Sumner

Today was our first port day. We stopped at the island of São Miguel in a port town named Ponta Delgada. Before commencing our journey inland we went up to have some breakfast. While there we saw some of the city from the vantage point of the boat. Once we were ready to go into town, we went down to A Deck. Not a deck but A Deck, this is the bottom most level of the ship that the passengers are allowed to be on. They checked our cards as we went out and then we were free to do anything we wanted, we just had to new back at the boat by four thirty in the afternoon. We were planning on walking around the town but we decided to get a taxi tour of he island instead. The tour cost the same as if we had gone with the boat but we were able to stay in any location for as long of a time or as short of a time as we wanted. From Ponta Delgada we rode in the car for a few minutes to get to another town on the island, the name of which escapes me at the moment. He took us to what you might consider the middle/center of the town. There was a small square with little pathways going throughout. The trees had a peculiar plant or something hanging on it. There was a path down to another larger park. This park was near the side of a river, well a river for us Coloradans, maybe not for those of you who consider a ten foot wide flowing body of water a small brook. Anyway the bridge over the river upstream a little bit was the bridge that we went over to get to the town center. The river that was running underneath it was the river that the aforementioned river by which the park was located. His park had some very nice flowers and paths throughout. Some of the water from the river was diverted to form a small channel of water going thought the center of the park. After seeing this park we went to a small church. We guessed that it was baroque or classical in style (Mrs. Duncan if you are reding this) it was our first of what will be many visits to cathedrals around Europe. I think cathedrals are to Europe as temples are to Vietnam. (For those of you who did not followed us on our trip to Vietnam about every other stop on the tours that we went on we stopped at a temple. Or at least it seamed that way). After the church we went for a little walk, about a hundred yards down a street until we got to a place where there was a traffic jam and we deemed that it was necessary  to turn around. We circled around and went back to the taxi. The next thing that we went to was an overlook over which you could see the sea all the way to the horizon, or at least until you could no longer see because of the fog. You could also see the cliffs that the water dashed up on from the aforementioned vantage point. Another sight that you could see was a plateau which some horses were grazing on. It was actually more like a ledge but…

Sumner

Like I promised I will describe to you the nature of the ship today. Hopefully it isn’t to convoluted for you to understand. I will hopefully before the trip is completed be able to add a link to the website with the plans of the ship and of the rooms. And as a picture tells a thousand words… My posts will only be a helper as you look through the pictures. Maybe I will post that in Lisbon, or… Maybe not. We’ll see. [The rest of this posts will be posted under the title Day 11: At Sea] I admit, I have been staying up watching shows etc. way too late and once I get to the blog it is often eleven o’clock at night. Right now I am writing this while waiting for a show to start. Now you can go to Day 11. See you there!

Sumner

Nothing much happened different than the other days at sea therefore I will not spend much time describing the days activities. Basically if you take all the previous posts that I have written, mesh them all together (give or take a few things) and then make a day out of them you will get some idea of what happened today. Colton and I tried to solve a sudoku puzzle (we didn’t succeed I think that we messed up one our logic for one square which screwed up everything else. Oh well, maybe we’ll succeed tomorrow.)

Sumner

Today was another day with a late start. About nine o’clock. We were going to go to a church service but because the room doesn’t have any windows we don’t know what time it is by the sun. If we turned off the lights, even at noon it could be midnight for all that we can tell. Anyway going to the church service didn’t work because it was supposed to start at nine. Oops. We decided to go to eat our breakfast. After that Hannah went to Club HAL and I went to the pool to see if anyone wanted to play ping-pong. Colton was there so we played for a while until we went to a talk about Seville. At the beginning though, he went thought the history of architecture. Much of this I already knew. Thank you Mrs. Duncan! After the talk we went to go eat lunch and then I went back to the pool and talked for a little while with Colton and his mom and played a little more ping-pong (we are playing a lot of ping-pong). Then I came down to the room and got my bathing suit on to go swim. A little way through my bathe, Colton and his brother Sebastian came. We played for a little while end then their other brother, Nathan came. We kept on going from the hot tub and then to the regular pool and back to the hot tub again. Then we got ready to go eat. (eat, play, sleep; what a life). After the delicious dinner we went to go to watch people at the karaoke room. There were a few pretty good singers but this one guy, I felt kinda bad for him, just couldn’t carry a tune at all. After that we came back to the room. When we go there though we had some chocolate covered strawberries which we promptly ate. The people that cleaned our rooms must have done it because Oma’s meat was not very good. I must say thought that Oma didn’t complain at a all but they must have sensed that she was not pleased, no wonder that they did, she only ate a tiny portion of the meat. Anyway that was basically it but I must tell you that if any of you have pets you probably should be wary of mom when she gets back because each night the people who clean the room always make a creation with the towels. The past two nights when the have done so mom has murdered the creations before Hannah had come down from club HAL by putting her jacket on it! Pets beware.

