Today was our first sea day. We were all looking forward to a relaxing day at sea. We made plans last night to meet in the main dining hall for breakfast at 9:00. I set a wakeup call for 8, but didn't need it. I woke up around 6:30 and just sleazed around in bed, I'm good at doing that in the morning. Around 8:00 I dragged myself out of my very large king size bed and got cleaned up enough to join the group downstairs. The main dining hall is on Deck 2. I'm on deck 6, Kevin and Joe are on deck 8 and Gary is on deck 4.
Breakfast was good, eggs and pancakes. We spent about an hour doing breakfast. Kevin and Gary went to the intermediate bridge lesson at 10:30, while I went down to the room to take a shower and work on the blog. Joe called and left a message that there was a culinary event at 11:00, so I joined him for that. We learned how to make Cedar Plank Halibut with Shrimp Scampi. Plus a pasta dish and Creme Brulee for dessert. They gave us samples of the brulee...YEA.
After that the rest of them met for lunch. I went down to the room to do some online work. Duplicate bridge was at 1:30. Kevin and Gary partnered up and I played with Eric from Sydney. He was at the lesson this morning and Joe and Gary thought he would be a good match for us. He was fun to play bridge with, but we have a bit of a learning curve getting to know each other's bidding and playing. Bridge lasted until 4:00. Duplicate went longer, but our foursome had other plans. Erick had to join his wife and us three had to get to Happy Hour.
I had a couple of Old Fashions. They were very strong, unlike the ones on the Maasdam, but not as good as the ones I had in Sydney. We enjoyed visiting and even saw some dolphins. The way everyone reacted, you would have thought they were the only dolphins in the entire universe. Cruise people are a strange lot.
From there, Gary went to his room and Joe, Kevin and I headed down to the Ocean Bar to grab a couple of tables for the LGBT gathering at 6:30. A nice group of men got together and got to know each other. There is a couple from Uptown District in San Diego on this cruise. They just did the 2 week New Zealand cruise as well. We had made plans to meet Gary at the Lido for dinner. Joe and I were 15 minutes late as we lost track of time. Tonight was Gala Night and since we decided not to bring a suit or blazer, we had to eat in the Lido instead of the main dining hall. Dinner was quite good. Each of us had brisket and fried chicken. Kevin joined us a bit later and just had dessert.
Kevin and Gary wanted to get some time in the hot tub, so they went down to change and Joe and I decided that we had had too much fun today and wanted to relax in our rooms. I wanted to get the blogs updated. I decided to buy the Internet package, $175.00 for 500 minutes...on a slow satellite connection. Annoys me to pay so much, but it's the only option that Holland America offers. Maybe some day they will improve the connectivity situation.
Tomorrow is another sea day and I imagine it will be very similar to today, except I might have Manhattan's.
