October 8 Sea day #2
Today is Sea Day #2 travelling to Madeira, Funchal, Portugal. Anthem is cruising southwest and the latitude is 37° N. At 7:30 this morning, the ship was west of Lisbon, Portugal. Anthem will stop is Lisbon on the way back to Southampton in six days. There are a few clouds, but mainly sunny, just a bit of wind, temperature 19° C. We are about half way to Madeira this morning.
There was no one on the staircase from Deck 9 down to Deck 4 as we went down for breakfast. Even on a ship with over 4,000 passengers there are seldom people using the stairs. Some elevators are glass so people can see the atrium. On the floor of the elevators is a removable piece of carpet which is changed each day with the current day’s name. We chose the Diamond Club for their Continental Breakfast. There were three other passengers in the lounge as well as the Diamond Club Concierge. Since it was buffet style, there was no hustle and bustle of servers.
We walked around the quiet Deck 4 and 5 promenade. The cafés were open but the retail shops did not open until 10. a.m. Some of cafés are included in the fare and others are extra. There are some interactive art installations by the elevator lobbies on Deck 4 and 5. By 9 a.m., there was a line to get into the Deck 4 restaurants, American Icon, for á la carte restaurant and Silk for the buffet. We climbed up to Deck 15 to walk on the 900 meter track. There are lots of people on the pool deck (14) and the track deck (15) We walked 4.5 km before taking a coffee break at the Solarium café. The Solarium loungers were already 80% occupied. It is an adults only space for about 500. As we drank our coffee, we scanned the QR code for the bar menu and there were some interesting cocktail mixtures. A Diamond Club benefit is four complimentary alcohol beverages per person per day, so there was no need to buy a Drinks package.
Another Diamond Club benefit is complimentary 24 hour Basic Internet per person per cruise. We used it today and paid an extra $7US to get the surfing speed to post photos. You are supposed to be able to stream videos, but it takes three minutes to post one photo, however, we won’t have to find cruise terminal Wi-Fi in Madeira, tomorrow. We could sit on the balcony, which has room for two chairs, two foot stools and a small table, to read while the photos were posted.
We had noticed that the Solarium dessert menu for this evening had baklava listed. At dinner we asked our waiter, Sivakumar, if it was possible to order the Solarium baklava for dessert. He delivered to both of us two five square cm pieces and asked if we would like more sent to our statement. The baklava was almost as good as our recipe but, we declined Sivakumar offer to send more to the stateroom. The assistant waiter, Liangphapou, still wears a face mask. Sivakumar explained that this is the first cruise that staff could decide if they wished to wear a face mask, he has decided to not wear a mask, as have 65% of the crew.
After dinner we went to the Headliner Show which featured comedian, Steve Womack from Britain. It was a funny show. After the show, we climbed up to the Solarium bar for one of their cocktails. We enjoyed our choices much more than the drinks of the day that we ordered the past two days. The Solarium was quiet. The pool was being cleaned and the light were dimmed. There were less than a dozen people in the bar area. The bar tender said that the Solarium bar closes about 9 p.m.
The towel creation on our bed tonight was a gorilla.
By 9:30 p.m., the ship was west of Casablanca, Morocco.
Total steps 15,160 = 10.5 km
Comments
Post a Comment