On the Norwegian Sun, Day 9

[Written on the Norwegian Sun, which means it won't get posted until I
return to the US. I may have changed the sequence of events in order
to create a more nearly cohesive narrative.]

Day 9, Friday (Sea Day)

Another grey morning, with slight ship movement.

I had ordered room service, but they were out of bran muffins. Seems
odd - they knew hours ago how many bran muffins they were going to
need, and it doesn't take long to make a muffin. There's a lack of
attention to fit and finish in the galley - the lack of lemonade, the
tasteless watery shrimp in East Meets West, the problem with the tea
last night, and the lack of bran muffins this morning, were all
preventable errors that show a lack of care.

I had a manicure in the morning, walked around with the others for a
while, and then (after we got separated when I wandered off to the
bathroom), did one of my exercise goals: walk past every passenger
cabin door. That took a while, but I discovered some parts of the
ship I hadn't seen before. The children's area looked very nice.
Parts of deck 4 seemed to have a lot of engine noise. There doesn't
seem to be a way to tell room categories apart by looking at the
doors, unlike other ships which mark the suites in some way.

The captain came on the PA system and announced that his plan to
outrun the storm had worked, and that if we had gone to Cabo San Lucas
we would have been holed up there for two days. Personally, an extra
two days on the ship would not have been a tragedy, but I suppose the
people on the next cruise wouldn't have liked it. He also said we
might see rain and thunderstorms, but we ended up with only light
rain, no thunder. Too bad.

We spend much of the day wandering around the ship. We saw some
dolphins jumping off the port side. I saw only two, but R. and S.
said they saw 6 or 8 jumping together.

S. looked at chains at the "Gold by the Inch" booth, but he didn't see
anything at a price he wanted to pay. I don't have any idea whether
the prices are reasonable. If I had known what he wanted I might have
found something for him in Mexico. Too late now!

I later talked to a staff member who asked where we were from; I said
California. She then said that it was odd how people from California
only say they're from California, when California is a really large
state. Do we think that no one outside California has ever heard of
Sacramento, or San Francisco, she asked? I said yes, that's what we
think, because Americans in general don't learn anything about world
geography, so we think that people from other countries don't learn
about us. She said no, people everywhere know about lots of places in
California, because they watch American TV and movies. She also said
that Europeans tend to know very little about South America - "Oh, you
have televisions in South America?"

B. decided to skip dinner in favor of staying in his room, so S., R.,
and I decided to eat at the Italian restaurant again. The food was
very good, but the atmosphere was ruined by a very loud and obnoxious
bunch of drunks who were shouting at each other and playing with some
kind of toy cow with a built in loudspeaker.

Then we walked around the decks for a while, and off to bed.