CHANGE OF COURSE

January 15, 2020

It was a beautiful day in St. Maarten today.  Or at least I suppose it was because we weren’t there.  The itinerary called for Wednesday in St. Maarten, but as we told you yesterday, the Carnival Breeze detoured to San Juan so we could get refueled.  And it was a beautiful day in San Juan.

Your favorite cruisers walked up to El Morro, the fort which defended the city.  It is approximately 2.5 miles each way, but I commented as we walked back onto the ship, I think it gets farther away each time we visit.  But the beautiful view and the great sea breeze make the walk worthwhile.  We bought a couple of souvenirs, plus a Snickers Ice Cream bar for me and a Coke Zero for Bonnie.  Last of the big time spenders here.

For reasons we never learned, our favorite path along the outside fortified wall of San Juan was closed today, so we wound our way around through the city.  In addition to the afore mentioned detour, there were barricades all over the city in preparation for a special event about which we haven’t a clue.  Oh well.

For those of you who keep up with our stops on our cruises, you may wish to make the following changes: on Tuesday, January 21 we will be in St. Maarten, and on Wednesday, the 22nd we will be in Tortola.  Those are the only changes due to the fueling stop mentioned above.  I was talking to Monroe, the entertainment director, earlier this evening and he said most captains would just miss a port and keep going, but this one is doing his best to see that we get to visit all the advertised islands.

My talk tomorrow is on how to take better pictures with your digital device, and I got a couple of good ones today which I will add in.  As I said, it was a beautiful day in our neighborhood.

Tonight’s entertainer on the Ovation stage was a comedy juggler.  He was funny, but as Mom said, having seen several jugglers on our cruises we have seen all of his tricks.  But he is very skilled and it was an enjoyable show.  Tomorrow night, the “kids” will do another of their musical programs, and as we’ve told you often, they put on our favorite shows.

And now I will turn the keyboard over to the bride of my youth.

TTFN

Well, first some comments about yesterdays stop in St Croix. We did find the fort and church that he had taken pictures of  that he uses in his photography talk. But also, we found the souvenir store where he picked up a free novel on a rack out side the store. Also, there were chickens and roosters wandering around everywhere. There is a KFC in St Croix and we commented as we always do to the chickens “You better look out or KFC will get you.” Well, I had said to him that I wandered if the roosters ever got friendly with the chickens. And low and behold we saw two different hens with baby chicks. A black hen had about 5 or 6 which were mostly black and a brown and white hen had 2 that were brown. He took a video of the mothers and chicks as the mother hen scratched the ground for whatever they eat and the chicks rushed to eat whatever mother  had found. It was an interesting sight.

Now to today. As usual I was awake at 1:30, 3:30 and 5:30 in the morning. It was light out before 6 am. I was a wake and the boat had slowed and I knew we were getting close to San Juan because we were to dock at 7 am. Couldn’t see much as we came in and docked but there was a Holland American ship, the Zuiderdam, in dock already. We have sailed on it at least 2 or 3 times. After he got up about 6:30 we washed, dressed and headed to breakfast. As were eating the Zuiderdam left port just about 8am. Now that is strange.

After breakfast we went to the room and picked up our going ashore stuff, which included postcards to be mailed to the grand kids. Since Puerto Rico is an American port, I could mail them. I had brought along stamps just for that.  Well, we got off and mailed my post cards and then headed to the fort the way we always went but it was blocked off. So we had to walk back and go another way. There were numerous roads closed all over town and police were every where directing cars. It was quite a mess if you were trying to drive a car. It usually is difficult to drive there but today seemed to be much worse.  There were at least 3 large stages set up in the areas where we walked. They appeared to be preparing for some big celebration which included lots of music and much drinking.

After we got back to the ship and got back on, we headed to the Lido and lunch. Today was hamburgers and of course ice cream. The we headed to deck 5 and a place to set and play cards. They were doing some trivia contest so we joined in on two and managed to win one of them which was all about the 70's. Yeah us. Now we have a Carnival medallion to add to our “ship on a stick” from our last Carnival cruise that sits on the mantle piece.

The comedienne juggler was good even though we had seen all the tricks and heard most of the jokes from other ones. The funniest thing was the lady sitting beside me. She laughed and clapped and was so amazed by everything he did. I don’t think she had ever seen a  juggler before. Her husband sitting beside her seemed to be bored with it all.

Well, we are back in our room and will probably be in bed soon. Tomorrow he has to give his 2 photography talks, one at 10 and one at 4. It is also the second Gala Night. But we will probably be late getting to supper because his second talk is at 4 and our supper is at 5.

Well, time to stop. I love you all. Mom, Granny and Bonnie