One of the great things about being in the studio rooms is that you have access to the best coffee on the ship.  There’s a machine in the Living Room that dispenses a pretty good cup of latte’.  It’s far superior to the free coffee on deck, though you can buy a decent cup just about anywhere on the ship.

I head to one of the formal sit down full service breakfasts just to see what I’ve been missing.  In a word (or two): not much.  Yes, it’s nice to get the excellent service that I’ve come to expect from NCL, but unfortunately I’ve also come to expect some pretty bland food, and they are consistent in that regard.  My pancakes could not have been recently made, and the bacon as I noted before is too thin and greasy for me.  The coffee was really just horrible, and the OJ is that sort of canned crap you never drink anymore even at home.  Next time, I’m back to the buffet.  The food’s no better, but at least I won’t feel uncomfortable in my shorts and T-shirt.

The dress code is very relaxed here.  No formal nights so far and only one night where they even suggested that men and ladies dress semi-formally.  I can enjoy either type of cruise.  It’s fun for me to pit on a tux occasionally, but it’s nice to know you don’t have to, either.

The gym was packed this morning as usual when I got there.  Almost all of the equipment works, and they even have a punching bag, which I use to take out all of my aggression.

The weather, as predicted, has turned a little rough and we have some white caps out on the deep blue sea.  The ship can compensate pretty well for roll but not pitch, so the captain has wisely decided to reduce speed until we find sunny skies again.  I meet a passenger who became sick, and I hope that it doesn’t get worse.

Since there’s not much sun, I take a dip in one of the hot tubs, then go back to yet another trivia game, which seem to happen about every three hours.  But the host doesn’t have enough “unused” questions for us to finish and I decide to leave for the French lessons.

Now, I took some high school French and know a few words, but it was nice for the instructor to provide a “cheat sheet” with key phrases that could actually be useful in a real life situation.  And it didn’t hurt that the woman sitting next to me was a native speaker who corrected our teacher several times and also helped me out individually.

And here’s another complaint about NCL:  They don’t have highly knowledgeable people teaching these courses.  This kid from Mexico was teaching us French and his total experience in France and Quebec was 9 months!  I had tried to sit through a seminar on gold and treasure hunting with a guest speaker but beyond the fact that he was a diver and a journalist he had no real connection to the Atocia or Mel Fisher.  I didn’t make it and left early.  He tried again on major sea battles of the Atlantic but he just wasn’t an effective speaker IMO.  I’m sure NCL got these 2 pretty cheap, but it shows.

My room safe failed to open today so the engineer came out to fix it.  He was fast and efficient.  Good show!

At night, I hit the Jazz bar Kool Kats and listened to Charlie Love as the lead singer.  He has a talented band, and one of the audience members even went up on stage to play his trumpet!  Who brings a trumpet on a cruise anyway?  But it was fun to watch.

They played a movie down low in the ship in the Atrium theater.  The Bourne Legacy IMO is not worthy of the Matt Damon versions, so it’s lights out for me.