Sumner

The day started out really late today, ten o’clock for me. We didn’t go to breakfast because we were going to have lunch in just a few hours. I decided to go up to the crows nest but on the way I saw a boy that was bouncing a ping-pong ball on a paddle. He looked like he was just slightly bored. So I asked him if he wanted to play. We played ping-pong for about half an hour and then Colton, that’s the boys name, and I went down to the theater to watch a talk about the history of the cruise boat. I met Oma and mom down there at the talk, which was very interesting. I learned a lot about cruising in the speech. Then we met up with Hannah went to go eat lunch. After lunch, which was really good, mom and Oma went to go watch another talk and I went up to the crows nest to do my class. While I was waiting for the ladies to show up the people that I had done the trivia with yesterday called me over to play with them. I didn’t help much but it was kinda neat just to listen to the questions and think of good answers. Anyway, as the people in my iPad class showed up I asked them if it would be OK if we just met two hours later at four for the class instead of two because the talk that mom and Oma were going to was on that the ladies in my class wanted to go to as well. I decided go go up to Club HAL to see what they were doing it wasn’t anything that I wanted to do at that moment so I went down to the pool and talked with Colton’s brothers and mom. He has two brothers, one is named Sebastian, the other is Nathan. Colton is ten, and the others are seven and eight, I just don’t know which one is which. Anyway, I went back up to Club HAL for a few minutes until I went to go do my iPad class. After class we decided to meet in two days, on Monday, so that they could try out everything that we had gone over. At that point it was about time for dinner so we went to the room and got ready. The food was good and after we had eaten we went to the show. Today it was an Olympic gymnast performing some things. Mainly he used silk things that hung from the ceiling to do some tricks on. One time though he said that he was going to take a break and let the band play but he went over to the piano and started playing with them! He had learned to play because for the last few years he as been doing shows on cruise ships and he had learned from the musicians that he met on the boats. He also did a few juggling routines, one of witch he did in the dark with lighted balls. It was really cool. After the show we went back to the room to go to bed.

Sumner

Today we got up earlier than we did yesterday, about seven or a little after. We actually got to go to breakfast today! The food was good and after the meal we had to decide what to do. Hannah and I went with Club HAL to play ping-pong. And after we were done we played UNO for a little while. Then Hannah went with Oma to a cooking demonstration and mom and I went to hear a person talk about one of the ports that we went to. I dosed off during part of it do I’d don’t really remember everything that he said. Oh well. Next was lunch, which was very good, and then we played a little ping-pong before I went to meet with the ladies for our little iPad class. We didn’t have much of a class, only about twenty minutes. This was because there was another talk that all of the ladies wanted to go to so our meting adjourned and the ladies left. I decided to go and find mom and Oma, who themselves were at the talk. I couldn’t find them but we had arranged for everyone to meet in the room at about four to get ready for diner. That was done and we went to eat at the restaurant. I wasn’t feeling great, it was a little rocky. (I’m fine now, it was juts over that one spot for a few hours that was really bad. It wasn’t that bad though I just didn’t enjoy everything to its fullest extent.) After dinner we went to watch the boats sings perform some Broadway songs. I fell asleep for part of it, (I seem to be liking to sleep through things… Oh well it doesn’t matter). We all went down to the trivia show, it was pretty funny. We left a little early because Hannah wanted to go to a room where someone was playing the piano. I came to the room and am writing this blog. Well I should probably start getting ready for bed. I’ll keep you posted!

