Day 2 morning – Early Rising & Cruise Critics Party
I was awake at just after 6am and went up on deck just after 6:30. The joggers were out in force! It was already hot, and also very humid: when I took out my camera the lens steamed up immediately. But we were sailing steadily southwards. At about 8:30 or so we went past Stromboli, I think. But it was very misty and hazy, so it was hard to be certain. During the morning I sorted out the connection of my MacBook to the on-board network, and also bought a package of minutes. We qualified for a discount (being Captains Club members) of, I think, 10%, but this was given to us as 10% extra minutes, not 10% off the price! I bought 125 minutes (+10%) for $60, which works out to about $0.44 a minute, or around 25p in English money.
Interestingly I had to use Internet Explorer (*not* Safari) to set up the account – apparently the PHP web app that controls it expects, and can only cope with, IE. But it was perfectly happy with my old IE 5.2 Mac version, so it suspect it’s a perfectly arbitrary decision. I think that’s the first time I’ve run IE on this (December 2006) machine. But thereafter I was able to use Safari.
Then we went to to the Cruise Critics party where we met Rich and his wife, and one or two other people. At 10am, the party due time, there were just 6 of us there! But we had an interesting chat with Stuart the CD plus one of his staff. Then he had to leave at 10:30 as we were approaching the Straits of Messina and he was due on the bridge to make an annoucement or two. After he left several other Cruise Critic people arrived. It was especially good to meet Cass and her husband, who gave us an update on her father-in-law’s trip after the passport worries the week before they set off.
Then an early snack at 11:30 (made-to-order omelette at the omelette bar – excellent!) to give us time to prepare for our 12:15 gathering for the afternoon excursion: ‘Taormina on your own’.
Day 2 – Morning
23 June, 2007 by Tom Burke
UK Tog here Glad yo read you are enjoying yourself. Will keep track of your blog and do say hello to Philip Herbert from Ann and Charles and tell him we have great photos of him making Tacos