Day at Sea #1

We were a bit tired this morning, what with our “little walk” from Barcelona center to the ship yesterday (carrying all of our luggage no less)! So, we decided to just relax and get up when we got up. One of the advantages (disadvantages?) of having a room with a window is that the lovely sunrise comes through the window in the morning. Today, sunrise was around 7:30. So much for sleeping in! Our next-door neighbors also have a young baby who was a bit fussy this morning but so far he hasn't been too loud. We managed to fall back asleep for a while and didn't really get going until around 9:30 or so.

We headed up for breakfast at “Raffles,” which is the big buffet-o-everything that is open nearly all the time. You can eat breakfast in the restaurants but neither of us are huge breakfast fans so the buffet is perfect for us. When we got there, we realized that quite a few other people had the same idea, as all of the tables inside were taken. Luckily, the weather is a bit warmer on this cruise than our last one so we checked outside on the “Raffles Terrace” to see if there were any seats out there. It’s laid out like a stadium with 4 levels of seating all facing the stern so it's a great way to watch the world go by. This morning we were passing by some mountains somewhere near Málaga. Scott was pretty excited about that because he has applied for a job in Málaga so who knows? We could be climbing those very mountains this time next year!

Even though I’m not much of a breakfast person, I am very much a coffee person so I held our table and enjoyed my coffee while Scott braved the crowds inside at the buffet. When he came back, we spent some time people watching and noticed the different styles of people from different countries. People from the U.K. were wearing very tropical attire, even though the temperature was hovering around 60° F with a strong ocean breeze. There was even one lady eating breakfast in only her swimsuit! The Italians and Spanairds, on the other hand, were bundled up quite nicely and many even wore scarves or gloves. We were somewhere in the middle, as were most of the other Americans who were generally wearing oversized sweatshirts and some form of casual pants (some still wore their pajama bottoms!).

I decided to grab some salmon and scrambled eggs because, well, I could! While I ate we did a little more people watching and enjoyed the reactions of people as they put their hands on newly-varnished banisters despite warning signs not to literally every foot along the entire length of the railing. One man was so engrossed in his photography that he didn't even notice until his hand got stuck to the button on his camera!

During breakfast it was announced that there would be a presentation about all the shore excursions in just a few minutes, so we headed over there to see if there were any worth doing. We had decided that we will probably go it alone in most of the ports except for Casablanca. Neither of us are very outgoing and it can take us a while to come out our shell in new places where we don't understand the customs. Casablanca is just different enough that we’re not sure we want to tackle it solo on just a day trip so we watched the guides talk about the upcoming tours and decided on one that gave a tour of Casablanca town, some of the historic buildings, and then to a farm for a traditional lunch and folklore show. They said that tour was very popular and spaces filled up fast, so we left the presentation immediately to sign up.

By the time we got to the shore excursion desk, we were told that that tour had been cancelled! Oh, well, we opted for our second choice which includes a tour of Rabat, a city about an hour and a half from the port. There we’ll get to see the royal palace and the archaeological site at Chellah. We'll also get a quick tour of Casablanca and the Hassan II Mosque. So it should still be an interesting ride!

After booking our tour, we headed back to our room to “freshen up,” shower, and change our clothes. We ended up staying in for a while and just reading and relaxing before venturing back out in search of some lunch. Most people don’t eat in the restaurants for lunch so we took the opportunity to eat in the main dining room “Windows,” so named because of the huge Venetian windows along the entire back of the restaurant. We got seated off to one side but luckily it was the side towards the mountains so we enjoyed a great view.

The food selection was listed as “traditional.” I’m not sure what that means, but we enjoyed a starter of hummus and bagel chips—traditional American dish, I suppose? For the main, Scott had some Penne Arrabbiata (it was supposed to come with shrimp but he opted out of that part), and I had a shrimp burger. Yes, it was a patty made with shrimp topped with sautéed onions and guacamole. Surprisingly delicious. We had wanted to have some dessert, but by the time we finished all of that we were too full for it. We got asked by three separate waiters if we were really sure that we didn't want dessert?! I can imagine that turning down dessert is not something that happens often on cruise ships.

We finished lunch just in time to attend the introductory art auction. We went mostly because, as members of the Latitudes rewards program we earned extra raffle tickets, giving us 6 chances to win a free piece of artwork. Also, free champagne. When you go in they give you a bid card and some stickers with the same number on it.  You have half an hour to walk around and choose the paintings that you want to see put up for auction, and you indicate this by putting your sticker on the frame. Then, when the auction starts, the items with the most stickers are the ones that get put up for bid. We chose 4 works of art including one by my favorite artist Romero Britto. We didn't really think we’d end up buying anything but it is fun to see how much our favorites our worth.

Well, so much for not buying anything. By the end of the auction we had not won the raffle, but Scott had purchased his very first piece of fine art! It is a beautiful signed print of painting of a bear by an artist named Jim Collins The list price was $490 so we were surprised when the bidding started out at only $60 and even more surprised when we won it! Now, we just have to decide where to get it shipped. It’s much cheaper to ship to the U.S., so we will probably have it sent to one of our parents’ houses and have them hold it for us for a few months, but of course that means we won’t get to enjoy it during those month. Oh, the price of international living.

We left the auction feeling a high from having made our very first art auction purchase and went through the buffet to grab some snacks to take back to our room to relax. As soon as we got back, I promptly fell asleep for over an hour. Scott read and had some snacks. I woke up just in time to enjoy watching the sunset from our big window. We also turned on the TV in time to hear the breaking news about sanctions with Cuba being lifted! It’s about time! We’re both very excited to see where this will go next.

Tonight is the “Norwegian Night Out” tonight, meaning it’s the night when everyone gets dressed up and gets their photo taken by the Christmas trees and the giant gingerbread houses. We were both still recovering from our colds, so we skipped out on the party and went to the gift shop to get some medicine before doing a bit of work. The shop manager is from Chile, so that was pretty cool—we got to reminisce a bit about “good ‘ol Chile!”

After Scott finished some of his work and I did some reading, we headed to the buffet to grab a quick dinner before it closed down. Scott enjoyed some Indian curry, of course! We were going through the Strait of Gibraltar during our meal, so it was very scenic!