Summer of 23 - Transatlantic Cruise - Day 2 - At Sea - Looking around the Ship

Tuesday May 2nd, 2023 

Today we decided we would explore a little and relax a little.

Bryan took some pictures of the cabin.

View from balcony

Suites on our right

Sue deciding what she wants to do for the day!!

Magnetic Hooks that we brought came in useful

Our main objective today was to see the Solarium as it had been closed for a private party yesterday. 

Our original cabin had been a spacious ocean view at the very front of the ship, a couple of decks below the solarium, and we had decided we would probably spend a lot of time here as it is over 16's as well. 

We then applied and got a "Royal Up" where they give you an option to upgrade your cabin for a bid you make. We bid $150 each to upgrade to a balcony, which we thought would give Bryan some fresh air if he needed it. We were surprised and happy to hear a few days later that we had "won" our bid. So for $300 we got our balcony. We also really liked the location of the new room as it was close, but not to close, to the elevators and on the 7th deck, so pretty much mid ship. 

Anyway back to the Solarium at the front of the ship, deck 14.

We found a couple of loungers, which we had read would be hard to find, but it wasn't to bad. They have started to put the signs that you see on my chair, advising guests that they can not reserve chairs with towels, and unattended chairs will have any belongings removed. You can see that there are unattended chairs next to me that have towels, but to be fair if you go in the pool there is no option but to leave your belongings/towel on your chair.  It has been suggested that they make lockers available for personal belongings, which I think makes a lot of sense but then they have to find room for them, hmmm!!!

It was quite relaxing just lying there and watching the ocean go by. This area is enclosed and so not open to the elements of the Atlantic Ocean and it was warm.  In fact we got too warm and ended up moving to an outside area that was semi-covered. Neither of us had any desire to swim, as most of you know I can't swim and Bryan really wasn't interested in swimming with the masses, although we both brought our swimwear for the spa.  It turned out that we didn't use the spa either. I'm not sure why but we really weren't interested in being in a crowd!!!  Although there were times we passed by, that the spa was empty, but we didn't have our swimwear!! 😄

We laid relaxing for a while before deciding to explore some more.  We went up to Deck 15.

Sue posing with a headless giraffe!! 

Aaah, there you go.  It does have a head.

Rock Climbing Wall

North Star going out over the side of the ship. We will be going on that later in the cruise.

Outside Pool Area. It was a little cool to be in the outdoor pool.

Decks 6 to 13 are all passenger cabins, so there's really no need to go to those decks. We went back down to Deck 5. Below is "The Via", where we sat when we originally got on the ship yesterday.  There were various restaurants (some speciality that cost extra), high end shops, bars 

and at the aft(back) of the ship, the top deck of 270 (a 2 deck showroom)

This was a huge computerized screen that showed various robotic type displays at different times and was used in shows here.

Back at the room I was delighted to find a "towel animal". Do you know what it is?  I think "a pig". I was really thrilled as I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE towel animals and I made sure to tell him "Thank you" when I saw him next, and that he made my day!!! I know, I'm still a big kid at heart!!!

Relaxing on our balcony, there's no fighting for chairs here.

Not far to the lifeboat if we need it, Ha!! Ha!! Officially we have to go to Deck 4 in an emergency. 

There are lifeboats along both sides of the ship, although I never think it looks as though there would be enough space for everyone!! Maximum Capacity is 4,905!!  We heard we had 3,996 on our cruise.  it didn't seem that crowded though!!!

Bryan had an afternoon nap after all our exercise!!! My towel animal kept him company!!

A channel on our TV shows the position of our ship. It looks as though we've slowed down or stopped, hmmmm!!!!

It's getting a little misty!!!!!

Well, turned out that we had a medical emergency on the ship and we need to head back to Boston to do a medivac via helicopter.  We were very concerned for the patient and their family but didn't get any details yet.

The map showed us do a v-turn and head back. We weren't sure how long this would take or if it would impact our future stops but the main priority was the passenger!!! Everyone was in agreement with that.

The ship picked up speed and very soon we were close enough for the helicopter to come out and medevac the patient off the ship.  I believe it was about 11.30pm that the evacuation happened.

The captain reported later that the helicopter came from Canada.  The passenger was from the UK and was doing ok. Very good news indeed. He also told us that the diversion shouldn't change any of our port stops and the time would be made up. So normal service, at least for us, was resumed. What a sad start for this family though, but thankfully it happened when we were relatively close to land.