interest to the walk.

We drove out of town thru the Columbia "rush hour", which was almost unnoticeable, and stopped for the night in Florence, SC, shortly after the intersection of I-20 and I-95. Being a little under the weather (head cold) I decided to turn in early and postpone writing the journal until the next day while Monika was taking a turn driving. We both dined on selections from Denny's seniors menu, which was a first for me but quite rational since the portions are smaller and we are trying to avoid eating large meals late at night.

Tuesday, January 9, 2001
We had thought about breaking up the final day of our drive home with a Volksmarch in Rocky Mount, NC, but we couldn't find it listed in our Starting Point book and couldn't find any other walks on this stretch of I-95. I was still fatigued and even had trouble staying awake while driving, so that was probably just as well. Fortunately, the traffic was light and the weather excellent for the drive home. We made good time thru North Carolina and Virginia, arriving at home before 3, which gave us time to settle back in, buy food, start washing clothes, and so forth. We had done everything we set out to do on this trip and really had a fantastic time!