Sumner

We started out really late, nine o’clock or so, because we have such a dark room in the interior of the ship and we don’t have any windows so we were all just thinking that it was three in the morning and went back to bed. Finally I figured out and looked at my watch. Oh well we had some nice rest. We actually didn’t have breakfast because we were so late getting started. Instead we got ready to go to this “Meet and Greet” meeting hosted by this group called “Cruise Critic” (if you ever want to go on a cruise check it out, I actually don’t know what it is but it must be good or else mom wouldn’t  have used it). Anyway Hannah and I got ready before mom and Oma so we went up to the Crows Nest to write yesterday’s post. The meeting, by the way was at the Crows Nest on one side. We were sitting on the other side looking out at the ocean in front of us. Mom showed up at the meeting late, really late, so late that she missed the entire meeting. She did show up for the mingling time after the meeting and somehow or another she ended up talking to some ladies about the iPad and how they didn’t know how to use it. Well she volunteered me to teach an iPad class. I had come over just as she was doing so and I was just a little surprised. Well, I walked out of the Crows Nest with an iPad class with four women at two o’clock in the afternoon. We decided to go have some lunch and after we ate we went to play ping-pong until time for me to teach the iPad class. The iPad class went well, our progress: we made it to learning how to mass delete photos! Anyway after an hour of class we decided that we would have another class the next day at the same time two o’clock. Remember this time, it will come in handy near the end of the day. After I was finished with the class I joined club HAL for ice cream an then plagued ping-ping with mom. Then Hannah and I went swimming for a little while. Once we were done we went back to the room to get dressed for the formal dinner. The formal dinner is a very formal occasion. I wore a suit and tie. If you’re reading this Nic, thank you for the suit, it has come in handy. Goodwill also helped out by supplying the shoes and tie. The food was delicious, we had an appetizer, soup, an entree and a desert. All of which were good. After our dinner we went to go see a pianist perform. Before he started though, the guy announced that there would be a time change in the middle of the day tomorrow, at two o’clock. There will be no two o’clock tomorrow. He joked that he was going to work out from two till three. Now remember that time I told you to remember? Well if you remember I had scheduled my iPad class at two o’clock but tomorrow it not exist, oops. Anyway the pianist was really good. I enjoyed the songs. One of the songs was a medley of some of Beethoven songs made modern, it was really interesting. It just goes to show that the melodies are the same just the style, and instruments that the melodies are played on change. After that show as we were going towards our room we saw another thing set up. It was a game show. We decided to watch that, they took some people form the audience that wanted to do it and one of the guys from the staff asked the questions. One of ladies was just not good at all but he staff guy made her feel fine. He asked all of the other people to step back and let her get some questions for only herself. One time when she answered a question “John F. Kennedy!” he said, “Yes, also known as Jimmy Carter but you know he went by a lot of things back then.” Anyway everyone had a good time and it was really funny to watch. After that we came back to our room and got ready for bed. I am currently writing his post and getting tirrrrrrrreeeeeeedddddd oops, I think I held down a key on he keyboard, that probably means I should go to bed.

Sumner

Today was tiring at best. We started the day out in Ft. Lauderdale and ended it out of site of the shore. We had breakfast in the hotel and then went back up to get ready to check out of the room at ten. Then we went to the port, Port Everglades. There we dropped off our bags and went to the airport to drop off our car. We took the shuttle from the airport back to the port and went through a very extensive security and check in. Eventually we got to the jet-way. Oh wait, it can’t be a jet-way, we weren’t going on a jet. It did look like it though. Anyway when we got onto the boat it was really cool. It was really grand. We were almost attacked with people with hand sanitizer and everyone was very nice. Then we were told where to go to get to our room and there we put down our bags and then we went to lunch. After a delicious buffet lunch we explored the ships for a little while and then went back to the room to get on our bathing suits to go swimming. After that we watched the embarkation at about 6:00. There is a kids club and a teens club on the ship. The kid club (called club HAL; Holland America Line) had a meeting and so Hannah went to that for a few minutes while mom, Oma and I went to go eat. We learned that I was one of two teenagers on the ship and Hannah was one of about ten or so kids. We were going to try to eat at the nice restaurant but the line was so long that it just wasn’t worth it. We went to the buffet instead. After we had eaten we went up to pick up Hannah. One of the leaders of the club informed us that I was actually the only teenager on he ship. The other “teenager” turned out to be 67 not 17. Someone had made a typo. Anyway Hannah came down to have dinner and then we went back to the room to go to bed.

Hannah

Can you believe it? Tomorrow is the BIG day! We are going on our cruise tomorrow around noon. (Maybe before.) Anyway… Today was the last minute shopping time. Such as Target, Walgreens and  CVS/Farmacy (that is the southern Walgreens.) Today wasn’t very interesting, but I’ll tell you, in 7-9 days, there will be LOTS of news. Well maybe tomorrow will be interesting. Why? Because I will probably tell everyone about and what’s on the boat. It will be VERY exciting. Well I gotta go to bed now, see ya’ll later!

Hannah