Date: Jan 7, 2007 11:41 PM
Subject: Sunday, January 07, 2007
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Sea day on the way to Great Stirrup Cay, Bahamas.
Again we had to get up early this morning. We had to be to breakfast by 9:00. There was a special breakfast for gold and platinum members in Signatures restaurant. The captain and many of the officers were there. There was more caviar then even I could eat. The pastries were unbelievable. Full size and miniatures were everywhere. Lox with all the condiments and very large shrimp with the best sauce I have ever tasted. Mini Eggs Benedict with tiny Quail eggs. Thin Swedish crepe like pancakes with loganberries. Four stations making eggs to order. 
And of course all the usual breakfast meats and some unusual like some kind of great Italian salami. And while we ate they kept coming around and pouring Champaign and real fresh squeezed orange juice.I wanted to get a shot of the bridge to send but they had an open day on the bridge today. It was impossible to get a shot without people blocking most of it but I sent it anyhow.
Did I mention that they announced there was an itinerary change? A few days ago they announced that we would be going to Manila. They did not tell us why or what we would be missing. I just finally remembered and looked it up. On the 2nd we were supposed to visit Taiwan. My guess is that China said we could not visit China if we went to Taiwan. They had put in a technical call to Japan to get around the old rule of not coming or going directly to Taiwan from China. Obviously China changed the rules without warning as they are well known to do. So now we get a real stop in Japan as we have more time and a stop in Manila. We stopped there last year. The majority of the crew is from the Philippines. The crew knew about this itinerary change long before we did. On our first day aboard one of the waiters mentioned what he was doing in Manila this year. I had said we were not going there this year. He said oh yes, we were going there on March 1st. Later I looked and saw we were at sea on March 1st on the way to Japan. He must have been told to shut up as he now said it was just a rumor.
Manila had the most polluted air of any place we visited last year and there was not much to see. I remember being fifty miles out to sea before the odor and smog dissipated. We did have a great lunch and entertainment provided by Virtuoso at the Hotel Manila and it was a beautiful hotel. The people we ran into there were all very nice and friendly.
It’s about 8:30 at night. We stopped back at the room after dinner and turned on the TV. There is a channel that shows the ship speed etc. by GPS, as do most cruise ships. This ship is not the fastest. Top speed is about 19.5 knots. I saw we had an apparent head wind of about 60 miles an hour. Apparent means our speed plus the real wind speed. The GPS said we were going about 22 knots even with that strong head wind. Very unusual. That means we must already be in the Gulf Stream and it has to be going 4 or 5 knots.
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