July 14 Sea Day

July 14, Thursday - Sea Day

Today is a welcomed sea day. I hope to use it to update you on our non-port activities. 

We have been told that the ship’s capacity is 2,100 guests. She carries about 1,100 passengers on this voyage. Some of the reduced number is due to COVID limitations. The rest stems from the slow return to cruising. Many people are still discouraged by having to fly to embarkation points. To a lesser degree some worry about proximity to others on the ship and on tours. 

100 of us will be staying on for the next cruise. 1200 new passengers will board in Trieste for a total of around 1300. 

As you might expect with the reduced occupancy, service has been outstanding. The dining room is at about half capacity. From our perspective that is a good thing because the waiters are now performing extra duties. They now serve as wine stewards and bar men.  They do the best they can but they do hustle in order to provide timely food service. 

There continues to be a priest onboard for daily Mass. We have always appreciated that Holland America provides this. These priests volunteer for the assignment and they come and go. This is not a fixed assignment. Our priest is from Lamont Illinois. He has been a priest for 19 years and he has served as a mariner priest for many years. He is only with us for 7 days. He volunteered for this as part of the windup of his 6 month sabbatical. He is Polish. He spent the first 3 months of sabbatical in Mexico where he worked on improving his Spanish. Then he went to Poland to stay with family and to enjoy the motorcycle he keeps there. Just before joining us he rode his motorcycle from Poland  and did the Camino de Santiago. When he finished that long journey, he rode to Trieste where he left his cycle in storage with friends and boarded Oosterdam. Alice and I had the good experience of having breakfast with him one morning. He is a fascinating man. We will be looking him up when we get back home. 

There is entertainment on the ship. It is not like any shipboard entertainment we have experienced before. Step One Dance are excellent dancers who perform to recorded music with a fantastic automated light show for their set. We really hope to learn more about how all of the effects are coordinated. We have seen them perform 4 times and do not mind the one show that was repeated. In fact we are looking forward to their repeat performances. 

As you can tell we are enjoying ourselves thoroughly and we are very busy in the process. 

This sea day has us on our way back to Croatia. Tomorrow we will visit Split. We have not been there before. Our plan is to do it on our own tomorrow. Our next segment will bring us back to Split in 2 days. For that we will consult with Ivor, our charter skipper, for activity suggestions. 

Stay tuned.