Summer of 23 - Transatlantic Cruise - Day 3 - Lazy Day at Sea, Andy & Towel Animals

Wednesday May 3rd, 2023  

We put our time forward 1 hour at noon. We will do this at most sea days now as we catch up to European time. Before we get to the Azores we need to gain 4 hours, then a further 2 hours before we get to France. We will then lose 1 hour to be on UK time when we arrive. Hmmm, complicated but it works. they do it during the daytime to help the crew, so they don't lose sleep and it actually makes it easier on us as well. We really didn't notice the one hour loss in the middle of the day as we slept the same amount of hours at night.

We started to get into a kind of routine.  I think we were thinking we had lots of days on this ship and would just relax and do a little bit each day.

Yesterday, we ordered room breakfast. Continental was free but there was a charge for a cooked breakfast. So we tried a bit of everything on the continental menu - muffins, croissants, fresh fruit, bagel & cream cheese, toast and jam and, of course, coffee. It was all great but in reality we didn't need all of that every morning.

So we decided in reality each morning we would just order coffee, for our morning kickstart, ha!!ha!!, and one item each from the above. That's what we did today, and then we went to main restaurant and had breakfast there. We were very disappointed in the service this first time as we were led to a table and seated and then just sat & sat for a long while with no one coming to assist us. There were people at the tables next to us and behind us and they were all getting served, but it seemed their waiters were not our waiters.  After about 10 minutes we asked one of the waiters if we could have some coffee and order. He said he would find our waiter for us. Several minutes later, no one knew who our waiter was, but we suddenly had two helping us. The food and coffee once we got it, was good but we couldn't get past the really bad mixup.

We only went to breakfast in the restaurant one other time during the cruise, and thankfully the service was immediate. The food was also very good. Other times we woke up slowly in our room with our coffee. 

The difference between breakfast and dinner was that at breakfast the tables were assigned as you arrived, whereas dinner we had the same table, same people and same waiters every night. We thoroughly enjoyed our dinners, and only missed a couple of nights when there really wasn't anything on the menu we wanted. 

We found ourselves going to the Windjammer buffet for lunch and always found something there.  Occasionally it became brunch as there was often some breakfast items available. 

As most of you know the UK is 5 hours ahead of the East Coast of America.  To adjust for this time difference we put our clocks forward 1 hour at noon today, so we were only 4 hours behind UK. They do it at noon because it is better for the staff, as they don't lose an hour of sleep every night for potentially 6 nights.  This is because we will have to adjust 6 hours before we arrive in France, who are 6 hours ahead of us. This actually worked better for us as we didn't lose any sleep. It took me a little while to figure out how to change my Fitbit as I had to turn off the automatic time zone, and manually adjust the hours.  The same with my phone. We were on ships time, and this could only be adjusted manually. The Royal Caribbean App on our phones did adjust automatically, although it sometimes took a little while, so that was helpful. 

Some people had made reservations to do things on the ship at 1pm on the day, and then missed their reservation because they thought it was still noon. The cruise line charged them for a no show, which is what is stated will happen when you reserve a spot. Even though the rides are free, because of their popularity they charge you a no show fee because you are taking a spot that someone else could have used. After some complaining most passengers that this affected got their money back.

Andy was playing today and I managed to get a stream of the match on my laptop. We have been very lucky with the internet signal in our room. We had conflicting reports on whether it was any good and I think a lot depends on where you are situated on the ship. It will be interesting to see if it's as good on our return trip, as we will probably be at the front of the ship then, and the reports are not so good at that location. You have to pay for internet, and we bought an internet package that wasn't cheap, although I got it in a Thanksgiving Sale last November.  In fact I booked all of our excursions, 24 bottles of water and the internet package for this cruise and all the excursions and internet package for our October return cruise, last Thanksgiving and got some great prices.

We got another towel animal today, and he's very useful as he is taking care of our remote control for us.

To be honest I can't remember what else we did today. Every day we got a "Cruise Compass" which told us what was happening throughout the day. Everything was always on the app on our phones as well. We planned what we wanted to do, but sometimes our plans would change. That is the beauty of it, there is always something to do and somewhere to eat. We are also getting our "steps" in!!!