10/31/12 Halloween at Sea

Today was pretty quiet and laid back – lots of chatting with people and taking it easy. We did, however, get together with Lawrie and Lorraine, and a German couple, Christiana and Jens – Team International – to play the daily trivia quiz and we won! Our prize was one large drink of the day with 6 straws (whatever!) The consequence of winning was that we had to write the 10 questions for the next quiz. That’s tough when you have an international group to quiz.

During dinner some of the crew turned off the lights and had a costume parade through the dining room. After dinner Renata, our cruise director (dressed like a witch), held the “Spooky Frog Jumping” races at the Tropical Bar. I think the “frogs” looked more like turtles,and there was a bit of cheating going on. All-in-all it was a lot of fun. Our captain is very outgoing and participated in the festivities.

I’d better get some sleep. Tomorrow we’re in Spain.

Buenos Noches,

Charli

10/30/12 Mahon (a city), Menorca (an island), Spain

Calm seas, blue skies, and a beautiful port – all’s right with the world.

Today we spent hours wandering around the tiny city of Mahon.  It is a peaceful, picturesque village on the hillside of Menorca, Spain with clean streets and friendly people.

We wandered in and out of the little shops and through Mahoon’s version of an indoor mall with dozens of tiny little kiosks lining narrow walkways. We did come across a pretty good sized grocery store there where we bought rum and fruit juice. They also had a little tavern that offered free WI Fi. We went back after lunch and I finally posted my blogs that I have been writing in word but unable to post because of the iffy internet situation. This blogging is harder than it looks but by George I think I got it…

Buenos Noches

10/29/12

Ahoy, Mates

The seas have calmed, the sun is shining. Life on board the Royal Clipper is much improved. So, let me take you on a short tour of our ship.

The ship is bigger than the Star Clipper and the Star flyer. It is, in fact, the largest full-rigged sailing ship in the world, and it is really beautiful.

Our cabin is much nicer this trip. Not huge by any means, but not the smallest on the ship like last time, and we have a regular bed rather than bunk beds, yea!!!!!

We spend much of our time in the Piano Bar Lounge. It is where we chat with new found friends, relax, read, blog….

The circular skylight you see on the ceiling is actually the see-through bottom of the swimming pool on the deck above.

x

Here is Tom in the dining room at lunch.

And Chef Randy demonstrating his fruit carving art on the sun deck.

And here we are on the upper deck.

So this is our home away from home for another 25 days.

Love and kisses,

Charli

All Aboard,

10/27-28/12

Here we are aboard the Royal Clipper. We are currently in the very rough seas due to a small hurricane off the coast of Rome. On board it doesn’t feel so small. The sea is very rough with waves up to twenty-one feet. Needless to say, many of the passengers are very green and there have been a lot of broken dishes. I rarely get seasick but the boat has been so rocky that even I have been pretty queasy. Not a great way to start this part of our journey, but it will get better. The good news is that it is supposed to calm down greatly by this evening – we’ve been in it for two days.  The bad news is that this weather really slows our progress, so we’ve had to skip the first 2 ports of call – Corsica and Ibiza– to stay on schedule. The other good news is that we can (although it is costly) get WI FI (they call it Wee Fee) access on the ship, so I’ll be able to blog away :o)

Not feeling so hot – rocking, rolling and blogging don’t go so well together, so I think I’ll go lie down (uggg),

Charli