travels, races, and other musings

At Sea By now you know the drill: laundry, light breakfast, laundry, work out, back to the room and shower and finish up the laundry that Roger had tended while I was working out. I didn’t feel like going to Cabana’s and Emmaline was still sleeping after all this and I wanted to be there if she needed me so Roger brought me back a plate of food.  I was all done getting ready and having breakfast and Emmaline was still sleeping so I just let her. Finally around 10 AM she woke up. I called the health center to report her illness and they told me that we could bring her down but it would be $128 and they left it up to me. I told them I just wanted to report it since I know we were supposed to. They honestly didn’t seem to care. I considered getting out our Covid tests since Covid can often present as nausea and vomiting, but I decided to wait and see how she was doing. I had brought her a banana from the fitness center, which she ate. Then she got herself dressed and said that she fel...

Alesund We lost an hour. I forgot to mention we lost an hour the day before too. We had gained them going into Iceland and now they were gone again. There were so many time zone changes on this trip. We lost 6 hours from the US to the UK, then we lost another going to France. Then going to Iceland we gained two hours and then back the other way going to Norway (they did both of those across two days which was nice). But because of all these time changes it was like a nonstop Daylight Saving Time changes and I spent a lot of trip feeling jet-lagged and off-kilter because of it.  So we slept in, but also tried to get up at a reasonable hour which was 8 AM. Emmaline did not find this reasonable and did a LOT of complaining. Finally we all went off for a very light breakfast before picking up the day’s scavenger hunt, which was slightly different. They supplied photos of flags and we had to identify which country had that flag and the name of a crew member from that country. It was har...

At Sea Here we go again. Another round of laundry. Why, you may be wondering, did you do so much laundry? Well, we packed six days of clothes, but we need to stick to sort of a sea day schedule which meant we needed to do laundry on those days, plus the laundry machines just don’t hold much so we were either going to have to do multiple loads on one day or smaller loads every few days and we took the latter approach, mostly because it was just easier to do the load when our little bag was full, but also because we could really only get one machine at a time, even with me getting up at 7 AM to get it done. I usually had to go to multiple laundry rooms to find an open machine. About those growing pains on the Dream… So I started the load, went and had a light snack, went back and moved the load to the dryer and went to the gym, at which point Roger took over. It was a system that ended up working well. I actually think this was our last load and I managed to do two that morning. I can’t ...

Akureyri For Akureyri (ah-koo-ray-ree) we booked a small group tour through Saga, who provides a variety of single or multi-day excursions throughout Iceland. They had good ratings and I thought it might be nice to take in some more of the natural beauty of Iceland. I wasn’t exactly sure where we were going. I knew a lake and a waterfall were involved though. Sign me up! We had an 8:45 AM meeting time for a 9:00 tour. We waited until 9:15 and then the tour guide got word that the final family we were waiting for wasn’t coming. So it was us, Larry and Janee from our cruise meet group (they were also with us in Cherbourg), one other family and one single guy, who turned out to be a former crew member onboard who was done with his contract as an actor on the main stage theatre. He was a nice kid and we chatted with him throughout the day. Anyway, on our drizzly and windy morning, we made a thirty minute drive to the first stop, which was Goðafoss, “waterfall of the gods.” It was stunning....

At Sea As I mentioned previously, when we first learned this port day was changed to a sea day, we were all really disappointed, upset, and angry. Pretty sure I went through all the stages of grief. Yes, I know there are bigger problems in the world (I should know with all the personal tragedy in my life over the last couple of years) but we were still disappointed.  It’s funny to look back on it and we all really felt like things worked out really well. We got the horseback riding in and while it made for a long day, the terrain we were in was way cooler than the terrain we were originally going to be riding in Isafjordur. I’ve written before that I don’t really subscribe to an “everything happens for a reason” worldview and I prefer Amy Mann’s “we look back and make the reason” but I think in this case things worked out just fine.  Onward! My day started at 7 AM and notes for this morning are as follows: laundry light breakfast laundry work out (BODYCOMBAT practice) laundry ...

Reykjavik About a month before we were supposed to set sail someone posted in our FB cruise meet group that there was an issue with the dock at Isafjordur (our second stop in Iceland). They were dredging the harbor to create a new dock that could accommodate larger ships, like the Disney Dream. But apparently it wasn’t ready and a lot of ships were having to cancel that stop. Some of the smaller ships were able to use tenders.  We kept waiting to hear what would happen and we were hopeful, but then, with less than a week before we were set to leave, we got an email from DCL that the port was cancelled and unfortunately, they were unable to secure an alternative port for us. We were really unhappy about it. The cruise already had more sea days than we really wanted and now we were getting another.  I was scrambling to figure out how to get the horseback riding that Emmaline really wanted to do tacked onto another port day. Ultimately, we decided we had the most time in Reykjavi...

At Sea It’s another day at sea. And this time without laundry (don’t worry, more laundry is coming). Which is good because the day was jam-packed with activities we wanted to do. I woke up at 6:30 and headed to the gym. I found a tiny little piece of real estate and I did a BODYCOMBAT. I had already started learning the chorey for the next release I would be teaching and I knew it somewhat and so I put on the masterclass and listened, but didn’t watch (there really wasn’t any way to watch anyway). I’m sure people thought I was a weirdo punching and kicking in a little corner. It wouldn't be the last time I'd eke out a little corner to punch nothing for an hour. After that I went back to the room and showered and put on my pajamas. Yes, my pajamas. It was time for our FB cruise meet group pajama breakfast. We all descended on Royal Palace at 8 AM decked out in our jammies for breakfast. It was a lot of fun and some families went all out in matching PJs. Emmaline ate breakfast wi...