AT SEA, Sailing the Florida Straits, en route to Cartagena, Columbia - January 7

rough life!

Partly sunny and 24 degrees, feels like 24, windy

I don’t consider myself much of a princess, but there are some creature comforts that are deal breakers for me when away from home…AC, a mattress off the floor, and a working toilet!!! It is significant to mention how important a working toilet is this morning as ours IS ON THE FRITZ! Somewhere close to Cuba, our toilet decided to take a vacation of its own! We are familiar with temporary ship-board toilet outages for small periods of time…sometimes you flush and nothing happens and moments later…woosh…everything is sucked away (that’s how toilets work on any ships we’ve been on…woosh! But for the last 12 hours…no woosh. Apparently, the toilets on half of the boat aren’t working…ugh! Luckily some are, so we don’t have to hold it, but this isn’t exactly luxurous! I’m sure the workers are working like mad trying to get things fixed…I wouldn’t want to be them right now.

The toilet situation isn’t exactly wonderful, but since there is nothing we can do about it and the AC and showers are working just fine, I decided to get a walk in on the top deck. It was quite windy, and I saw no wildlife, but the walk was glorious. I fell right back into my onboard routine of a pre-walk/workout espresso followed by a post-walk fresh pressed juice – today’s was spinach, cucumber, carrot and pineapple, I am make a serious effort to eat fruit/veg.

The rest of the day was spent being busy napping, blogging and restoring my vitamin D reserves. According to Chris, the UV today was only a 2 or 3, but I got enough sun to turn my skin a bit pink – it wasn’t too hot at all when we were lounging and I actually sat in the sun rather than the shade. Lunch was al fresco at the back of the boat - the temperature was glorious, but still no wildlife to be found.


After a nap it was time for the ship’s ‘block-party’. This is where everyone has a drink in the hall outside of their rooms. This is a nice way to meet the people who are in the rooms around us. This only lasts 10-15 minutes, just enough time to have a drink and a short chat with our neighbors. After one party, we must attend a cocktail reception held by the travel agency who booked this cruise for us. It was a nice opportunity to meet some other people.