Today is Thanksgiving Day and we started the morning with both a beautiful sunrise off the port side (which gave me an indication of the direction we were traveling) and an announcement from the Cruise Director whose is Mexican however signs off every announcement with ciao, ciao! like he is Italian! Quite interesting in this multicultural city at sea.
We had what I would call light to medium swells night at sea, which was confirmed by the captain at noon when he told us we were heading into 2.5 to 3 metre seas and trying to avoid a storm by heading west first and then more south to Hawaii to avoid a storm. We are currently cruising at 13 knots during the day however it is our impression that he puts the throttle up at notch at night!
Today I set out early to get my manicure and pedicure done while Andrew walked around the deck a couple of times which he found cold and blustery (he normally walks each day at home to Jericho Beach). Then we met for lunch and at 2pm I hosted a “Meet at Greet” on the ship for those who belong to the online group called “Cruise Critics”. We met all the people we had been chatting with over the last 18 months! I also, with another lady, ran a little trivia game with Canadian prizes (it was Thanksgiving after all) and it seems a good time was had by all! I had booked space for 40 people, had enough name tags for 50 people and 38 people showed up! Only minor issue is that someone on Holland America did not READ the meeting request properly and set the space up for 14 people! So we were a bit squished in the area. However we were in the Crows Nest on the 10th deck facing the bow so the view was great! I was amazed how many Canadians and people from the UK were on board!
After the Meet and Greet, there was supposed to be a Ukulele show on the Lido deck, which I found to be a family affair! A mother was talking about the origins of the ukulele and then playing it, while her daughter then did some hula dances. It was quite nice, although I was disappointed that they were not offering ukulele lessons like on our previous voyage to Hawaii.
After that cultural experience, which I really like that Holland America brings these Cultural Ambassadors on board the ship for this part of the crossing, we had some time in our stateroom where I fought with my new yarn and trying to get it nicely into a ball (was not successful) and then we went to Thanksgiving Dinner. It was a casual night tonight and while I did wear a nice skirt, I wore my Canad EH ian t-shirt which did not impress Andrew! I thought it was appropriate attire for the evening! Cruise ships have become way less formal for dinner these days and no one blinked an eye – in fact lots of people liked my shirt!
Dinner was awesome, aside from the cold berry soup. I like berries but decided that I do not like cold berry soup for an appetizer! Oh well, something tried for sure! The turkey dinner was unbelievable – the turkey I could cut with the side of my fork it was so tender! While this plate shows only a TINY square of cranberry sauce and gravy – two more soon arrived which made my evening! The fact that I got a double serving of petite chou’s (brussel sprouts) also made my night! Of course I adopted Andrew’s as well as he had turkey dinner too. Dessert was a coconut rice pudding – light and small – just perfect end to the meal!
After a fairly active day of walking (over 10,000 steps for me) we called it a night, filled out the room service menu for the next morning to have breakfast in the room and went to bed! The nice thing that happened in the evening, which the captain promised earlier in the day, was that the seas did calm down and we started heading south. So hopefully less tossing around tonight at sea for those who do not like the slight bumps! For me, bring them on! 🙂