March 13, 14, 15, 2023

The wifi has been very erratic and we have been at sea for three days crossing the Atlantic from Brazil to Africa. The usual sea day activities took place and we were lucky to have a very smooth crossing with great weather.

I placed second in one blackjack tournament and won another so that hobby is going OK overall! We have had some wonderful entertainment too, a pianist named Filip Wojciechowski from Poland performed three different concerts and was just terrific. Thinking of my painful 5 years of piano lessons and watching his fingers fly over the keys (no music in front of him) is truly spectacular to watch. In his last concert, he played lots of movie themes – just great.

The other thing that took place on three different days was a series of luncheons for passengers on previous world cruises. This is our 4th, so we were invited to three of the luncheons. Our Oceania ambassador, the general manager, the cruise director and the around the world host and hostess were there and each hosted a table. We really never go to the dining room at lunch so it was a nice surprise to experience the different menu items they have only there. I think I already posted one picture of the 2015 lunch and the salmon appetizer that Norm enjoyed so much. There were 16 guests from the 2015 ATW cruise, 13 from 2017 and 30 from 2019. They will have a lunch for the 2020 which got cut short in March of 2020 when Covid hit, 2021 was of course, cancelled (we were signed up for that one) and 2022 happened (we cancelled our reservation for that one and are here instead) but it was a very different itinerary with very few passengers. Many of the passengers that are here now had cruise credits from the one that was interrupted and the one that was cancelled. So the 2020 and 2022 lunches will probably have many more attending.

Our first port in Africa is Porto Grande, Cape Verde which is an island off the west coast of Africa. We were there in 2015 and enjoyed it. We will do a 6 hour tour this time which includes one of its beautiful beaches and 1 1/2 hours of hiking. I am glad we are both up to that now!

Some people took pictures of the tables of guests at the luncheon but I don’t have the 2017 and 2019 yet. so the only picture I will add to this blog post is the one of this beautiful rainbow that I took one day at breakfast. It was better in real life!