Sea Day Tuesday September 11

Creatures of habit, we met again for breakfast at our table by the beautiful sea. Terry and I tried Sit to Be Fit at 9 along with a contingent of deaf people who has a variety of questions and jokes. I noticed that it was not offered the next day, but they did have a stretch to be fit class in the centrum. That was a little too public for me.

After that it was another lecture with the Professor on the Solar System. He told us that shortly before the sun rises we should be able to see Venus and Jupiter rising in the east.

At 11 we watched the movie Super 8 in the same theater, that being a concession by management to the fact that there were more people wanting to see a movie than would fit into their smallish stadium seating cinema and in six days we would all be sea crazy. I’m not sure how sailors do it for months at a time. I hear words like confined, imprisoned, sequestered, and confined used to describe our condition and its only day 2. There may have been 10 to 20 of us that took advantage of it, so I guess we aren’t that desperate.

Next Joseph Condril, history lecturer, spoke on (the top) 25 Days that Shook the World (in his opinion). I knew most of the events and about two of the dates:

• 3200 BC – man created writing

• 752 BC --, founding of the Roman Empire - longest running government in history

• 5 BC - Hippocrates, birth of modern medicine

• 4-6 BC - Christ born –the monk who originally calculated his birth erred

• 1066 Norman Invasion/Battle of Hastings- Germanic English modified by French giving us words like buffet, RSVP, parliament (parli – to speak, ment – to meet). 30% of modern English derived from the French

• 1215 - Magna Carta - birth of English law where everyone is equal under the law, including Kings

• 1421 - year Chinese discovered the world,

• 1440 - invention of printing press

• 1492 – Columbus discovered America and Granada fell in Spain ousting the Moors (we saw Granada on our last transatlantic cruise)

• 1522 – 1st circumnavigation of the world by Spanish ship Victoria proving it was round and not flat – birth of cruising! My own irreverent comment. But I definitely wouldn’t be sailing on a flat earth. Of five ships, 1 returned. Spain became superpower.

• 1588 - defeat of Spanish armada by England – many of us wouldn’t be here if this had not happened – including the Salls (my family of origin)

• 1607- founding of Jamestown

• 9/14/1752 – British Empire joined the Gregorian calendar – King George advanced their calendar by 10 days

• 7/4/1776 – Declaration of Independence – birth of modern democracy (I got this one!)

• 7/1863 – Civil War

• 12/17/1903 – the Wright brothers first flight

• 6/28/14 – WWI – Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and within 5 weeks everyone was at war.

• 10/29/29 Stock Market Crash – worldwide depression

• 1933 – Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini (the real axis of evil?) and Roosevelt (knight in shining armor)all rose to power

• 12/7/41 - Pearl Harbor bombed

• 6/44- Normandy invaded by Allies, Saipan falls to the US which put us close enough for the final attack on Japan. We were privileged to visit Normandy on this trip.

• 1940’s - computer invented (without which I wouldn’t probably be on this ship or writing this)

• 11/89 - fall of Berlin Wall marking the end of the cold war. We saw it’s remnants

• 9/11/01

• 12/21/2012 End of World according to the Mayan Calendar, this is really just the end of the calendar. The Mayans had a number of calendars – 12 year, 52 year, 125 year.... This is just the end of the 500 year calendar. The Spanish took over the Mayans and they quit creating calendars.

Mark Merchant, The Comedy of Two Voices in One entertained us at 9. He has 3 puppets, one black, one old lady and one Hispanic. The target of his jokes was equally distributed between all races, all political parties and addictions. The old lady introduced herself as an alcoholic and in surveying the audience said she recognized her group.

We wandered through the Solarium, an inside pool area reserved for adults, and proposed the idea of getting up at 3 to enjoy it the spa, reminiscent of our adventure of the Blue Lagoon without the people, the hot springs and salt water. Come to think of it, it’s nothing like the Blue Lagoon.

Unfortunately due to hurricanes and cloud cover we did not get to see the real Northern Lights in Iceland. The picture is of the work of art created for the Jewel - Northern Lights in the center of the ‘city’, beautiful and ever changing at night.

At 2:59 AM I was awake, but Terry’s ankles had been swollen and blue, so we didn’t think it was a good idea to go out to play again so soon. Oh well there is always another day. Until there isn’t.