Day Three: At Sea!

Day Three:  At Sea!

It seems our cabin is overly creaky with some added popping noise while we sleep.  The ship is only going 17-18 knots or less.  The seas are slight though I haven’t checked the ships channel to get the accurate reading.  When we hit a nice swell the extensive creaking and popping is actually waking us up every now and then.  

We finally wake up late in the morning.  That’s what sea days are for.  We get ready for our day of lounging, but we have to leave the cabin so Elie (our steward) can freshen our cabin.  As I open our door to leave, Elie has planted his cart outside our door and he greets us with a smile.  We exchange our “Good Mornings” and I insert our “Cabin Needs Refreshing” card into our key slot.  Just in case he forgets.  He smiles again.  

Elie is from the Philippines.  Elie is a nickname that his supervisor suggested he use.  His real name is quite unique and very, very long.  It’s still early in the week and early in our cruise adventure, but Elie is warming up to us.  Whenever he sees us walking back to our cabin, he quickly walks to our cabin door and opens it for us.  Such a gentleman.  On Sunday when the TVs were sitting in the hallway, Hubby being a funny guy, told Elie to ship it to our home.  Elie quickly responded with “Why not take it now?  I’ll take one end and you grab the other.”  At that point, I knew all was good in our cruising world.  I’m looking forward to see what these two wise guys come up with in the next few days.  I’ll be sure to report back.  

I ran into our Canadian friends.  We saw them at our Muster station and I find out there cabin in on Deck 15 (Lido) and they are almost directly above us.  During our sail-a-way on Saturday, they looked down from their balcony and saw this guy with a green hat.  Yes, that would be Hubby.  I’m sure we’ll run into them tomorrow while in St Thomas.  

In our cruising world and adventure, it’s about meeting people from all over the world.  Not only our fellow cruisers, but the cruise staff as well.  So far we have met the staff from Anntonina from Ukraine, Matthew from Canada, Teddy, Bella, & Elie from Phillipines, and Vivianno from India.  

I mentioned Teddy.  I have story to tell.  We met Teddy today by mistake.  Our mistake.  We had a lazy sea day of lounging followed by a late lunch around 2pm.  We had a reservation for a Maitre’D wine tasting in the Island Dining Room at 3pm.  We arrived at the door around 2:45pm only to find the doors closed.  I could see people sitting inside.  Teddy shows up and with a smile and says the wine tasting is done.  I look at him thinking he’s kidding and I say to him “it can’t be we just got here and I have an invitation”.   He mentions to me “did you remember to set your clocks forward last night?”  Oooops, no we did not.  No worries.  There will be another tasting next sea day.  

Later at night and after we watch a movie on the upper deck at MUTS, we head to the Market Place for some fruit and dessert.  We are sitting at a table and a gentleman dressed in a dark suit comes up to us and says “I know you two!”  I look up and it’s Teddy.  He has the biggest smile on his face.  He says he will come look for us and invite us to the next tasting.  Now, that’s service.  I’m sure he won’t let go of the look on my face from earlier in the day when I forgot to set my clock forward.  

Speaking of clocks.  Or Fitbit devices.  Or gadgets that keep time.  All of our gadgets and devices are set automatically to the time zone we’ve chosen on our devices.  As in “New York”.  I pulled out my iPhone (Airplane mode with WiFi turned on) and checked its settings.  Yep, “Set Automatically” is turned on (green) and “New York” is selected.  I turn off the setting and manually look for and select “America-St Thomas (AST)”.  At that point I also look up some other islands we will be visiting to make sure they will be in the same zone.  Then I’m able to change the actual time and move it forward by one hour.  

I also looked in my Fitbit application for settings.  Sure enough “Set Automatically” is turned on with “New York” selected.  I do the same for my Fitbit.  I sync my Fitbit watch with its iOS app.  I also help Hubby make the change on his iPad and his Fitbit as well.  All is now better in our cruising world.

So for my fellow cruisers, remember to take your gadgets off auto and manually set the time to ship’s time zone(s).  

Okay back to our scheduled program.

Since we had a late lunch, we decided we would have dinner at Vines and well that means Sushi!  It’s formal night and we dress accordingly or almost.  Hubby doesn’t want to wear a jacket.  Nor a tie.  Okay a polo shirt will work fine.  

We find a table in the middle of Vines on Deck 5.  This is where we meet Vivianno from India.  We order a bottle of wine to go with our light meal and have them store the bottle for us for another time.  The Sushi and Tapas are complementary.  We can order all one type or choose from the variety they have or try all.  On the tapas side I heard chicken wings, shrimp wrapped with bacon, pate, and one other item I forgot.  For Sushi, they offered Yellow Tail tuna, Ahi Tuna, and California Roll.  No GF soy sauce here and I left my GF packets in our cabin.  Lesson learned and I’ll be carrying my packets in my camera bag.  

While we’re people watching from Vines and enjoying our meal, the crew starts to setup the wine glasses to build the champagne fountain.  A couple next to us asks if I could take their picture for them.  Of course I would be happy to!  So I move them around Vines (away from the windows as the bright sun was creating havoc) and show them how to pose and ten pictures later we are done.  Hubby mentions to them I’m a photographer as they are reviewing their pictures and they are happy to have chosen the right person.  Glad I was able make their evening enjoyable.  

Several pieces of Sushi later, we decide to check out the upper decks and settle in for a movie on MUTS.  The upper deck lounges have new soft furnishings as well.  The padded loungers are extra comfy.  The Pizza guy comes by and offers to get us some slices.  No thank you maybe later.  The Popcorn guy provides us bags of popcorn.  We are ready for our movie.  

When we are back in our cabin for the night, I scan our Princess Patter to see when and where we’ll dock.  We sail into St Thomas around 1pm and we’ll dock at Havensight.  We have to be back onboard around 8pm.  Looks like we are leaving port an hour early.  Good thing I checked.  I’m hoping to resolve my blog issue while in port which requires a good WiFi connection and I might have to sweet talk one of the bartenders on the island to login for me.  We’ll see.