There is something special about that first day at sea.
As usual, I was up before dawn. I took this shot from my cabin.
I think I dealt with the noise OK – the
earplugs did their job.
The weather got better as the day progressed. A beautiful day at sea.
I went up for breakfast at 7:30 AM (Azamara has late
breakfasts). I had a waffle and some
scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese. I
asked for cottage cheese and was told there was none. I found a suit and he was able to get me some
cottage cheese. I can understand no sour
cream but no cottage cheese in the fruit section would be a first. I guess I will have to ask each time. The waffle had a funny aftertaste and was
difficult to cut with a knife (very thick and doughy – hopefully, a onetime
occurrence. The scrambled eggs were not nearly
as good as on other ships (Celebrity has the best scrambled eggs). The best part
of the breakfast was eating on the Sunset
Veranda and the pre-breakfast of corn and frosted flakes. I will figure out
the breakfast thing tomorrow. As for today, this is the view I enjoyed.
The ship is pulling 16 kts to get to San Juan on time.
After getting an Iced Decaf Mocha to go at the Mosaic Café, I went to Chuck Richardson’s talk on San Juan and St. Johns at 10 AM and also stayed for a few minutes of Tom Eastwood’s talk on “Spies and Espionage”. He had a different speaking style than I am used to but the audience knew him and he had a good turnout. I did get a picture of Lee introducing Chuck.
I had lunch on the Sunset Veranda – I ordered a Beyond
Burger with Onion Rings along with a salad from the salad bar. The Beyond Burger was OK but not even close
in taste to the Impossible Burgers I get on other ships. Still, it’s an option.
I like what Onward does with the adverts for the lectures. Here's the one for my first talk.
I went to the Cabaret
Lounge at 1:30 PM to set up for my 2 PM talk – “Forensics and History: Identifying the Famous and Infamous”. This is my new opening talk because it
lets me introduce the technical stuff in just a few slides and provides the
background for the second talk. There were just a handful of people there and
the AV guy set up my computer in no time. The headset mic was an issue as it
was too small for my big head but the slides were clean and crisp. The AV is great on this ship.
By the time, I got started, the Cabaret Lounge was about 80 percent occupied (Google says that the
Lounge has a capacity of 450 people more than Journey or Quest – it didn’t look
any bigger to me). I got a nice
introduction from Lee and the talk went well.
I wasn’t mumbling and struggling like I have been recently and I got a
lot of nice feedback from attendees. A
good start.
I was tired after the talk. I didn’t take my anti-inflammatory meds this
morning so I was a bit achy. I stretched
out in the room to deal with that.
I went to The Den
to hear Bob, the Piano Guy but I got
the time wrong. My consolation prize was
a Blue Curacao Sour, which was very good.
I didn’t finish all of it as I didn’t know how strong it was. Turns out not so strong.
Tonight was Asian
Night in the Windows Café. I got a nice seat on the Sunset Veranda. There wasn’t much for me to eat (I would have tried
the stir fry but it was going to be a task trying to get a meat free dish
tonight). I took some veggie fried rice,
veggie spring rolls, and some tofu dumplings.
Everything was pretty greasy but not bad. I then went to the patio to get some salmon
as my dinner was protein free so far.
The salmon, which took a long time to cook, was basically sushi. I ate a bit but the rolls and butter dipped
into the decaf coffee made the meal (pathetic for sure). It was just enough
Showtime tonight was “Groove
Tonight” the first production show and focusing on disco. I have seen it before and I was just too
tired to go.
I went to the Mosaic
Café instead and had a decaf Americano coffee with a chocolate truffle.
After a while, I was back in the room. I told Rustico, my Room Steward, that I
didn’t need a turndown tonight but he did bring me an interesting chocolate. This ship does have little petit fours as
part of their turndown.
I moved the clocks forward to Atlantic Standard time as we will be in Puerto Rico in a couple of
days. Puerto Rico does not have Daylight time so they go all year on AST.
We are current now – it is 10:39 PM AST.
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