Day 19 - Thu - 11/20/2025 - At Sea to Ponta del Gada- Day 1

 It was nice to be at sea once again.  We allowed ourselves to wake up when it was light as our first event wasn't until 10am.  After our normal get up routines and breakfast, our first event of the day was an interview with the Hotel Management Team.  It was a fun and spirited interview by Matt Thompson, our Cruise Director.  Much of the interview was spent sharing about the challenges of the loading that took place the day before in VIGO, Spain.  We took on over 100 tons of provisions.  If we had not taken on that load, we would have run out of some basic staples such as butter, salt, & flour.  The officials had decided to make yesterday a customs inspection day and limit the amount of alcohol that was loaded.  The problem was that the alcohol was disbursed among all of the 40' containers and one couldn't separate regular food stuffs for loading.  In the end, all was loaded by 5pm.  There were contingency plans to send out crew personnel into all of the supermarkets and purchased all of the butter.  Fortunately that didn't need to happen.  

Our next event at 11am was an enrichment lecture by William Kramer, PhD.  He spoke on the history of space exploration starting with Chinese kites to Musk on Mars.  He's a terrific speaker who speaks without notes and has lots of slides that he doesn't read from.  He'll be lecturing on space exploration topics all the way to Florida.  All of these topics are also available on our stateroom TV for later viewing.  We really like this and is a contrast with Holland America who claims it can't be done due to copyright issues.  To them I say, "Poppycock!"









After lunch on my way to the next event, I spotted a very nice double rainbow.

We watched the Deal or No Deal game show and the second contestant won $300.  Angela and I watched the latest episode of The Curse of Oak Island.  It's developing into a really interesting season.  For the rest of the afternoon I worked on my blog and watched YT videos.  While I was doing that, there was a knock on our stateroom door.  An activity staff member delivered a cute little Princess Duck as a prize for being selected from the entries into the riddle of the day.


The evening entertainment in the Princess Theatre was Mark Walker, a singer and comedian.  We liked his singing, but found his attempts at humor quite offensive..  Afterwards we listened to a country western set in the Vista Lounge performed by a Philippine group, Moonshine & Mud.  They were quite good.


Angela stayed down on deck 7 for karaoke while I did a few walking laps to get my step count in.  Fortunately, this night began the first of many set backs of our clock by an hour.  We're back on London time for a day as another setback will occur tomorrow on our second sea day. 

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