Day 5 - Thursday, January 9, 2025 - At Sea

We intended to play the poker tournament at 10:00 so we got up and out early. We went down to the casino to register for the tournament, but by the time we got there there were already 10 players in line. The maximum tournament size is 10 and Mary and I were 11 and 12. So, we went to breakfast. I had oatmeal and smoked salmon - not together, separate dishes. I can't imagine what smoked salmon oatmeal would taste like, but I might try it. After breakfast, we decided to come back to the room. For a couple of hours, I worked on the log and there's some financial stuff. I began uploading pictures from my phone to Google Drive. I will start adding these pictures to the website very soon. It's a cumbersome process, but I finally figured it out. It's still hit and miss though. It might be the ship’s internet.

Mary had an appointment at 1:15 so I went down to seven to push around the ship. She went to her appointment. I kind of lost count on how many times I went around, but Mary met me a little before 3:00.

I wanted to check out the 14th floor. That's the floor where the horizon center is or as I'd like to call it the cattle feed. Up there are the pools and outside bars. We walked through and checked everything out. We ended up where the buffet is set up. Mary wanted cookies so I got a cup of coffee. Real coffee, not the stuff that they're serving in the restaurants. Mary had tea and cookies. We sat up there for about an hour. The buffet area looked really good. We're trying to avoid lunch so we might have to skip breakfast someday to go up there for lunch. We came back downstairs at about 4:00. We got cleaned up to go to dinner. We did FaceTime with my parents for a few minutes. I'm glad he's got that figured out. Hopefully, it will become in use more often in the future.

We went to the Bordeaux dining room. We decided to sit by ourselves. I had a Pinot Noir That was pretty good. For my appetizer I had grilled asparagus. I also had coconut shrimp. Both were very good. For my main meal I had mahi mahi. They also had an Austrian dish called Weiner Zweibel Rostbraten - which was top sirloin, in a red cabbage sauce. The Austrian dish was actually better than my mahi mahi. I always like trying new things. Mary had her salad and chicken dish. For dessert Mary had a chocolate cake kind of thing. I had an eye dropper of drambuie. That's not an exaggeration, I would need 10 of them to be satisfied. As usual, it was a very nice dinner.

We went to the 7th floor a picture taking. We're only at Day 5 and we have about 40 pictures taken already. You can see where this is going. We wanted to go to the 7:30 magician show- Shane McMasters. By the time we got there, there were only a few seats left. For the next 45 minutes or so, a pretty entertaining magician did his show. As magicians go, he was more funny then mesmerizing. From there, we walked home. We're watching the Penn State and Notre Dame game. We want to get to bed early because tomorrow we go through Panama Canal. The whole process starts at 7:00 AM. I don't know that I will be awake for 7:00 AM, but I'll try to be there as early as I can.