Thursday, February 1, 2018- At Sea

Thursday, February 1, 2018- At Sea

We awoke to find blue skies with 84 degrees outside.  We had breakfast in the Horizon Court and made the 9:15AM morning trivia.  We teamed up with Bob from NJ, Gary & Angela from AZ, Steve from TN and Dan from San Ramon, CA.  We scored 15/20, while the winning team scored 19/20.  We learned that Dan was assigned to NAS Whidbey for much of his navy career, as a mechanic for P5 Martin amphibious planes.  He said he was in Oak Harbor in December and surprised to find his old hanger was the current day Commissary.  His sister-in-law owned Yuen Lui Photography studios, until it was recently sold for $8M.  His brother owns Beverly Hills Porsche, and rubs elbows with all sorts of celebrities.   He had a picture on his iPhone of a young Clint Eastwood playing doubles tennis with his daughter-in-law.  Dan said he has been on six winning trivia teams so far, and when we said we really wanted a wine bottle stopper prize because we have an open bottle of wine, he gave us one of his.

We attended the morning destination lecture on Devil’s Island, which is actually part of a group of 3 Islands called the Islands of Salvation.  They were so named because missionaries were fleeing a cholera outbreak on the mainland and sought refuge on these islands (St. Joseph, Royal and Devils).  The administrative headquarters were on Royal Island, while lepers inhabited St. Joseph and Solitary Confinement was on Devils Island.  We learned that convicts had to serve their full sentences, and then could not return to France until they had spent the same term living on the islands, so a 30 year sentence was actually a 60 year sentence.  Most prisoners didn’t make it.  Over 40% died in the first year from illness, malnutrition and abuse.  

Ben went for a swim in the pools after the lecture.  Today was beautiful and sunny with a temperature in the mid 80’s.  The outdoor pool was closed for maintenance for some reason, so he swam in the covered pool.  There was a bit of sloshing around, but it was possible to swim laps down the center of the pool, and there weren’t many people interested in swimming at the time.  

We crossed into a new time zone so we lost the 12Noon hour, going from 11:59PM to 1:00PM. We had lunch and then went to the afternoon trivia at 3:15PM.  We partnered with Ed & Fran from Pennsylvania, Dan from San Ramon and Gary from AZ.  We scored 15/20, while the winning team managed 19/20 and won keychain flashlights.

We had an early dinner, skipping dessert so we could see the early Ventriloquist Mark Merchant show.  He had some pretty current material and joked that tomorrow is Ground Hog’s day- That’s when Hillary Clinton sticks her head out of a hole, and if she sees her shadow, that means 3 more years of not being President.  He had a swinger alcoholic woman dummy, a black dummy and a Chinese Elvis dummy, highlighting his multicultural show.  He was quite entertaining- another quality evening of Princess Theatre entertainment.

After the show, we went back to the dining room to be seated just for dessert because they had a delicious chocolate frozen torte dessert that was worth going back to the dining room for.

We retired to our room to watch some TV.  They were playing the Cruise Highlights video, and for Trinidad, they did film Janet doing the Calypso with other passengers.  

We then ventured to the Explorer’s lounge for their Rock-n-Roll Game Show Party.  We teamed up with Roger (Santa) and a new couple An and Dave from Louisville KY.  This gameshow required teams present their team cards to cruise staff members scattered around the lounge with the name and artist for several Rock-n-Roll songs, some of which were from the 50’s.  Only the first 5 teams to present the correct answers with their cards got points.  There were other tasks such as having the whole team get up and do crazy dances for extra points, or having someone run up to the front of the stage and present a sock with a hole in it, teeth, a man wearing lipstick, a woman wearing an item of men’s clothing, a couple holding hands, and doing the hoola hoop.  We really broke a sweat on that gameshow, but it payed off as we won another game and shared a bottle of champagne with our team mates.  

Tomorrow, we arrive at Devil’s Island in French Guyana at around 9am for 2 hours of scenic cruising with narration.  The ship will apparently stop to drop a tender and pick up vendors and a pilot from shore to bring aboard, but no-one gets to get off the ship, so it will be an odd sort of destination stop.  We’ll see how it plays out.