Day 32 - 12/21 - At sea to Cruz Bay, US Virgin Islands

Ah, lazy sea days after a rock and roll night in the Atlantic Ocean. We got up in time to attend Ian's 9:00am coffee chat with Chandler, the HAL entertainment coordinator whom we had already seen on the previous cruise. We were also able to connect in person with our cruising friend Larry and chat a bit. We skipped the 10am shore excursions presentation as we have booked all of our excursions, but attended Ian's presentation on the upcoming ports of call, all of them! The previous night we received duplicate tickets for our planned HAL shore excursions and triplicates for one excursion. So I returned to the Shore Excursion desk and asked if I could resell the tickets. A good laugh was had by all but I returned the extra tickets. I also pointed out a possible error for one of our excursions and ended up rebooking the excursion as the excursion booklet was wrong.

At lunch we shared a table with Larry in the Lido and continued our conversation. After lunch we watched part of Jolene's port shopping talk before attending Ian's history of Holland America on the World Stage. The rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing around the ship. Christmas decorations are everywhere throughout the ship and Christmas music is played everywhere. It's quite a festive environment. 

It was a GALA evening, but we didn't care for the menu in the Main Dining Room, so we booked a 5:30pm dinner in the Pinnacle (one of our 2 free 5 Star Mariner free Pinnacle dinners). It was a yummy dinner of Salmon and Halibut along with the hanging bacon appetizer. The Captain gave his welcome speech and offered a toast While we don't see him around the ship much, he's a good speaker and volunteered that the seas are going to get smoother as we continue our route. The outside decks were closed so we had to stay inside the ship.  

The evening entertainment was the Jersey Tenors, whom we've seen many times on various HAL ships. They were fabulous and received a standing ovation. Afterwards we returned to our stateroom to watch the UW Huskies beat Boise State in the Las Vegas bowl. It was Coach Peterson's last game and the victory was over his former team. I also used the time to finalize a Sunday service sermon titled "The Waiting Game" in case I am able to speak at the 'led by congregation' interdenominational service. We were also paid a visit by a front desk representative to check the room temperature. She confirmed it was 22ºC. Supposedly it will get fixed and she indicated she had 7 other rooms to check for the same condition.

Tomorrow is another sea day. It is expected to get smoother and more Caribbean weather like.

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