April 3, 2025

Just a few observations over the last few days.

We have a nice, insulated ice bucket in our room, but the housekeepers keep putting it in the refrigerator.   Out on the pool deck, they have uninsulated ice buckets that sit in the sun at 84 degrees.

We have a great black out curtain in our suite, but the part that comes together in the middle has a sheer trim about 6” wide.  I know you all have been in a hotelroom and wished you had a clothes pin to make the 2 halves stay together.  A clothes pin wouldn’t help here, who thought that would be a good idea?

We have this huge floor standing champagne stand that takes up way too much room, but they refuse to remove it, does anyone actually use these?

To decorate the only flat surface worth using for typing my blog, they have a very heavy shark on a stick decoration, why?

We are on a ship that offers free drinks 24/7, but they lock up the bars when they close, really why?

There’s a phone in the bathroom in our room; it’s on the wall about 5’ up and behind the toilet.  Seriously, I can think of only two times I might use it.  If I’m sitting on the toilet and it rings, what?  I’m I going to stand up, turn around to answer it?  The second scenario would be if I stepped out of the shower, slipped, and fell.  It’s way up there on the wall, totally out of my reach, who thought this one out?

There are no bathrooms near the pool, so if you are in the pool or hot tub and need to go, you must get out dry off, cover up to traverse the restaurant and walk over half the length of the ship to the nearest bathroom.  Again, who designed that?  The Club is a late-night entertainment venue, same thing, no bathrooms even close.

I have decided that there should be an age limit on Speedos and Bikinis, no matter how fit you are at 70, there is a time to trash the skimpy suits.  Not everyone on board got that memo by the way.

We have been at sea for 4 days straight and yesterday I overheard a lady standing by the rail ask, wait for it….”I want to go to the Bow Lounge, which way is it”…. Look at the water lady, but I didn’t say it.

Is this a window or a mirror? Log your votes, I’ll let you know later.

Nothing I said here is in anyway a complaint, this is a beautiful ship and we are having the time of our life again.

For you science nerds and just those that want to understand how summer and winter works, this is a very easy to understand graphic.  We are learning every day.

And I’ll leave you with a story one of our expedition leaders told us.  “So, we went to this remote Island and everyone was very friendly, I visited the school, there were about 30 children there.  After visiting with them, I ask if they would like to come aboard the ship and have lunch”.  “After clearing everything with the ship and the school, we loaded the children and teachers onto the zodiacs for a ride to the ship”.  “First thing I noticed, was they were all freezing, they had never experienced air conditioning”.  “So, I put half of them into the lift (elevator) and the door closed”.  When the lift returned for the remaining children, there was no way they were getting into that box that made their classmates disappear!”  So, he took the rest of them up the stairs to see that their classmates were just fine.

We have reached French Polynesia tonight, more later………