Thursday, February 2, at pier, Ocho Rios, Jamaica

Day 4 of isolation, aka quarantine, in our cabin began with sunrise and then docking in Jamaica. One of the highlights was watching a freighter load sand or gravel and watching the vessel pitch in the water based upon the cargo load.

Here guests are leaving the ship to explore Jamaica

This musician was playing the steel drums and singing. He served to welcome as well as blocking the other part of the pier from passage. From our advantage on the ship, it was an odd karaoke experience with his skills with the steel drums great and his ability to carry a tune lower on the skill set.

Today we both did some more work and reading and settled in for some great movies. Some were old good ones and some new ones. We watched 50 first dates, Top Gun Maverick, and Calendar Girls.

Janice also began packing for our trip home. (a day early since we won’t need much of what we brought!)

Some food pictures:

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I noticed by toe in the picture. I haven’t had shoes on since Monday morning. Absolutely the longest in recent history without something on my feet

And Dinner

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Wednesday, February 1, Caribbean Sea – Depth 10-20K feet

We slept in again. Why not? It was a beautiful day with 6-8ft swells that caused the Rotterdam to roll as we sailed north to Jamaica.

We each spent some time working on work stuff. Seems odd but with little else to do, getting ahead while we had this great view was nice.

We watched a number of on demand movies including “Sully”, “Ideal Home”, “the women” earlier we watched “Dog” and several others.

Today was the last dressy night. As noted in an earlier blog there was no need to dress up since it would just be the two of us. The menu was fantastic and even eating alone we enjoyed a fabulous meal

Top left – Escargot, Top right Shrimp Cocktail, bottom, Pear, blue Cheese Frizze Salad.

Chateau St. Michelle Chablis

Our mains:

Trout

Beef Tenderloin, grilled shrimp and green beans. Only nasty part was grilled pineapple which has no place on such a great plate.

We finished the evening watching the sun set over the sea.

Tuesday, January 31st, docked at Oranjestad, Aruba

We were in no rush to get up as we had no plans and any plans we had would have been cancelled. Room service brought our fruit plates, lots of coffee, juice and other items for breakfast.

The first highlight was watching an NCL ship dock behind us and begin letting passengers off.

After breakfast Janice noticed an older much smaller ship that is over 50 years old docked to the same pier we are. She noted some of her observations on Facebook.

We both worked on the computer some and tended to emails. Around noon lunch was served. Some small cobb salads, a beef panini we shared and some cookies.

We watched some television and then Janice watched the all aboard the NCL ship and stragglers shocked by the captain blowing the horn.

Dinner arrived on time and was quite good

Thai Beef Salad

Pears, mixed greens and blue cheese salad

Veal Cutlet

Jamaican Oxtail

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All aboard was 11:30 PM well after we retired for the night. We awoke overnight to the movement of the Rotterdam moving north through the Caribbean Sea at 18 knots.

The big decisions for tomorrow will be what food we order and what to do with the “dressy” dinner. When we began cruising there were formal nights. Mostly suits with some tuxes for men and the women dressed to the best. Formal nights gave way to “Gala” nights and there was less formal clothing. Some even tried to wear jeans or print t-shirts to the dining room. Now Gala is know . n as dressy and men only need a collared shirt and long pants.

Since we are restricted to our cabin we could Winnie the Pooh the meal.