We were late leaving Canary Islands yesterday afternoon. We were scheduled to depart at 4:00 pm. I was out on the balcony working on my pictures on the computer and I heard someone below me talking. I thought it was someone on a lower deck. Finally I decided to get up and look to see what was going on. Everyone was supposed to be back on board by 3:30 pm and it was about that time. The gangway was still out. That was not a good sign -- that meant that everyone was not back yet. I started watching to see what was happening. About that time I saw one of the shuttle buses come and let out an older man who was pulling a suitcase. He was in a rush and I thought that must be who was missing. When he got close to the gangway someone came to help him with his bag and helped him aboard. Well it was obvious that he wasn't the only one late. The security from the ship kept coming up to a man who was on a cell phone. I decided that maybe the man's wife was late. About that time a police vehicle wheeled down there in a hurry and talked to the man and they they rushed off. About 10-15 minutes later the police vehicle came back and I could see someone else riding in the vehicle. As it pulled up to the gangway they opened the door and an elderly lady who was using a cane got out and walked onto the ship. She looked like she wasn't in any shape to be out about the town by herself and was probably lucky they found her. After she was on board the ship pulled away within about 10 minutes. That would have been terrible to leave someone in that condition behind. One of the things that they did when we got on board was take up our passports. I'm not sure what that was about but it sure wouldn't be fun to be stranded somewhere without your passport. I do have a copy of mine that I keep with me though.
This morning we got to go on our tour of the bridge. I really enjoyed it because I had never been given the opportunity to do that before. There were about 10 of us on the tour. After we signed a paper (not sure what we agreed to), we were escorted down a long hall and then a security guard met us and wander all of us and took away knives, etc from some of the men. We then were let in the bridge and one of the officers working in there explained everything to us. It was pretty interesting even though I am sure I don't remember most of what he told us. I do know that the ship was on auto-pilot since we were heading to Nassau, Bahamas and we have a long way to go. We are going full speed ahead to try and get away from the bad weather in Europe. I think he said we were going about 22 knots (whatever that is). They have all this fancy radar equipment but he said they can't rely on that completely because there are some things that radar doesn't pick up -- like sailboats. They use binoculars to be on the watch for things like that.
After the tour we went to the casino. I didn't win today but Mary P won $110. We then went to play bingo where we met up with Margie. This was Margie's first time ever to play bingo and I don't think she was real impressed but we may try to talk her into playing again. None of us won. That may be why she wasn't impressed.
After bingo we went to find Larry. He was in the room resting so Margie, Mary P and I went to lunch in the dining room. There was a really long line and as we got up to the front we broke the news to them that we wanted a table to ourselves. For any of you who haven't cruised before, they always want to seat you with others to fill up larger tables. Well they didn't have a small table so we told them we would wait. They then quickly set up a table for us. I had the most delicious quiche! The service was top notch. All of the dining room service has been the best so far.
After lunch we went to Margie and Larry's room and visited with them for a few hours. Then after that Mary P and I went back to the casino for a while. Our luck wasn't any good that time so we went back to our room to rest up before dinner. I was still full from lunch but didn't want to be rude and not go for my scheduled dinner time at 5:30 pm!
Dinner was good as usual. While we were sitting there the Captain came in and greeted a few passengers. He spoke to the table next to us for quite a while. He came in with 2 men and I had no idea who they were. As the Captain walked off to go to his table, one of the men came up to us and introduced himself. He was the Maitre'd and said he was the one that had a special table set up for us. I told him that we really appreciated it and we both told him they were were enjoying our dining experience. He then asked us if he could get us a glass of wine and we said yes. He then told someone to get us wine and someone immediately brought it to us.
We finished dinner in a hurry and I told Mary P we should go on to the early show at 6:45 pm. We rushed down there and there weren't very many people there which was nice. We saw Margie and Larry sitting there so we joined them. There was an impersonator performing. He was so funny and very talented. The last person he did was Elvis and he was a hoot! He came out into the audience several times during his performance. Each time he came out in the audience he came further back. We felt sure we were safe as far back as we were. Boy were we wrong! The last song Larry kept trying to hold Margie's hand up to get his attention. I saw him looking back there and I thought Margie was a goner. I couldn't have been more wrong. He came back there and looked at Margie, me and Mary P and said "uno, dos, tres". I knew then that we were in trouble. He jumped over the chairs and laid down in our laps. Mary P reached up and rubbed his stomach and belt and he said "watch where you put your hand lady". It was hilarious! Mary P said she was just checking to see if the jewels on his belt were real.
Well I guess that is all we did today. There is another show tonight at 10:30. It is going to be a Mentalist but we are going to skip that show. We have new channels on our TV tonight so I think we will watch them. We lose another hour tonight so tomorrow there will be a 4 hour time difference with home.
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