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Reef in Aruba from the ship

December 3, 2007

We are in Aruba today

I went up to the excursion desk as soon as it opened today because I booked two tours for Grand Cayman, and I think they will interfere with each other. One was Trolley Roger which was cheap and only takes an hour and we were to meet at 9:30 in the theatre for a 10:00 tour, and the other one was Stingray City which we were to meet on the pier at noon. They said to allow 45 minutes for tendering. There's not room for two 45 minutes worth between 11 and 12. I didn't want to take my digital camera to Stingray City (which is a sand bar where the stingrays come to be fed) and I was not absolutely sure I would be safe in the water with the vertigo.

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Ship pool from the Viking Lounge

So I told the excursion desk that I would go up and swim laps in the solarium pool and if I could do that then I'd cancel the Trolley Roger and if not, I'd cancel the Stingray City.

When I went up the solarium, the pool had no water in it. They'd apparently decided to paint it. So I asked at the spa, and lo and behold the acupuncturist was a girl with the same name as one of my son's in-laws - not a common name. I also weighed myself, and I've only gained about a pound.

I tried swimming in the big pool, but I didn't feel comfortable unless I had something to hold onto, which I wouldn't on a sand bar. So I went down and canceled that excursion. And later we got a notice that it had been changed from noon to 8:45 am, so I wouldn't have been able to do them both anyway.

At this point, I had missed breakfast in the main dining room, and I decided not to get off in Aruba. We had lunch in the main dining room. I had cream of broccoli soup and Bob had a hamburger with no bun. I took pictures of some of the excursion boats going out (top).

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Coconut compote???

I went up and did tribond trivia, and we did pretty well, but didn't win. This is where you have to find the common link between three words or phrases. Like surprise, beach and slumber are all possible types of party. I figured out (to my own satisfaction) why I have so much problem with the vertigo. I don't get sick, but the urge is so strong to fall over that even though I can see that I'm not moving (which I can't always do on the boat), I have to get a good grip on something immovable to keep myself from toppling over. I think this is precisely because I'm used to balancing on the boat, so that I automatically move the way that I perceive my body to be moving. Even, as in this case, when it is NOT moving.

When we went down to dinner, Elsie and Art (who uses a motorized cart) and Elsie's sister Janice were not there. Janice came in an hour late because Elsie had told her to change her watch back an hour. But Aruba is on Atlantic time, and the time change was supposed to be the night of Dec 3 rather than Dec 2. Elsie and Art did not turn up and, as we found out later, they missed the ship because Elsie had the wrong time.

For dinner I had chilled blueberry soup, Boston lettuce and buttermilk fried chicken and mashed potatoes and roasted corn. Bob had fish. We had something that was called a compote for dessert (coconut), but which turned out to actually be a pie. The waiter for our table is showing us tricks. He did some with toothpicks where he said to make 1 + 1 = II to equap 139 by moving only one toothpick. He took the one toothpick out of the equal sign and put it over the plus sign so that the plus became a four. So it now read 141 - II . I said that II should be 11 and not two, but noone agreed with me. Our towel animal tonight was a crocodile and it took up the whole bed.

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My lunch dessert

December 4th - Sea Day.

We will be in Grand Cayman tomorrow which is on Eastern time. I had breakfast with Bob in the Windjammer, and then we had lunch in the main dining room. I had a shrimp salad. We went to trivia together and then he went to the last lecture.

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Choca-Chino Trilogy

At dinner, Janice, Elsie and Art weren't there. Bob had jalapeno potato soup, and shrimp cocktail and I had beef and veal tortellacci and chilled cranberry soup. Then I had an asparagus and brie tart and I think Bob had tilapia. I had the Choca-Chino Trilogy for dessert (kind of like the chocolate dessert that my grandson had in London) and Bob had an ice cream sundae.

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Aruba from the ship

What happened to Art and Elsie?

She had set her watch back a day early, and as they left the casino in Aruba (which of course has no clocks) at what her watch said was 3 pm, they saw the ship get ready to sail off. There were no more flights out of Aruba that day, so they had to get a hotel for the night ($300 - they wouldn't let them stay in the airport), fly to Miami (fortunately they had their passports and credit cards with them), and then fly to Grand Cayman and get a hotel there. She was on the beach at 5 am watching for us to come in. She said she considered just having the ship pack up their stuff and ship it to them, but Art has sleep apnea and his machine that he sleeps with was on board.

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Towel Turtle

Our towel animal on December 4th was a turtle.

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