Day 2–At sea

I woke at an “early” 8 AM this morning, stepping out to a damp balcony. Apparently we had a shower overnight, but it was in the 60’s already, although with a still overcast sky. No fog today!

View from the balcony – day 2

So back to the room. Here ‘tis.

This is the Verandah Suite.

Yeah, it’s a bit tight trying to walk past each other at the end of the bed. You can see my home laptop and a flatscreen TV. Channel selection is slim, but there’s some movies, and both CNN and Fox News. Good ‘nuf. There’s also a DVD player and a 30 some odd page book of DVD’s to choose from for free. Better yet, they deliver them to your room and pick them up when you’re done. It’s those little conveniences that really stand out.

Holland America (aka HAL) let’s you bring on as much wine and champagne as you like. We decided to buy a rum package deal, which works out to about half price of the onboard drinks.

Glug glug glug

Yeah, four liters. But at one drink a day for each of us, that’ll pretty much take care of it. I think.

Here’s the desk. Bottle o’ bubbly ready for tonight, my speaker system (yeah, I value decent quality sound) and the dreaded work laptop. That’s a shortwave/AM/FM radio. And a rat’s nest of wires behind the speaker. Not shown is the radio scanner. Already hearing the crew conversations.

We have a Neesh shirt sighting

We actually saw land today, Cape Breton Island. Still no whale sightings for me.

I decided to get edumacated today, and went to one of the lectures they have on the Vikings (this is the Voyage of the Vikings after all). The speaker was very entertaining and informative. Amazing to think what these explorers were doing in the years around 800-1000 AD. Crazy. Also found out Erick the Red was apparently a jerk to his neighbors time and time again. One of our stops, Nanortalik, Greenland, is in the heart of one of the original Viking settlements.

After that, it was something to dull the brain. Beer tasting. It was quite popular.

Gerry’s moving so fast he’s a blur.

It was apparently very popular with me, too.

My best attempt at a goofy face.

What goes good with beer? More beer! See if you can spot why we particularly like this spot.

Degenerates

Had dinner and a drink and we were wiped out (ok, mayyyyybe I was a wee bit tipsy between the beer and champagne), so a little TV and snoozy time. Tomorrow is the first port day, the town of Corner Brook, Newfoundland.