Saturday Oct 1

Today is our next-to-last day at sea for a while. I remarked to Sandra that while I was looking forward to getting to Hawaii, I like these days at sea. As I have mentioned before, there are so many things to do, you really can't do it all. Last night was a beautiful evening, and we slept with our balcony door open. The sounds of the sea as the boat makes it's way along our course is so peaceful and makes sleeping so easy. So the morning dawns with a reddish sky, but proves to be another nice day, and with a time change (to Hawaii time), makes getting up at 8 AM no big deal.

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The clouds had a reddish orange tint—not “red sky in the morning—and the day was lovely.

Yesterday Sandra and I had a little business with the “front desk”. The desk clerk, Christine, was anxious to coax us to attend the Filipino Crew Show (which was being presented this morning.) So after breakfast we went to the showroom. The show was a very patriotic presentation, a number of indigenous songs including their national anthem and several folk dances. Christine appeared with a guitar accompianist and sang two songs (wearing 9” heels).

Here's the cast at the conclusion of the show, Christine: standing just to the left of her guitar player.

Of course we enjoyed the show and were flattered that the participants thanked us so profusly for attending. Even later in the day as we saw members of the troupe and thanked them, they thanked us for being there and supporting their efforts.

OK, over to the cooking show to which we seem to be going everyday--but we both enjoy the presentations and the recipes. Today's first segment included Hawaiian soul food, which in this case was POKE (Poe-Kee) and is made usually from Ahi Tuna, but was also done using flank steak and for the vegetarians in the audience, was similarly made with tofu. Last week in Englewood, the Wine Bistro added Poke to their special menu, and we tried it there, and liked it. In a nutshell it's similar to a simple ceviche as is often made in Mexico, just sushi grade raw tuna served over seaweed with soy sauce, onion, cilantro, olive and sesame oil, sea salt and lime juice. Served cold in martini glasses.

Not a great photo, partly because there's a glass bottle behind the POKE serving.

So after lunch I attended a Microsoft workshop, (a class in Windows 10) with tips to make WIN10 work better for me. We'll see how all this classroom training will work out for me over time—especially as I don't have an internet connection right now. Then I caught up with Sandra back at our room and we spent the afternoon out on our balcony. We were having lots of whitecaps, the captain

came on the speakers to give us position and general updates. The passenger who fell ill yesterday was in a recovery mode, which made me feel good about us rallying to help.

Later we attended a “Sip and Savor” program, which was wine and the Poke from the class earlier in the day. Bad news, it was the tofu version and frankly it sucked.

Steak Poke in the top bowl, the lower plate is the Tofu Poke. We were unable to try the steak,

but my personal opinion after trying the Tofu—Yuck, don't bother.

The final event of the day was in the Showroom, where a ventriloquist named Rob Watkins was the evening entertainer. Neither Sandra nor I have ever wanted to see a ventriloquist, but he was the only show in town, and we had a half bottle of wine that we carried into the showroom so we decided Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? I must say, he was entertaining, and good at his craft, Snadr thought he was creepy and I can see her opinion. He had a dummy (a small boy) who was bound with clothesline and had a knit hat pulled down over his face. He managed to be able to converse with Rob, but just. And there was somebody in a suitcase who occasionally yelled to be let out. He commented that the TSA guys at the airport love that sketch. But I agree, he was creepy. When we returned to the cabin, we saw some sea birds, so we are getting closer to land.

Friday Sept 30

Normally we have breakfast in the Lido restaurant, it's really just a cafeteria, with waiters who bring you coffee and bus the tables. The dining room for breakfast is overly grand, in the sense of an old hotel dining room in which you must dress appropriately, and order from the menu, and then wait for the food to come. In the Lido, you ask for (or order) your desired meal at various stations. Eggs from the egg station, pancakes and waffles from that station, toast from the bread station and so on.

