Two sea days

We are chugging away at sea heading to Aruba, our first port of call. The weather is warm but windy out on deck. On sea days there's lots to do on ship but we tend to keep to a routine of a morning workout and then relaxing the day away in a lounge chair--a great time to catch up on our reading. (Dad has already finished the book you lent him, Jen!)

Heading to the Sun Deck yesterday morning for a run on the jogging track (.10 mile per lap) we were surprised to see the track blocked off. On this ship, this area is now turned in to "The Sanctuary"....lots of super comfy lounge chairs and cucumber flavored water for drinking....all for only $10 per person for half a day (4 hours)! No thanks, as tempting as it would be to find a place for lounging that was out of the wind.

To get our workout out of the way, we next headed to the gym only to find the treadmills and stationery bikes all in use. So, it was down to the Promenade Deck for some laps around the perimeter of the ship. On this deck, 3 times around = 1 mile. At the bow of the ship, there's a built in stairmaster exercise as one must climb up to the next deck to go around the bow and then back down again. Not our favorite place to run as there are lots of walkers at various speeds to work around, but it gave us our workout and it's good to see so many people wanting to get some exercise.

Today we passed within a mile of the Emerald Princess heading the other way.  Seeing a ship so close at sea was a new experience for us.

Emerald Princess

We think the average age of the passengers on this cruise must be in the mid-70's. Watching them is like a glimpse into the future. We cerainly hope we are able to travel for many years to come. There are just a few families with young children on board, but not many. Hard to take kids out of school for 2 weeks. And, there are no college-age spring breakers! These 2 week Caribbean cruises are ending on this cruise line...next year they will be sold as 2 back-to-back 7-day cruises instead of the 14-day loop. We think that is to accommodate the spring breakers, who no doubt bring in a lot of $$ with drinking. More profitable for the cruise line than a bunch of senior citizens!

Today the seas are quite rough. We don't really feel any rocking on the ship but can see the effects of the rough seas. The pools have been emptied as they were splashing waves way outside the perimeter of the pools. We took up residence on deck chairs by the inside pool, trying to stay out of the sun as we know we'll get plenty of it when we go to the beaches on the islands...and it's out of the wind.



Pool water splashing due to rough seas.


Tomorrow.....the first of 9 ports....Aruba--one of our favorites!