Nearly There

Friday January 8, 2016

Just a quick entry tonight. Another day at sea. We went to a bridge lesson at nine and then a lecture on the Panama Canal. Both were pretty basic but I learned something at each.

Map of our location 

After lunch I worked out. Today I was able to use the rowing machine which I am sure is a great relief to you. At three we went to a lecture on the history of coffee, tea, and hot chocolate. Again, interesting but basic.

Bridge lesson

Bingo was at four o’clock. I am not ashamed to admit that I like bingo. I did not however bring my own dabber with me (a special bingo accessory that facilitates the rapid marking of multiple cards) as some of the others did. Surprisingly not enough people showed up to play and so it was cancelled.

Panama Canal lecture

Remember how I said that I thought we had come up with a good system for picking our dinner entrees? Well, we forgot to select them by noon today so we ended up eating in the cafeteria which was fine. A nice change of pace from the slow, multi-course, waiters in white jackets, assistant maître d’s checking on you production that eating in the dining room is.

View from veranda this afternoon (those are Russell's feet and his needlepoint project which he is just flying through!)

The evening was spent watching “The Italian Job” (Russell)/writing and reading (me) and getting ready for our first foray off the ship tomorrow.

Heading Toward Costa Rica

Thursday January 7, 2016

Another mostly uneventful day. We once again participated in the knitters and needleworkers get-together at ten am and I am happy to report that we were able to do more mixing and socializing than we did yesterday. Barbara (remember her? She’s the talkative one who does crochet)  has apparently hijacked the group at the other end of the room and she is insisting that everyone use the “free” yarn (mostly junk) to knit or crochet baby blankets for “Project Linus” (they go to infants in the hospital). Those individuals who have a different desire, say like to knit something for themselves or a loved one fled from her and joined our group where we make no pretense to be doing  charitable work nor do we in any way condone the use of free thread/yarn (the other members of the group may not be as committed to this later point as Russell and I are;)

Talk on Early History of Piracy 

In the late morning we attended an interesting talk on plate tectonics. The speaker was knowledgeable on the subject and I definitely learned a few things. The afternoon lecture on early piracy was however pretty sad. The speaker had obviously not run through his slides with the equipment on hand because he seemed surprised when several of the slides were unreadable by the audience. Not good. Also, he had a heavy New York accent which I am okay with except when it comes to a pseudo-scholarly presentations where frankly it’s out of place and doesn’t fill me with a great deal of confidence in the messenger.

Fellow attendees at early piracy talk

Russell went to a second lecture in the Culinary Arts Center while I went to work out. Same situation today as yesterday, that is plenty of treadmills and elliptical machines available while the rowing machine was occupied. Strange. Anyhow, Russell said the talk he attended on the emergence of the chef was good.

History of the Chef talk

Dinner tonight was a formal affair. Before getting all dressed up, I was able to sit on our verandah and read Middlemarch. I am getting close to the end of the book now. I’ve enjoyed reading it. She’s a remarkable writer and really good at characterization and plotting. Still, her language can be dense and the pace a bit slow. I’ll be happy when I am done because I read the first four hundred pages a year ago, put the book down and then went back to it a month or so ago and re-read the first four hundred pages. Sitting on the verandah and watching the setting sun’s rays reflected on the low, wispy clouds whilst hearing the waves and feeling the warm, gentle breeze was a peak experience for me (even if I did fall asleep for a little while).

Back to dinner -- it was a formal night as I mentioned and Russell and I brought our tuxedos and actually wore them. I say “actually wore them” because they have been in our closet for a couple of years and we’ve been too heavy to be able to wear them even if we had cause to (which I’m pretty sure we did not). Anyhow, it was a bit of a personal triumph for us to be able to put them on and have them fit so well. Our meal, which we ordered from the special vegan/vegetarian menu, was mostly very good.