There is always a video chart that is available to see on the room TV. This morning's chart shows we are half way between Seattle and Hawaii, approximately 1500 miles made good and 1500 to go. I noted we were also about 1500 miles from San Francisco, so plotting these three points, makes an equalateral triangle. It also shows that we are way the hell and gone out in the Pacific, in fact about as far from land as we could be, with 18,000 feet of water under us. And now the temperatures are generally warmer and it's quite comfortable to be outside in short sleeves and short pants.

The sea has calmed down but there are always rain storms on the horizon (this is a Panorama shot which makes the horizon looks a little wavey—it's not—that's my wavey hand).

The Captain had reported the sea swells were running 6 feet (of course we are over 700 feet long, so that's not too hard to deal with here in the cabin. But by mid day even that had let up and the Pacific seemed to be living up to it's name.

Looking aft from our balcony. Overcast at mid day, but sunny and warm after lunch, and 1500 miles from land—18,000 feet deep right here!

This morning Sandra and I attended a flower arranging demonstration. The ship's florist is an Indonesian fellow from Jakarta named Agus who has worked on the Holland American ships for 5 years. He did own up to the fact that he has worked for 5 years, but he had been a room steward, a bar tender and a dining room waiter, so his time as a florist may not have been all that long, but the room was filled with dowagers who approved of his skills and asked questions that he seemed able to answer. He did say that he liked his job, but it was his job, not an avocation. He said he does not arrange flowers when he is on vacation, except that once he reluctantly did the flowers for his sister's wedding.

Agus in the middle of a tall floral arrangement, being pestered by a passenger.

We've been trying to walk around the ship on the Lower Promanade Deck each day and so off we went to take 4 laps. I must say, the weather is fine, and walking around the deck seems like a good thing to do, and maybe a way not to gain too much weight, since there is food everywhere and it's hard to only select the foods that are good for you. Yesterday we were interrupted by a fire drill, but today everything went smoothly and we got our 4 laps in before the next food show. On past cruises we have seen these foodie events, but we rarely attended. But this group of cooking tips and recipes and other presentations have been interesting and fun to attend. In fact, following our track event, we went to see what was billed as a hamburger cook off which was a lot like Chopped.

There were 3 judges, and two chefs making their specialties. One was a 20 year chef from the Pinnacle Restaurant, and his competitor a member of the event management team—but spoiler alert, she used to own 3 restaurants and apparently did catering prior to selling out and joining the cruise line business. Lots of great smells as the burgers cooked, he made 4 different burgers, she made a couple of the same. Hers was pulled pork mixed and squeezed into hamburger meat, she also made a salad and desert—the judges liked her effort, but his efforts were really professional, and included a sushi burger; a tofu with portofino burger, a traditional burger and another fancy burger.

At the Hamburger Cook-off. From left: the two chefs, the host,

and the three judges (none of whom have ever missed a meal).

After the burger excitement, we spent the afternoon at the pool. Starting out with lunch (no burgers for us, thank you, we're into salads and iced tea) and then reclining in lounge chairs and reading until cocktail hour. I must say this decadent lifestyle is really quite pleasant, I can see how easy it would be to make this a regular way of life.

A look at the pool. The retractable roof is partly open for sun and breezes.

This is a nice place to spend an afternoon, don't you agree?

The Captain came over the cabin loud speaker as we were dressing for dinner. Apparently there was a passenger on board in critical condition and the ships doctor needed blood to save his life. The call came for O negative or A positive. Passengers who could were asked to come to the medical offices immediately with their blood donor ID card. Well I am A pos, but have no donor card. Even so Sandra and I went to the Dr's office. The really good news is there were about 15 people ahead of me, and most of them had donor cards, so I was released, as they wanted proof of blood type.

Dinner tonight at the Pinnacle and I assure you it did not include burgers, I had lobster bisque and lamb chops, Sandra enjoyed the signature Dungeness Crab Cakes and planked Halibut.

Sandra enjoys the planked Halibut and shrimp at the Pinnacle Restaurant

Dane gets ready to attack the lollipop lamb chops—Yum

After dinner the show was a Las Vegas based magician who was really very talented, specializing in slight of hand and rope tricks. I'd like him to come to one of our boating safety classes and teach knot tying. I'm pretty sure the students would all have vacant looks after seeing these fancy rope tricks.

