Friday, April 10th, 2009, At Sea - Cruising past the Azores

Bob:

I couldn't sleep, so I got up before 6:00 a.m. and decided to go down and calculate my predicted ship's position while I had peace and quiet in the library. Sure enough the ship was deserted except for the deck hands swabbing the decks and I could take my time and very carefully do my calculations to plot the predicted noon position, which turned out to be about 2 nautical miles south of Santa Maria Island in the Azores. Since that agreed with what the Captain had said in a shipboard announcement, I felt reasonably confident I was in the ballpark.

Done with that, I took a turn on the promenade deck, walking for half an hour on a totally deserted deck before Monika joined me and we went up for breakfast on the Lido deck. Then we returned to the promenade deck to walk for another hour or so more until we thought that Lois and Phyllis might be up having breakfast. Sure enough, we found them back on the Lido deck tucked into their morning meal. We sat and chatted with them and since I had already eaten I passed the time by idly filling out the Trivia Contest sheet for the day. The topic of the day was cruise lines, about which I know very little, so I was really taking shots in the dark. Apparently some cruise ship has a saxophone autographed by Bill Clinton and since I didn't have a clue which one it was I just put in "S.S. Hillary"

But Yoga, the waiter at our table in the Vista Restaurant in the evening, was also working in the Lido that morning, and he took pity on me and gave me his best guesses for some of the questions. As it turned out, his guesses were pretty good as I found out later that evening that I had won the contest for the day! I had a choice of rewards and chose the official "Holland America" key chain. After all, you can never have too many key chains!

We passed Santa Maria in the Azores at 11:00, and we had a fine ring-side view from Lois and Phyllis's stateroom balcony on the port side. Of course I had predicted that passage at noon, so once again my estimate of the ship's position was way far off, much to my embarrassement. How did the Captain get the ship there a whole hour early? It's not like a ship that big could double its speed or anything! Sigh. Still the island itself was quite near us, only a mile or two away, so we could get a clear view of towns scattered along the shoreline. The houses were all whitewashed and had red tile roofs, a rather picturesque combination.

Santa Maria Island itself was quite interesting in that it was a lush, green, verdant island but volcanic in origin with its steeply sloped sides plunging down into the sea. That dramatic coastline reminded me of the Hawaiian Islands, especially the Napoli Coast area. Of course, right on cue, a pod of dolphins frolicked right next to our ship. They seemed to know when our cameras were trained on them, and we were entranced watching them surface to breathe and occassionally jump in the air.

In the afternoon Tom presented port information for Barcelona, Monaco, and Citiavechia-Rome and Dr. Wulff presented information on Turkey. I found Tom's information to be very practical, down-to-earth information about what to see, how to get there, and what to do or look out for while in port. For example, he told us about the newest scam being run in Rome by folks dressed as gladiators around the Coliseum and the Forum. They would offer to use your camera to take your picture there, but then refuse to give you your camera back until you paid them 10 Euro! Ah, private enterprise at its finest!

Dr. Wulf's presentation about Turkey covered the usual gamut of history, politics, economics, and places-to-see. I was particularly interested in the section on Ephesus as I hoped we would get there on the Royal Caribbean cruise out of Venice later in the trip. The extent and state of preservation of the ruins looked very interesting, and I was especially intrigued by the newly-opened houses or excavated villas that apparently were located just off the main street. I resolved to try to see those if I got the chance.

The evening show was a very nice full-scale production performed by the ship's dancers and singers. The songs were all romantically-oriented songs from the 40s and 50s that were so common when we were growing up. Even Lois had heard some of them since that was before the days of TV. The song and dance routines were tied together with a boy-meets-girl story line for the younger pair of singers and a boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl-back story line for the older pair of singers. That assignment of roles to actual singers fit well, so we didn't have to suspend disbelief to enjoy the show. Monika, Phyllis, and I enjoyed it thoroughly and even Lois liked it despite the focus on music that was only half a century old rather than on music that was over two hundred years old which is her forte.

When I went to bed, however, I was really noticing the ship's motion for the first time in the cruise. It helped that our beds were placed athwartships rather than being arranged fore-and-aft, but I still occasionally slid on the sheets a bit. That was better than being rolled out of the side of the bed onto the floor, though! I had also come down with a sore throat, so all in all I didn't sleep well for much of the night.