So today was our second day at sea, and a relaxing one at that. We moved into a new timezone and set our clocks back an hour but that didn’t stop us both from waking up around 6:30 this morning. We got up, had breakfast and then I went to my second day of watercolor painting class. Today we learned about negative space, painting big tropical leaves, and then using dry brushing techniques to add texture and layer color on the leaves. I will have a whole gallery worth of little paintings by the end of the cruise.

After the class I met up with Jeremy and we went on the ship’s galley tour. There were a lot of folks there and we waited probably an hour while the earlier groups went through, and while we waited the head chef and director of the food and beverage department on the ship answered various questions. When it was our turn we went down one of the express escalators that the servers use down into the galley on the third floor. The area was relatively quiet as they were only prepping for dinner but it was neat to see such a huge kitchen, with stainless steel everything. During the Q&A the chef mentioned there was a “chef’s table” in the galley that seated 8 people, we were very excited to hear that. Jeremy tracked down and asked the maitre’d about reserving a spot for us for one of the dinners and luckily they still had space for their second seating next week, so that should be a fun, and very “us” dinner, so really looking forward to that.

After the tour we grabbed lunch and then found a more secluded corner on the pool deck in the shade to sit and read. It was right next to the ping ping table however so twice we had games going on right next to us but overall it was a quiet spot. After a few hours there we went back to the room and I took a nap (I’m getting quite good at them) while Jeremy read until dinner.

At dinner tonight our normal dinner companions were not there and about halfway through our meal two couples were seated with us, Diane and Alan from Australia who retired from the baby and children’s clothing manufacturing business and Sheila and Bob from Arizona, he retired from the steel industry. They had met each other earlier in the cruise and were quite chatty. Both couples had done very well for themselves and it was rather entertaining listening to them chat. For example, while vacationing at the Club Med in Indonesia, Sheila and Bob met a championship Formula1 driver who later in the year invited them to his home country of Monaco for Christmas on his yacht. The couples had been married nearly 50 and 43 years respectively and we were advised that the reason they were married so long, and the reason the two couples ended up getting along so well, was because they could always laugh and talk together, they said if you always sat and never spoke you were doing something wrong.

So even though I napped quite a bit today, we headed back to the room after dinner to relax. We are getting up to an alarm tomorrow, as we are to be out on the dock at Cartagena at 8:15 tomorrow morning for our tour of the gold museum and monastery, so that should be fun and a good change up from these two days at sea.