Sept 29—At Sea about 1000 miles from Vancouver

The Maasdam—this is a painting of the ship that hangs in our elevator lobby.

The Maasdam by the numbers:

Length 720'

Beam 101'

Max no. of guests 1258

Draft 24.5 feet

Max speed 21 knots

Once again, the cruise line has overdone itself with things to do on a sea day. And just when Sandra and I wanted to read our books, too. Todays offerings ran from a cha cha dance class to the Captain's welcome toast, and in between there was a fire drill, lectures, and even a bridge class.

The day dawned with some overcast skies and occasional rain--and then a beautiful rainbow!

So a great dawning of another day on the Pacific.

We managed to avoid most of the organized events, except that we did attend the Culinary Arts event (again) this time we saw the chef make Italian dishes in the morning which promoted an Italian restaurant on board

A couple of the appatizers available at the Canaletto, and recreated for us.

Veal meatballs with sage polpettina, and Pappardelle with shrimp, artichokes and lemon-herb sauce.

Late in the morning we went out on the ship's “track”, which is really the Lower Prominade deck, and

did I mention that 4 laps is a mile. All was going very well until all of a sudden there was a fire drill, which closed the deck and ended our walk.

Crew members responding to a simulated emergency

In this case the drill was for the crew, it was good to see they took it seriously, and once completed they had a debriefing on the bridge. Knowing that they are current in their training gives me a good feeling.

The Culinary Arts afternoon event featured recipes from Le Cirque which is a restaurant that's a part of the ship's Pinnacle restaurant. This was a Lobster salad with a brandy cocktail sauce and potato confit, followed by a crème brulee. Frankly we occasionally make a crème brulee, and using the packaged mix saves about 4 hours of prep—just sayin'

Sandra and I spent the afternoon at the pool. I discovered the pool was cold (by my standards) but the hot tub was just right. Turns out that everyone in the hot tub was pretty interesting and a long conversation on the Canadian Health Plan was the topic. I actually learned quite a bit about the scheme, as they call it.

Dinner in the Dining room tonight and with some nice folks, Ma-ann and John. He from London she from the Philipeans, but their home is in northern California. They are on their way to a rental in Sydney and will be there for the next 6 months, and then in April will return home. Ma-ann says she likes to go to south east Asia during their Australian cycle, John goes back to England for a few weeks—she doesn't like England...”they're too stiff”, she says. She served 4 years in the US Navy as a Navy nurse, and then went on to be a nurse in private practice. John was a corporate jet pilot. A nice couple.

After dinner we went to the Showroom for a presentation called “Atlantic Crossing”, done by the Maasdam singers and dancers who sang about every song that came out of England from the Beatles and Stones to Elton John and Boy George. And maybe 25 others... the background band was the HAL Cats (HAL=Holland America Line) which is the resident rock and roll band, all in all a very nice presentation.

Sept 28 – At Sea

(At sea, the cell phones don't ring, and the internet is $55 for 100 minutes).

Our first day at sea (for an entire day), and to the credit of the Holland America team, they are very aware that people at sea can get bored pretty quickly and then not enjoy the cruise, so they actually over compensate. They had so many events and things scheduled for this day that it was really a sensory overload. Here's just a sampling of the offerings: ukulele and hula lessons, a sale of $10 items, free tickets that might win a case of liquor, Windows 10 classes, and about 20 other topics.

For our part, Sandra and I took a tour of the big kitchen—it's really a walk through with a guide,

but you can actually see the stations and the cooks at work. We've done this tour on many other ships and it's good to see how clean and careful they are.

Then later in the day we sat through two cooking classes run by Chef Patel, who is an Indian and second or third in command. He also trains the cooks who come to Holland America. His efforts today included a Cedar planked Halibut, some killer brownies, and dungeness crab cakes with Thai sweet chili. Then in his 2^nd class he made Hosin pork chops with Hawaiian cole slaw—all this is conducted in a modern “show” kitchen where about 200 people can see and smell and taste the products, so it's quite the event.

