Travel Diary: Amsterdam Asia Pacific Cruise 2012
Day 2 (9/22/2012): Today was actually our first day waking
up at sea. Because yesterday was
so intense, and because I wasn’t able to use my CPAP last night, I didn’t do
very well today. I didn’t get out
of my cabin or eat anything until lunch.
I did spend the morning putting things away and now I am completely
unpacked and sorted out. I spent
the afternoon wandering around, perching here and there to read a while and
trying to get my bearings on an unfamiliar ship. The Amsterdam is a lot bigger than the Prinsendam and has
about three times the passenger capacity, so there is a lot of space to cover. The crew is very helpful and I have to
let them do a few things for me, but mostly I have my little orange backpack
and my walking stick and I just keep trudging along, sometimes using the
handrails. Of course, there are a
lot of other people doing the same thing, so I don’t feel so conspicuous—just old.
The daily schedule comes out
every evening and it is so hard to figure out how to organize my day because
there are so many things to do and sometimes events that I want to attend are
scheduled at the same time.
Luckily, some of the lectures are recorded and played back on the ship’s
television channel, so I can watch while I’m resting in my room. There is a marine biologist giving a
series of lectures and also another speaker who is a social scientist speaking
on globalization. I think he was
one of the lecturers in Antarctica last year, too. Every night there is a live show and I went to the
introductory one last night.
Usually I don’t like to stay out that late and tonight I am passing on
the magician. The films play three
times a day in the Wajang Theater/culinary arts center and I would have liked
to have seen the one they showed the first night but our dinner ran too
late. Tonight was the “Best Exotic
Marigold Hotel” which we already saw, so I skipped that, too. Tomorrow is “Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows”, so I think I’ll try
to fit that in sometime. We are
trying to get our servers to move a little faster with our dinner because it is
taking two hours to eat dinner and although we enjoy each other’s company very
much, it is making it hard to do everything we want to do. And we already are having trouble
making those decisions.
Tomorrow the arts and crafts
classes start in the afternoon and the knitting group is in the morning, so
I’ll have to get up and about just to do those activities. Nancy, the arts and crafts instructor
says she has 43 projects for us this time, so I guess that means we have that
many sea days out of our total of 73 that we have left. Some of the projects will be similar to
ones we did before, but I’m happy that we will be doing the fish purse again
because I missed that one the first time around last year.
Already I am being overwhelmed
with the food. Luckily my dinner
partners are very health-conscious, so we are getting a lot of tips from them
for making healthy choices from the menu.
At lunch I made very good choices, but dinner was not so good for
me. I think I will have to
strategize more for that meal because it is later than I am used to—even with
early seating. One thing
that I have been consistent about and that is not choosing anything from the
dinner roll basket.. That is very
difficult because HAL dinner rolls are very tasty, especially the whole grain
ones. Luckily my taste memory is very
good, so I can try something once and I don’t have to have it again unless it
is very healthy. Already several other foods have been eliminated. Also requesting small portions is very
helpful.
I have purchased 1000 minutes of
internet time and it is very easy to use it up fast. I try to just skim my emails and answer individuals directly
and I am trying to cut and paste from a word document for general
distribution. I hope it
works. No pictures yet, but I plan
to figure out my new camera tomorrow and get started shooting around the ship
before we get to Japan in another week.
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