Selecting what we want to eat is a complicated business. They give us this special vegan/vegetarian menu the night before (it’s the same menu every day) and we are supposed to tell them what we want to eat the next night. Well, aside from the fact that I don’t necessarily know what I will want to eat tomorrow today, I also am supposed to make the decision without benefit of knowing what the “regular” menu is going to be (it changes every day). On the regular menu there are always vegetarian options which if they are not vegan can sometimes be made so. Needless to say, it’s hard to commit to the items on the special menu when something on the regular menu may appeal to you more. I think that we’ve struck a good compromise now though whereby we don’t have to make our dinner selection the night before but rather by noon on the day of. This way, I am hoping, we will be able to see the regular menu before making a selection from the special menu. The special menu is not that big so I am hesitant to overdo the special menu meals early in the trip. We’ve got one hundred or so more days of this. We’ve got to pace ourselves. Ah the challenges we face – bravely and resolutely.

After dinner we decided to skip the xylophonist/comedian (I kid you not) who was performing tonight and went back to the room where we sat and needlepointed and watched a “classic” (according to Russell) movie called Tommy Boy. In the words of David Foster Wallace, it was "a supposedly funny thing that I'll never do again”.

Cruising the Caribbean Sea

Wednesday January 6, 2016

Today was our first full day aboard the Amsterdam. We had breakfast in the Pinnacle Grill, which is one of the perks of our new room category. It includes access to a special restaurant for breakfast. You may not think that this would be a big deal but believe me one trip around the Lido Dining Room at eight in the morning with people everywhere, stumbling around, trying to make up their minds about what to have for breakfast and fighting over the limited number of seats is enough to convince just about anyone that a private dining room for breakfast is a very good thing indeed.

Why? Who is going to sit here?

After breakfast, we went to the Explorer’s Lounge for the “unhosted” knitters and needleworkers get together. We arrived before everyone else did and sat by a window. We were quickly joined by a woman named Barbara who was wearing a mu-mu and liked to talk. A lot. More even than she liked to crochet apparently since she didn’t do but five or six stitches (is that the unit of measure for crochet?).

Other people showed up but strangely they all sat at the other end of the big seating area where we were. So, that was kind of weird. I don’t know if they didn’t see us doing our needlework or they just simply felt that the other end of the room was a better place for the get-together. It was mostly knitters and crocheters anyway. There was one woman who was also a needlepointer and she chose to sit with us -- for a while at least but then she too moved on to the other end of the room. Fortunately for Russell he had Barbara – all to himself -- because I had a manicure and pedicure appointment at ten am. I chuckled to myself as I left him because he was very sure that he wanted to spend more time outside of our room stitching in public on this trip. Be careful what you wish for!

In the afternoon we stopped by the “Atrium on 3” for “board games, Mah Johng and party bridge.” There was one table of four playing cards but no one else came along for us to play with. Most everybody was there to play Mah Johng anyway. We discussed whether we should stay and watch them play so that we could learn how to play but none of them seemed too eager to instruct newcomers. So we left and headed to the dining room where Duplicate Bridge was getting underway at 1:45. We explained to the people at the door that we were advanced beginners and not particularly interested in intense play with self-appointed bridge experts. They were mildly encouraging to us saying something about “players of all abilities” but I don’t think they really meant it. Russell didn’t want to commit to two solid hours of bridge playing anyway so we moved on.

Russell at dinner last night 

Eventually I headed off to the gym and Russell watched a movie before his mani/pedi appointment at four. When I first visited the gym yesterday I noticed that in addition to the seven treadmills and six elliptical machines there was a rowing machine. This I figured would be my ace in the hole because not many people use rowing machines and I was worried that the number of elliptical machines and treadmills would not be enough for the number of people on the boat but not to worry because there is a rowing machine. So I went upstairs fully prepared to do some rowing since I expected that the elliptical machines and the treadmills might be occupied. Well, don’t you know there were not a lot of people working out. Most of the elliptical machines were available and a good number of treadmills too but not the rowing machine where one older guy was rather unenthusiastically rowing away. I got on a treadmill but since I had expected that I would need to use the rower I kind of had rowing on the brain. So I watched to see when it would become available. Well this old guy just wouldn’t quit. Finally, after a half an hour of uninspired rowing, he got off the machine but before I had a chance to get on it another older person (this time a woman) snuck on the machine before I had a chance. Well, she rowed even more lethargically (I mean really people this is supposed to be exercise!) but for not quite as long before a third person jumped on the machine and I gave up and surrendered myself to an afternoon of elliptical training. Harrumph.