I know this will sound like something really unusual for us, but we took a 1 mile stroll around the Prominade Deck, it's 4 laps to the mile (no jogging, please) and so we embarked on that walk, the weather has been chilly, so the sunny side of the ship was quite nice, the shady side, pretty brisk. So rather than doing laps, we walked back and forth on the sunny side—but we did it and hope to continue each day.

I have promised myself that I will get my computer files sorted and named, photos and documents alike, and so I have started that. When that's done, I have another book ready to upload to Kindle, and it needs another pass and the illustrations added as needed and as appropriate. It's about the Spanish American War, and frankly I think it's very interesting.

At dinner we met a nice couple who live in Oceanside Calfiornia, he originally from Indonesia, she from Barcelona, Spain. They were telling us about a road trip from Lisbon to Madrid to Barcelona, and suugesting we should consider doing that. It's a nice area of the world (Iberia) and still a safe place.

Later we saw two musical shows, one a Neil Diamond tribute and the other an Australian named Patrick McMahon who sang a dozen or so “oldies” that we all enjoyed,

Sept 27-- Comes the dawn and I awaken early and go out on the balcony with my camera. We are just in the harbor at Vancouver BC (Canada). The Maasdam is still underway and had just passed through (under) the Lion's Gate bridge.

Lion's Gate Bridge—the span connecting the city to the suburbs

Once in the basin, we turn and tugs push us back into a slip at Canada Place. If you've seen Canada Place, you'll recall it looks like a ship with four white sails moored to a pier—but it is in fact the pier, and the same place we departed 3 years ago on our cruise to Alaska.

The city of Vancouver at about 6 AM as we arrive from Seattle

The day started out a bit chilly in the early morning, but then settling into a 70-73 degree day. Overcast at first, then sunny in the afternoon. We had requested breakfast in our room last night, and a knock came at 7:30 with a huge tray of eggs and crossants, plus juice and coffee and tea, and so we scrambled to make room for all that.

Our room—photo taken from the doorway to our balcony. At the far end is the door to the corridor, in the entry hall a bath with Jacuzzi tub and shower on the right, closets on the left.

The room is very nice, but everything except the bed is about ¾ size. Small chairs, narrow walking aisles and so on. Out on the balcony the chairs are full size, but there's no room to drag them in, and it's too cold to just sit out there this early morning, so we took all the breakfast items off the tray and managed to make room for the goodies on our little table.

My first effort at a panorama of Vancouver shot from Stanley Park, (at low tide) Sandra in her red hat getting a similar shot. The Maasdam is on the extreme left at the pier with 4 masts.

At 9AM we had arranged to take a “city tour”, basically a random bus ride through the city, but with a guide who knew lots about the city and provided a good patter as he drove us through Stanley Park and over to the Lion's Gate bridge and then back through the old part of Vancouver. Although he had a pretty heavy accent, he had lived in the region for about 20 years and was generally entertaining.

Lion's Gate bridge from Stanley Park

The driver gave us the opportunity to get off the bus in the China Town area and walk back to the ship. So we did. It was interesting to see the various stores and shops, and to wander through that area. We came upon an A&W Root Beer store and decided that a root beer float would be a great option just then—and they had free WiFi too, so we settled in and enjoyed ourselves.

