Wanderung 27

Bob:

Up in the buffet at dawn, we saw the sun rise behind some low-lying clouds on the horizon and stopped to take pictures before finishing breakfast.

After wandering around the ship for a while just taking pictures of the beautiful nooks and crannies of the Pacific Princess, we signed up for our next cruise on Princess with the "Future Cruise Consultant". We selected a cruise up the coast of Norway in June 2013 that we had both wanted to do for several years.

At 10:00 we took in a Rumba lesson where they taught a basic Z-shaped step rather than the box step we were used to, so that required an adjustment. But the Z-step as basic did seem to help the transition to the "New Yorker" step, followed by the simultaneous turns and a curious ending maneuver when I sashayed left and right while Monika rotated (or flipped) from side to side in front of me. Very interesting! Thank goodness I had put duct tape on the ball of shoes so that I could pivot easily; otherwise I would have been wrenching my knee even more with all those dance moves. (A big "Thank You" to Bill and Karen, who taught us how to Polka and gave me that valuable tip!)

The luncheon offerings were German-inspired, and I really enjoyed the herring and beets salad from northern Germany as well as the "Eintopf", which is a split pea soup enriched with extra meat and vegetables. I tried to keep the meal relatively light because directly afterwards we warmed up our voices, sang some of our songs, and then went to the Pop Choir rehearsal. Rehearsal went surprisingly well even though we had only 3 males and 7 females, 4 sopranos and 3 altos. But Lou, the guy next to me, fortunately had a big "belt 'em out" type of voice and was almost always on pitch, so I followed him.

We zipped down to participate in the "Fine Art Scavenger Hunt" in the ship's small art gallery. That turned out to be a bit more like information-gathering than the collection of specific art objects that I had envisioned, but it was still a lot of fun. We each answered the required 10 questions and then submitted our papers for the drawing the next day's art auction, hoping to win another print to go along with "Anniversary Song" that we were given on the Ruby Princess, which is now hanging in our dining room.

The rest of the afternoon we read and updated our journals, and Monika uploaded the photographs from both of our cameras. I was super happy to have successfully caught the pilot in Funchal just as he was jumping from the ship's rope ladder onto the deck of the pilot boat, a shot I have been trying to get for years! Whoopee! I was also happy that the "sweep panorama" option on my camera was capturing wide-angle views quite capably, albeit with a noticeable amount of barrel distortion. The curious thing was that there was no provision for me to zoom in using that panoramic option on my Sony, which was just puzzling. Monika's Kodak camera stitched together panoramic shots in the old-fashioned way from 2 or 3 adjacent pictures, but she could zoom in while using that option. These oddities are why we both carry our own cameras!

I really (honestly!) would also have liked to exercise that afternoon, but my left knee was really aching after walking maybe 4 miles on the Deck 10 jogging track the previous day, so I rather rested it. I also tried to stay awake to see the crew's variety show at 10 p.m., but it was just no use; I flopped on the bed fully dressed, hoping to be able to get up again later, but I was out like a light for the rest of the night. Pitiful, really. Now if Laurie and Brad were on board, they could at least fill us in on all the night life we were missing, and maybe even manage to drag us along to some of it!