Day 02 - 10/03/2021 - At sea

It was a restful night with some 'motion to the ocean.' With an inside stateroom it was totally dark except for the light under he door and some miscellaneous LED's from devices being charged.  Except for an overnight bio-break, I slept soundly and didn't even sense my wife leave the bed, dress and head on out.  I woke in time to attend much of the Cruise & Travel Director's Q&A session.  We learned that the ship would be at 1600 passengers or about 60% capacity after San Diego  

 

Afterwards we attended the shore excursions presentation about Avalon before staying for her Whale Presentation.  Because we attended the whale presentation, we missed the 11am Mariners lunch.  

 

Our lunch was a leisurely sushi affair in the Lido.  Angela was having problems logging into her Navigator app, so we waited in line at  Guest Services to successfully get that resolved. It appeared that a number of guests were having similar issues.  I have to confess that I fitted in a bun less burger & fries at the Dive In burger bar mid afternoon before we attended a short talk on salmon where the naturalist reported seeing a couple minke whales earlier in the day. 

 

The temperature outside was an indicated 70°f so we did laps on the outside of deck 3.  But it was a cold 70° f on the port side which was shaded from the sun!

 

It's worth noting that the Photo Gallery area has not yet been updated to the new technology which disappointed us as we had planned to purchase some pictures printed on aluminum. This was surprising as this is one of the newer ships.

 

Today we received a letter indicating that all guests will be required to have an antigen Covid test 3-5 days after departure.  Ours is scheduled for Tuesday morning.

 

After attending an interdenominational church service (I was stunned & disappointed in the number of participants that shed their masks in the close quarters of the Stuyvesant Room), we enjoyed a nice gala dinner with a couple (Jim & Rita) from Kelowna, BC. The crew were all masked, and our server told of his repatriation to Indonesia using the Veendam at the start of the cruising pause. Our evening was wrapped up watching a very good Beatles tribute show on the Main Stage by Jesse & Colleen Kazemek. This was their first time back on a cruise ship in 1.5 years and they expressed their joy at being back on stage.  Walking by Billboard Online, it was standing room only and the casino was really busy.

 

 Sea days are nice and this was no exception.  We have another sea day tomorrow.




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