August 17, 2015
Somewhere between Bermuda and here, the ship’s schedule went kaflooey. No one to blame, really. It was a medical emergency, and the Captain turned the ship back to Bermuda to get the guest the medical attention she needed. Once the 4 hour round trip was completed, and adding in time to get the guest into shore based conveyance, we were bound to miss St. Martin. Some estimates suggest that we could have gotten there at 4 p.m. instead of our scheduled 1 p.m. arrival, and then stayed until 9, but that didn’t work out. So here we are, hours away from San Juan, and a short scheduled visit – off at 7:30, all aboard at 12:30 and then sail to Royal Caribbean’s private estate of Labadee (your humble scribe and his traveling companion plan to get in the ocean – there will be no pictures).
I’ve had 2 talks and led a church service since we left Bermuda. At the direction of the cruise staff, I announced the service during my first talk, and it’s a good thing I did because it was left off of the Cruise Compass. Word of mouth got an audience of about 30. As usually happens several people told me that this was the first time they’d been on a cruise ship that had a Sunday worship service, and thanked me for leading it.
The talks have been well-attended. Today’s on San Juan had about 150. And since the first day there has been no technical problems. I’m using the old Touch Pad Windows XP computer and it is communicating fine with the ship’s projector – their old technology won’t match the screen resolution of my new laptop, but this works fine. And I have a regular technician helping me, so that makes getting set up and going live a lot easier.
We are participating in “My Time” dining on this cruise. Many ships are opening up large blocks of time and one entire dining room to this option. It was chosen for us, just like our second seating, when we do that, but we have great waiters – Frederico and Jefol. We eat every day at 5:30, which is quite a change from our usual 8 or 8:30 p.m. seating. We go to the second show and are in our cabin by 10, ready for bed – old people are boring!
Tuesday, August 18, is Mike and Ivy’s 3rd anniversary. Happy Day Kids! Everyone call or text and send them happy returns of the day!
If these two blog entries get posted while we are in San Juan, don’t expect to hear from us again until we are back in New Jersey on Saturday. Internet onboard the Liberty of the Seas is outrageous! $20 a day, and you have to buy 9 days! And I ain’t paying it! September may be better since we will be in several U.S. ports and I can use my cellphone as a wifi hotspot (that’s what I’m going to try in San Juan).
Well, TTFN!
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