June 1 – AT SEA

oh yeah, and we had Spritzes!

Weather – 21º

Steps – 6,951

Humidity – low%

Sea days, like most sea days look very much like all others. With nothing to do and no particular schedule, we take it very easy.

sunset

We normally don’t order room service breakfast unless we have a morning excursion and I want yogurt and fruit - I haven’t tried finding ground flax, but I’m not hopeful. However, today we decided to get room service breakfast – I still only got fruit and yogurt…Chris got a couple of eggs and bacon.

Next, it was time to book our excursions for the second and last leg of this 15-

day, 2 leg-cruise. We’ve been to more of the places on the next leg of this cruise than the last, so we aren’t scheduling things in everyplace. Repeating a walking tour of a small town for $100 doesn’t seem like a good use of $$. We’ll go into to town for sure on our own, or find a free walking tour, or find a pub and the Marks & Spencer in the only UK port on this vacation.

Elvis tribute

We then spent some time at the pool – this pool doesn’t seem to have any chair hogging folks, like we’ve had on most other cruises and especially on Regent. The way Windstar handles pool chairs (which may be because of how small this boat is) it that when you want a chair, they set one up for you. All of the chairs are stacked until you want one. This seems to limit the plopping of random magazines and leaving for hours ‘occupying’ a prime chair in the shade for god

knows how long.

The drink of the day was a Bloody Mary – I’m not the hugest fan of thick drinks…I much prefer thin flavourful clamato to thick bland tomato, but this one was spicy at least.

the always popular 'Splish Splash"

Lunch was ‘NYC Street’ – can’t say I’ve ever had that theme before…interesting – hot dogs, chili, fried fish, mac&cheese, but no pretzels – I was salivating over the prospect of a pretzel. I’m not sure how New York street that all was. I had a piece of fish and some chili and stuck to the usual lunch buffet items. One new item, was a clam salad…interesting but needed the addition of some jalapeno, which helped.

Then it was back to the pool for a post-lunch chill session – as if the rest of the day hasn’t been chill.

At 3:00 they set up an ice cream bar at the pool served by the ship’s officers…cookies&cream topped with Kahlua and a sprinkle of crispy chocolate balls, all that was missing was a bit of crunchy salt.

Groove Factor

However, little I like hot tubs, our room’s proximity to the secret one is hard to pass up, so I joined Chris for a bit of a soak. I tried to get my shoulder positioned on a jet, but all I seemed to do was get a shot to the face.

Dinner was at the ship’s Asian place called Basil and Bamboo. We looked at the menu before we went and didn’t have high hopes, but things were great. The

best thing was a burrata salad, which I’m not sure is Asian – I suppose it’s the basil. I wasn’t complaining as it was delicious. I am a sucker for burrata. This was washed down with sake – I’m not a huge fan, but given the opportunity, I partake.

sweet dreams!

After dinner we were able to catch the end of the crew show. As usual, I love the crew show. One solo did Shallow and, while she was no Gaga, she was pretty darn great! That’s a risk, going onstage to give that one a go – bravo!

Lastly, was a good time not a long time at the bar – I had a Heineken Zero, I’m growing to really enjoy those. Of course I’d rather be pouring back the

Champagne, but I’m responsible you know. We listened to the duo (Wake Up Duo) and then the 4-piece band (Groove Factor). Groove Factor was particularly great! We knew and liked almost every song they played! Their front woman plays and sings! Often the woman is only a vocalist, but her guitar skills were fantastic – I didn’t get a pic of her with her guitar, next time.

We returned to the room “good night cookies” - lovely.

A note about the bed…this one is TINY. As with most cruise ship beds they are 2 twins pushed together, so that when people occupying the room want twins, that can be set up easily, this isn’t a problem this time and is hasn’t been in the past, but the bed is smaller than any cruise ship bed I can remember. River boats would be different, but as for ocean going chips…this bed it tiny.  The twins would be tiny!