Finally we got underway and found Canada Place was really only just 2 or 3 blocks further—but then the delay began, since we had been through all the customs and passport checks in Seattle, and had documents that certified we were passengers INTRANSIT, we had been told we would be able to get right back on—but no... Apparently that was an error, we were walked maybe half a mile through Canada Place, all the way to the end of the pier within a cattle fence, and then up a long stairway, then all the way back to the front of the building—now on the top floor. All the “guards” were Indian or Muslim, and had their own garments on (turbans and berkas) but wore yellow reflective vests over the top with ID badges. Finally we were seated (now with 100's of others) and had to wait for US Homeland Security Border Police to meet us one at a time, and scan our passports, read our other documents and finally send us “through” meaning we could take the escalator down and walk the same old route back to the front of the building, and then up what seemed like the companion escalator, and get back to the gangway to the ship—maybe an hour or more in total time wasted. Later the Captain apologised and indicated that it was not Holland America's fault. He said the Homeland Security guys were called in plenty of time, but they had to drive to Vancouver from Seattle (where they were based) and stopped for lunch on the way. Much of our waisted time was waiting for them to arrive. On the other hand, adding Vancouver to the list of stops was not on the original schedule, it was added in August and may have been added so Canadians who went to the Seahawks game in Seattle on Sunday could take a one day cruise to get home. Anyway, everyone had to be re-certified to leave a foreign country (Canada) to go to the US (Hawaii). Just a SNAFU that we see in the Coast Guard on a weekly basis.

So back on board, we explored the ship and prepared to depart at about 4. Lots to find, like where's the laundry and which bars are having happy hours and the like. Of course our departure was delayed as well due to the Homeland Security issues, but the Maasdam finally got underway and retraced our course south toward Victoria and then a hard right as the sun set and and the captain makes our course toward the Pacific Ocean and points South and West. It's all exciting as we get going in earnest.

Cold evening sky as the sun sets over the Straits of Juan de Fuca

At dinner we joined a couple from Australia (Deardra and Andrew) who we had met in the “Crow's Nest” bar yesterday. They have suggested they would take us sailing in Sydney on their new 50' sailing catameran. That would make a nice visit, don't you agree? And with desert were surprised by the waiters all singing to Sandra and me—Happy Anniversary. Nice touch. Sleepy came early and the time changed by an hour, so although we got in bed at 10 or so, with the time change it was only 9.   

Sept 23 So this was the day we had to get all our stuff together, because we were leaving early--or relatively early the next day,  The plan was we needed to get everything together and fisnish packing so that by the time we went to bed, we would be ready to leave in the morning. The the phone rang, our across the street neighbor wanted to share with me that one of our sprinkler heads had disintegrated and we had a geyser in the front yard. Meaning I needed to somehow deal with the lawn sprinkler because when one sprinkler blows out, there isn't enough pressure to run the other sprinkler heads in that zone.

And did I mention that I was trying to eat the fridge out of food so we wouldn't be leaving any fresh meats or good leftovers for the 6 weeks we would be away. And so we had pretty well accomplished all that and planned on going out to dinner that night.
So I dug through my sprinkler parts and found an old sprinkler that would work, and installed it, only to discover that it was not going back and forth, it really just sprayed. (crap).

And so after dinner (at the Moose hall) we went home and to bed.  And then, at about 2:30 AM I woke with the distinct belief that the ship sailed on Sunday--I MEAN, DON'T THEY ALWAYS? That meant that we had to get to Tampa first thing Saturday to catch the plane to Seattle, there wouldn't be time to rent the car we planned to take to the airport--and so we'd have to leave my car for 6 weeks at the Tampa Airport! So lights on at 2:30 AM to check all the paperwork--only to find this was a false alarm, the ship was scheduled to sail on Monday, everything was fine--except we were awake and had a difficult time getting back to sleep.

Sept 24 After a not all that good night of trying to sleep, it was time to be up. And so we were, up and at 'em.  We got the laundry in the washer, and picked up the rental car,  I managed to stop at Lowes for a sprinkler on the way home. On the TV news we hear that Rt 75 was closed in both directions, a gasoline tanker had run off the road and spilled fuel all over the highway. That would be a major setback for us. Well alls well that ends well.  We got the rental car packed, I replaced the sprinkler, finally we were ready (after turning off the hot water and unplugging the TVs and computers) finally we set out.

