So today we made our voyage through the Panama Canal, with Jeremy geeking out pretty much the whole time ;). We started entering the lock system around 6am and completed the crossing around 5pm. Jeremy was up bright and early to see us enter the first set of locks. We kept the cruise ship info channel on in the room and when they announced that the helipad was open at the front of the ship to view the locks up close Jeremy and I hustled (ok, ran), along with many other guests, to deck 5. I didn’t hear during the announcement that you had to have closed toed shoes to go up on the helipad so I went back up to the room and waited for the rush to die down a bit then got on my loafers and headed back down. Jeremy had staked out a prime spot at the very front and center of the viewing area and so I got some very dirty looks when I called to him and worked my way through 3 layers deep of people to get to him, but he had saved me a spot. We got rained on rather hard two or three times while we went through the first set of three locks at Gatun. Despite the rain, it was pretty awesome to see the mechanics up close, the way the railings on the locks folded down to tuck into the sidewalls, how the locks used only gravity to transfer the water and keep each lock sealed. Very cool. As we were going through, we felt a pretty big jostling at one point and apparently one of the locks closed early and hit the back of the ship. The captain made an announcement about it after we completed going through the first set of locks but I didn’t hear the complete announcement so I’m not 100% sure what happened, I’m sure we will hear rumors throughout the ship for a while though.

After the first set of locks we were in Gatun Lake, where we had kayaked yesterday. We went upstairs and had some breakfast and then returned to the room to watch things go by on our balcony. Then we decided to try lunch in the dining room for a change, it was alright, the service not quite as attentive as at dinner, Jeremy and I both had the udon noodles which were unexpectedly salty (most of the food, if anything, has been a bit under seasoned, but expectedly so as there are lots of folks on the cruise whom I suspect need to control their sodium intake), but still tasty. We then went out to the outside walk around deck 5 and encountered the newlywed couple from New Mexico and we watched going through the next set of locks together and chatted, took photos, and we all managed to touch the canal wall when we went through we were so close to it, very cool.

After the second set of locks we headed back to the room and read, watching the last set of locks go by from our balcony. I proceeded to take a 45 minute nap and then got ready for dinner. Tonight John and Karen rejoined us and we chatted away the whole dinner, ranging from science to touching on politics a bit.

Tomorrow is a sea day and I plan on going to the watercolor class at 9am, there’s a newlywed/anniversary welcome reception with cake and champagne at 11am, there’s also a volleyball game against the staff at 4:30 so I think we’ll be partaking in that as well.