When I wake up on a ship and it's moving, I head for an upper deck. Which one depends on where the coffee is. In this case it was the causal dining room on deck eleven. (The larger swimming pool and two hot tubs were also on this deck.) I enjoy watching the sun rise at sea. I found the coffee and a sweet roll and a seat by a large window out near the pool. We were sailing directly into a stiff breeze, but this remarkably stabalized ship hardly noticed. After I finished the preliminary breakfast, I went up to deck twelve, forward, where there is a big lounge with large windows. Sitting up there, you are directly above the guy at the helm and your view is as good or better than his. The breeze was kicking up a good chop with whitecaps, but the swells were small and widely spaced. The combined speed of the headwind and the ships forward motion plus the waves gave a sensation of very high speed. The relative wind outside was more than 40 knots.

After WMM came up, we went off to the breakfast buffet and later visited the pool and the hot tubs. She saw a movie before lunch and I walked several decks, checked out the flying fish and listened to one of the musicians practice on the piano. He didn't seem to need practice, but I suppose professional piano players always try for prefection.

In the afternoon (after another buffet!) we saw rainbows. They are visible early in the afternoon when you are ten or twelve deck above the water. At first they are low, but get higher late in the day. We passed several showers, but the ship steered around them so they wouldn't need to close the dome over the pool deck.

In the evening we went to the captain's reception, ate in the formal dining room, saw a show, then went to one of the lounges to listen to the music. I've found that one of the major differences between a cruise ship and a hotel is the lounge. At a hotel, if you go into the lounge and don't drink, they act like you are intruding. On a cruise ship, they could care less. Sure, they come by and ask if you'd like something, but then they leave you alone. After a while, they begin to recognize you as a non-drinker and don't even ask. I like that. One lounge featured a string quartet and Dutch chocolate. We were offered chocolate as often as the drinkers.
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