The highway was clear--the actual spill occurred in Northport, not Sarasota as the news seemed to indicate. The drive up to Tampa was uneventful, and we easily found the hotel we had made reservations for. It was one of those places that looked really nice in the photos, but was not exactly as shown. It was pretty tired over all, and very busy with customers who I thought might have been there for a wedding. Lots of loud laughter late into the night. We did, however, discover the Bahama Mama restaurant next door, which was very popular, had lots of young men and women who were hooking up before our eyes, Great band and lots of good food and drinks. But because we had an early flight out in the AM we went back to the hotel room about 10. Later--around 3AM--the place finally shut down and there was a noisy crowd in the parking lot outside our window for the next maybe 20 minutes. Then it was silent.

Sept 25 We needed to be at the airport 2 hours before our 9:30 AM flight. But that said, we left the hotel around 7:30 and got to the airport about 7:45, dropped off Sandra with the luggage and then I returned the car. We were pretty well through the TSA by 8, and managed to get a really nice breakfast and then board the plane at 8:55. Sandra discovered that with her folding cane she could get priority boarding and so we enjoyed getting on early--which was a huge help since we had 5 carry on bags (2 back packs, 2 carry sacks, and a computer case with both of our computers inside.
Tampa to Denver, and then Denver to Seattle (2 bags of peanuts and three Sprites and beautiful views out the windows of the plane) Around 3 PM west coast time we were in the hotel. I had a chance to jump in the pool, but suddenly lots of small people jumped in with me, and so I exited quickly.

The long and short of this day was we were tired from two nights of not much sleep, and no lunch. But we did enjoy a restaurant suggested by the hotel--Sharp's Roasthouse--which provided us a roast beef sandwich and a couple of drinks for just over $100.  Well, Seattle is a city, and in New York we'd have been really lucky to spend only $100, it just seemed expensive after Florida prices. Gas here is $2.85 for regular, we just paid $2.02 in Venice this week, so you can see the difference. So it's about 8 PM here and we are in bed (It's Midnight our time) so good night ladies.

Once we are on the ship and settled I'll start adding photos to show what we've been up to.

Sept 21, Today Sandra and I sat on our kitchen stools and had lunch. Our conversation came around to since wee would be away, how would we be able to vote in the November election? We had requested absentee ballots weeks ago, but nothing in the mail so far. Our plan was that our gardener Chris was going handle the mail for the first 3 weeks, and then the post office would hold our mail after that.  The ballots (we thought) would arrive during that first cycle and Chris could mail them to us. But the ship line told us on the phone that there was no way they could deal with mail coming to the ship in Australia.

There was a story in the paper that the ballots would be mailed on Saturday to those who had requested them, and so we thought--maybe--if we drove to the County building, we could get an early copy.  (That's so unlikely that we were certain we were wasting our time, but armed with our usual youthful exuberance, we set off to joust with the windmills of the county). Well, in we went to the voting office, and there were no other citizens in there, just us and the workers. We explained our situation (out of the country for 6 weeks, missing all the dates to vote etc.) and it was as if the clouds opened and a ray of sunshine struck us--"sure", they said, "we'll print ballots for you and you can vote today!" And they couldn't thank us enough for making the request, since they expected more like us and needed to figure out how they would handle folks who wandered in needing this service. They told us we were No 1 and No 2 to vote in the 2016 election in Sarasota County, Fl. You could have knocked me over with a feather.

Sept 22 The big day is getting closer and my excitement is growing.  Lots to remember, lots to do, we're pretty well packed. I think we've done enough traveling so it should be easy from here on. On the real estate front, I had a closing today and need to submit my check to my broker for him to take his share and give me the rest. I'll do that around 5 as he would rather meet me at his house which is basically through our backyard.  My customer, Mark Thompson was really easy to deal with and is quite the gentleman, if they were all like that I probably would never retire. (but they're not). Now I'm just juggling computers and memory sticks so I'll have my stuff with me. And I'm wondering about the weather in all the different locales we'll visit--I'm packing shorts and jeans and short sleeved shirts and long sleeves and sweaters and jackets, lots of layers since today is the first day of Autumn here and the first day of spring there.