Day 13 - Thursday, 11/21/24 - At Sea to Livorno - Day 1

 As a postscript to yesterday's entry, if you are interested in contacting our guide for a possible excursion in Casablanca, contact me and I'll provide Mohammed's contact information.  He can do not only cooking classes, but can guide excursions in Casablanca and to Rabat or Marrakesh.  While his Master's degree is in public policy, he got bored at a desk job and with his travel expertise and excellent personality, he's a terrific guide. 


After such a nice stop at Casablanca, it's nice to have a sea day.  Even so, we were up by 7am to enjoy breakfast and Pastor Dan's morning devotional before attending Nick's morning coffee chat.  His guest this morning was Haley, the shopping concierge. She's from South Africa was bubbly and clearly into shopping both personally and professionally.


David Beck gave the first lecture of the day on Pax Britannica to Pax Americana.  It was really good.  Nick followed with a long port talk on Alexandria. We learned that we have to let the front desk know if we are staying off the ship in Alexandria (which we are).


After lunch, Michael Sullivan followed with his excellent presentation on Art: Sometimes there is more than meets the eye.  He's clearly been the best presenter so far this cruise and I'm really not an art affectionado. He fielded questions for a brief time.  Kate Ross followed with a good presentation on Florence: Birthplace of the Renaissance.


On sea days after the lectures, the Crow's Nest is our go to place.  On this day it was fun to watch us overtake and pass a couple of small freighters that were ploughing through the waves and choppy water.   Later we passed a two masted sailboat which was running on engine power with the sails stowed.  Just before dinner a couple joined us and struck up a conversation.  It turned out the man was a retired 2 star General in the US Army tank corps.  It's the first time we've met a retired real military general.  They were fun to converse with and we shared a lot about cruising and traveling in Germany and Europe.


Tonight was the Volendam Ball which we didn't participate in as Angela is still hobbling around with her trekking pole and I don't bring formal clothes on cruises any longer.  Instead we watched the current episode of the Mystery of Oak Island which both of us really like.  Afterwards we watched a cheesy movie, Mafia Mamma.  I don't reccomend it. It was a bloody as Gladiator from the night before.


We received our souvenir coffee mugs and were pleased with the design with a map of our itinerary on one side and a picture of the ship on the other side.  It was also fancy chocolate  and towel animal night.






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