March 6, 2023

It is a sea day and my adventure started after breakfast. We were walking down from our breakfast at the Terrace Cafe, when I spotted some food on a step. My attention went to avoiding that, and I missed the last step, fell and sprained my ankle and hit my head on the wall. Head is fine but the ankle started to swell even with the ice I put on it right away. So I headed down to the medical office where they did an xray to determine that there was no break. They did stress that they are not orthopedic specialists and offered to arrange a visit to a specialist or hospital in our next port but I declined that. The xray didn’t show a break and I am not in much pain and can walk on it.

So now both Norm and I are a little mobility challenged. Taking an elevator will be a new experience for me!

So, it is wrapped and I am putting ice on it. But the most interesting was the incident report process that is mandatory when anyone has an accident on the ship. Both Norm and I had to fill out an incident report and I had to have a breathalyzer test! Of course it was 0.00.

So no power walk that I do every day. 😦

We were invited to a reunion lunch for the current passengers who were on the 2015 and the 2016 world cruises. Our cruise director, Ray, our Oceania Ambassador, Cella and our ATW host and hostess, Paul and Carolyn, were with us, and it was really nice to catch up with people we have seen on other cruises and one couple not since 2015. Of course, in 2015 it was the first world cruise for Oceania and there were only 80 of us. Now we have about 390 on this cruise.

We will be invited to the lunches for 2017 and 2019 later in the cruise.

New friends Bruce and Karen arranged with the ship to make Hamentaschen for the Jewish holiday of Purim. They were delivered to our door today. Cheers to our executive chef, Farid and our wonderful pastry chef, Sheila. Oceania is truly special. Bruce leads the Sabbath services on the ship and will lead the Passover celebration, which we will miss since we will be off the ship on our Botswana safari then.

Today is also the Captain’s party and we have a dinner reservation in the Italian restaurant, Toscana, tonight. A day that I sure could have used that power walk!

We really never go to the main dining room for lunch – only when they do the special brunch about once each segment. They have a lot of menu items that you don’t see anywhere else. Norm enjoyed this salmon appetizer which he said was one of the best on the ship.

Tomorrow we will be in Salvador de Bahia for 2 days. One day was added after a city, Vitoria, was removed from the itinerary early in the cruise.