En Route To Lima, Peru

Today, we enjoyed a full day at we sail to Lima, Peru. We are scheduled to dock in Lima tomorrow morning at approximately 5:00 AM.

Each day at sea is even better than the last.

After waking up early, we went to the Fitness Center to work out before breakfast. We did our normal routine with Anne Marie working out on the treadmill and Keith working out on the Elliptical machine. We then had breakfast in the Lido Café. We enjoy the café as it provides a nice diverse selection of food (Anne Marie typically has cereal and an assortment of fruit while Keith has either Cereal or Smoked Salmon and a Bagel with an assortment of Fruit) and we enjoy the wonderful staff mainly from the Philippines who work in the café. Most of them knew our names after a couple of days and some remembered us from our last cruise. Some of the folks from the Lido Café work in the Japanese Specialty Restaurant during the evening hours, while others work in the main restaurant while others work at the other venues near the pool in the afternoon hours and still others work in some of the lounges. These folks work very long hours each day, yet always have smiles on their faces and go out of their way to make each and every passenger feel special.

We were joined for breakfast by Sandra and Bill and had a nice time talking with them. After breakfast, we decided to take a walk on the Promenade Deck. We walked for about 45 minutes and we joined for a portion of the walk by Bob who sat at our table for the World Cruise Gala in Miami. Bob and his wife now live in Hawaii. We enjoyed our conversation with Bob and the weather was perfect for a walk on this deck. There were more people walking than usual which was nice to see.

At 11:00 AM we attended the lecture given by Alvin Shuster from the Los Angeles Times titled “Covering the World: The Bush Agenda, Key Issues Ahead and the Correspondents Reporting It All”. As usual, we enjoyed this lecture as we do all of the other ones given by Mr. Shuster. Before the end of the cruise, we will be getting together with Alvin and his lovely wife Miriam for drinks one evening.

At 12:00 Noon we attended trivia and, once again, there were many challenging questions to answer.

Following Trivia we had lunch with Ernie and Val who are from the United Kingdom who we first met on a Mediterranean Cruise in the fall of 2005. Today, the restaurant staff set up a special lunch called Sunday Jazz Brunch in the main dining room. In addition to a wonderful lunch, complimentary Mimosas wee provided as well. We passed on the drinks and enjoyed the food and the music.

In the afternoon, we also took another walk on the Promenade Deck. We have a long tour for tomorrow so we thought we would exercise a little more today.

In the afternoon and in the evening Crystal utilized the Hollywood Theatre (the ships movie theatre) to show the New Orleans Saints vs. Chicago Bears and the New England Patriots vs. Indianapolis Colts Football games. They provided hot dogs, popcorn and soft drinks.

In the evening, Crystal once again offered the Repertory Theatre at Sea. While we experienced the Repertory on previous sailings on board the Crystal Harmony and the Crystal Symphony, this was not offered on this ship on our Mediterranean sailing in 2005, so it was nice to once again have this as a venue to see. We love the Repertory Theatre at Sea. The actors perform selected abridged scenes from some of the theatrical world’s best-loved plays and playwrights. This evening we saw Cookin’ with Gus. We recognized one of the actors from the last time we saw the Repertory Theatre on the Crystal Symphony.

We ate dinner in the main dining room.. The dress for dinner was informal (semi-formal) and the food was wonderful.

We received invitations for two events for this coming week. One is for a cocktail party with a theme of Country Club and the other is one of three special events that will be held shore side during the course of the world cruise. The first one will be held in Valparaiso, Chile later this week.

As we mentioned, tomorrow morning we arrive in Lima, Peru, which is our first time in this port. We have full day excursion planned.

Keith & Anne Marie