Show last night

Another harrumph came later in the day when I tried uploading my last blog entry. Oh the hoops I have to jump through in order to satisfy you, dear reader. You have no idea. The Wi-Fi on board this ship is a cruel joke. It allows you to log on quickly (relatively) so that they can begin to charge you right away but when it comes to actually getting on a website or uploading a photo or doing anything useful – forget about it. It’s just spinning and spinning and more spinning as the minutes rapidly tick away. After moving to a new location in search of a better signal I concluded that wasn’t the issue. Perhaps the photo files are too large. But trying to change the size of the photo files was neither quick nor easy so I moved on to solution number three. Ye old cell phone. You know, the method that I used all last summer to good effect (recently I have been using the computer to write up my entries thus explaining the sudden expansion in the size of these entries. Sorry.) Anyhow the cell phone did appear to work better than the computer and so after dinner and the lesbian/gay meet & greet at seven o’clock in the Crow’s Nest (which included unsurprisingly no lesbians and mostly just queer gentlemen of “a certain age”) I was able (finally) to upload and post my previous blog entry while waiting for the show to begin in the Queen’s Lounge (who comes up with the names of these places?)

The show was pretty tragic but better than it had to be. I mean there was a band of six people and five dancers and four singers and numerous costume changes (such as they were) and just enough bare male flesh/tight pants to keep R and I from falling asleep (actually sleep wasn’t much of a possibility given the volume and pitch of the singing).

Now I am back in the room and believe it or not I have shortened this entry considerably though it is still too long so if you’ve made it this far, I salute you.

Ft. Lauderdale, FL

Tuesday January 5, 2016

What a day we have had! It’s so nice when things go the way that you hoped they would. We left packing until this morning so I was a little nervous that we would not have time to re-pack everything and move the luggage to Russell’s Mom’s house in time. But we got up early and set to work right away and before you knew it we ended up having enough time to go to Starbucks with Phyllis and enjoy decaf, soy milk lattes together.

The luggage

All the luggage made it into the full-size SUV

Captain Charlie arrived at the appointed time in the big SUV just as we had requested. The driver seemed awfully young though and perhaps even a little hung-over but he nevertheless got us to the ship on time. The car didn’t break down. We didn’t get pulled over for speeding. No construction. No traffic. Everything went smoothly.

The mandatory pre-boarding photo

Our room 

Our meager deck

Now it was time to check in. The line went quickly and before you know it we were on board in our room. Our beautiful, very large room. Some of you may remember that we had originally booked an inside cabin for this trip but I decided to surprise Russell with an upgrade to our room as a Christmas present. Russell, unbelievably, had the same idea as me and before you know it with our double upgrade we landed in a very nice room so we are pinching ourselves and feeling both foolish and fortunate at the same time.

The gym

Spa

So, now for the big question: were we able to fit the contents of our eight pieces of luggage and four duffle bags in the room? And the answer is, shockingly, yes!

Excited and wind-swept

The ship itself is in good condition. I was a little worried about that since this is not one of the newer ships in the Holland America fleet and we saw plenty of evidence of deferred maintenance on both the Zuiderdam and the Eurodam this summer. However, I am happy to report that the carpet on board this boat looks new, our sofa is comfortable and the tiles in our bathroom are clean and well-caulked (it’s the little things that make more of an impact than management would like to believe).

Potential needlepointing spot

Dinner was the early seating (5:30 pm) and we have a table for four by the window. It was only the two of us though. We like to get a table for four so that if we want to we can invite another couple to dine with us occasionally but we are not locked into any long-term arrangement. We explained to our waiter that we were vegans and dinner was very good: Gazpacho, Salade Nicoise (no tuna) and pasta with tomato sauce.

The atrium clock

It’s eleven pm as I write to you and we’ve just left our dock and are underway now. First stop, Costa Rica. But first we have two days at sea. Russell’s made our selections for what we will be doing tomorrow. There is a knitting and needlework get-together at ten am, party bridge at one thirty and an LGBT (lesbian, gay, etc.) meeting at seven in the evening. And no, we are not in our seventies -- thank you very much. This is just how we roll.

