Day at sea (Thursday, March 9):

The Crystal Symphony is a 781 feet (238 m) long by 100 feet (30 meter) wide cruise ship that weights over 51,000 tons, cruises at 20 knots, and has a guest capacity of 922, with a per guest staff ratio of 0.59 (crew of 545, from 45 different countries).

On this particular cruise, there were passengers from 49 different nationalities, but the large majority of them (over 600) were from the USA.

That first morning at sea we slept so well (and long) that we missed breakfast, and were literally two minutes away from missing lunch! The worse part is that we missed the two lectures we were most looking forward to attending (one by a criminologist, the other one by a South East Asia art expert).

In the afternoon we worked with our laptops from the Palm Court, with some tea, scones, and strawberries with cream. Quite a civilized way to work, if you ask me!

After that went back to the stateroom to get ready for the Captain’s Reception, and then dinner. Of all the luxury and enjoyable features onboard, one thing that was consistently excellent on this cruise was the level of food preparation. Exquisite!

At night, back in the stateroom, we watched a great movie I truly recommend: “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” from the Library’s DVD collection.