Alaska Cruise Day 3 At Sea - "I Cannot See Clearly Now"

I love at sea days. I should clarify, I love sea days when I can roam freely and I am not sailing past ports that we had planned to visit. Anyway, there is so much to do on a cruise and today I think that we tried to do all of it. Rob is still waking up on EDT, this morning he was up and dressed by 4:30. He was already going down to the front desk to check on a crossword puzzle. I saw the light on and checked the time. 5:15 am, seriously? OK fine, I will get up. Rob was heading up to the fitness center to work out, that opens at 6:00. To save room in my suitcase I did not bring workout clothes but did bring my swimsuit so that I could swim laps and/or do water walking. The pools open at 7:00. Rob is coming back down the hall as I am leaving. He told me that I should make someone take the net off the pool, it is almost 7:00. OK, fine. I get to the pool. When the ship is at sea the water in the pool kind of splashes around. It is fairly quiet so I decided that the waves must be quieter. Um, no, there is no water in the pool. Drat. I climbed into the hot tub and follow the yoga class that is happening on the pool deck. This feels good. I do not work on my knees and a few other exercises. Not exactly the same as 45 minutes of swimming or walking in the water, but it is something. I have been waiting for my eggs Benedict since our last cruise. It was worth the wait. There is no self serve. You cannot even get your own coffee, everything is handed to you. I saw tomato juice and opened the door to get it. Oops, sorry, I was told very politely to ask someone to get it for me. They are taking this seriously. When you walk into the Lido or the dining room there is someone standing at the hand sanitizer stand to make sure that you use it. I thought that this cruise was being run at 50%, it turns out that it is at 2/3 capacity. Even with fewer people on board there are still times that you have people wandering trying to figure out what they are doing or what food they want. Rob went to “Meet the Cruise Director” and I went to something on coloring in the Digital Workshop. When I looked in the night before I saw that they did not have any computers in there. I thought that maybe they had gotten them in overnight. Nope, they were handing out coloring pages and color pencils. Oh, well, I guess that I will stay. I understand, they are trying to eliminate things being touched by multiple people. Computers would be hard to sanitize between classes. Either that or Microsoft ended their deal with Holland America on running these workshops. It took Rob and I a while to find each other after our different events. They have a message app, but it does not always alert you that you have gotten a message so you have to keep on checking. This is like having a phone that you have to keep picking up to see if there is anyone on the line. We attend a program on the history of Holland America. There is one video of the Westerdam in Glacier Bay on a very clear day. The day that we were in Glacier Bay back in 2013 it was so nice that they sent a helicopter out to shoot photos and take video. I swear that when you watch that video you will see one bright blue dot. Remember the blue fleece that I was wearing in the famous penguin photo? Yeah, I was wearing that jacket the day that they took that video. When we were leaving lunch we saw Seth Wayne. He was talking to someone sitting at a table. I kind of stood off to the side for him to finish his conversation. He saw us and got excited. He said “Oh, I am so glad to see you.” The person he was talking to kind of looked at me like “who is this and is she important?” I joked about how he was wondering if I was someone famous and did he want my autograph. Seth finished up with him then talked to us. He asked us if we would be willing to do an interview. He took us outside to the aft pool and asked us to talk about what it was like being on the ship and what we wanted to say to everyone who was thinking about cruising. I will post the link when I get it. Seth asked us what we were doing the rest of the day and if he could take us out to eat at the Canaletto, the Italian specialty restaurant onboard. Cool. After lunch I go back to Carol and Tony’s cabin, they are having a few technical issues. Their TV thinks that they are German and she has no idea how to sign on to wifi. They took a package that we did not take. They get wifi. I have two different reporters who want to do interviews with me while I am on the cruise. The wifi is too unstable. I will try with the hotspot on my phone tomorrow when we are in Juneau. The problem is that we will be 4 hours behind EDT so not sure who will be around when I can contact them. We also have plans for what to do in Juneau if the weather is decent. Right now the cloud cover is pretty heavy and we have sailed through a lot of fog. We did get an unwelcome letter from the captain today. “Due to the increasing cases of COVID-19 in Alaska caused by they spread of the Delta variant, the health authorities have strongly recommended that when ashore, all persons, including those fully vaccinated, wear a face mask at all times while indoors and also if outside when physical distancing cannot be maintained. US regulations require all persons to wear a face mask on public transportations including buses, trains, vans, airports, aircraft and dayboats.” Yup, not want I wanted. I can already hear Victoria “If you get trapped on this cruise you are getting yourself home.” We played trivia and only lost by one point. Then we went to the Lincoln Center Stage. This has become a favorite of ours. They play a wide variety of classical and popular music. This was music from around the world. Tonight was Gala Night. They used to call it Formal Night, but have relaxed the dress code for men. Rob is thrilled that he no longer has to wear a jacket and good shoes for these nights. I wore my squash blossom necklace, it did get a lot of notice. After dinner we went back to the Lincoln Center Stage to catch the last part of their New York composers presentation. We did not sit in the main section but could hear the music. Suddenly Seth shows up to tell us what time our reservation is for. OK, I am impressed that he remembered that we were going to the Lincoln Center. The piano bar was doing music from the 60’s, ah, my kind of music. I knew the words for all of them. Nice to just relax and get into the music. Now it is time for game night. We find it and look for an open chair. We find two up front and are told that if we sit there we are playing. We are fine with that. They have two teams of 3 people each so we are split up. I am on a team with three other women, two of whom are from the Cincinnati area. Rob is on a team with three of the crew. The first game there is a word displayed behind you and your team can each give you one word clues. I played this before, I got 11 points. The other three on my team got a total of 15 points. Another game was acting out dances. I got down on the floor and did the worm, not well, and was wondering if I was going to get up. My team did loose the entire night by one point, but they ran out of clues for us on one section so…. It was a fun night. We are both tired, but we gain another hour overnight and as it is Rob is still getting up too early. I would ask him to play cribbage, but he is already nodding off.