PS – So far the other passengers seem very nice but in the height of irony Russell was ready to “shush” the table next to us at dinner tonight because they were being too loud for him! Hah.

North Palm Beach, FL

December 30, 2015 to January 4, 2016

We arrived here in North Palm Beach on New Year’s Eve. The traffic was much lighter than it had been and we made good time. After moving the luggage from the truck into our accommodations we discovered that the cover over the bed of the pick-up truck was unfortunately not waterproof. Our luggage was wet and much of our clothing although not sopping wet still had to be either put through the dryer or spread around the apartment to dry.

 Drying clothes and luggage in apartment – working on the roof to my Nordic Christmas House.

Entering cruise mode with a new hat and shirt. If this shirt is not very orange on your computer screen you need to adjust your monitor.

Russell’s sister’s family – Dave (her partner) -- front left, Karen’s three daughters in rear and yes, his Mom all jammed into a Ford Escape on their way to the airport for the flight home (obviously Phyllis wasn’t flying home, she was just going to say goodbye and drive the car back)

We passed a quiet New Year’s Eve, in bed by 11:00 pm. On New Year’s Day, we actually went shopping at the Palm Beach Gardens Mall which I have to confess is one of my favorite malls (it has both a Saks Fifth Avenue and a Ferragamo store). It was open on New Year’s Day and there was hardly anyone there which was of course a nice change of pace from the pre-Christmas crowds. Dinner on New Year’s Day was with Phyllis (Russell’s Mom), Howard (her husband), Brad (Russell’s eldest brother) and Hadley (Brad’s wife) at the “club”. It was advertised as a special seafood buffet so I had low expectations for vegan food options but was pleasantly surprised to discover a tofu dish and a large salad bar so it all worked out fine.

From left to right – Russell, Howard, Phyllis, Brad, Stephen, Hadley

On New Year’s Day we also discovered a wonderful restaurant not far from here called Christopher’s Kitchen. It advertises itself as an organic, plant-based restaurant. They shy away from calling themselves vegan because some of the dishes contain honey. The food here was fantastic. We returned several times including one day when we had two meals (lunch and dinner) there. We took our friends Nancy and Bill here and Bill who is not the most adventuresome eater was a real good sport (I think the beer on tap might hae helped!). We also took Russell’s brother Steve there for lunch, Howard and Phyllis for brunch, and Marge (Russell’s family’s former housekeeper) for dinner. It was a lot of meals in the same place but fortunately they have a large menu and all the food was very good. The ambiance – we mostly sat outdoors, enjoying a little plaza complete with water feature – was also terrific.

Russell, Marge, Minnie Mouse, Stephen

Alvin, Marge’s dog, must be in a stroller on his way into and out of the building!

The weather was cooler today with a breeze but it has been quite warm with temperatures well into the eighties and high humidity (making jogging a real challenge). Today and yesterday however temps were in the upper sixties/low seventies, a more normal temperature for this time of year.

Phyllis and Howard in what I suspect is their first ride in a pick-up!

Today, once again, we went out to lunch with another couple, Bill and JeffAnn. We met them on an RV tour of the Gaspe and Maritimes and we’ve stayed in touch through the years. They are lots of fun and we shared a most enjoyable meal together. And, as if that wasn’t enough meals eaten out, we went out again tonight for dinner with Howard, Phyllis and Steve at a seafood establishment. Confronted with lots of non-vegan food choices we were nevertheless able to navigate our way successfully with a house salad and a no-cheese, no seafood pasta entrée.

Bill, JeffAnn, Stephen, Russell

Tomorrow we must pack up our luggage and make our way to the boat in Port Everglades. We expect to board around 1:30 pm. The forecast isn’t so good – 71 degrees and rain but hopefully we will not be spending too much time outdoors. The ship is not due to depart until 11:00 pm which is rather unusual. Normally departure time would be in the late afternoon so I am not sure why the later departure time. I suppose it may have something to do with the extended nature of the trip and needing more time to load supplies. Just a guess. Will report more tomorrow with pictures.