Day 14 - Sea Day... things we have learned on our first cruise

Wednesday was the first of three sea days as we make our way from Iceland back to our starting point at Southampton, England. So, we easily got back into the routine that we are happy with on sea days.

We have to admit, three sea days in a row is about what we are comfortable with. We could do more without any real issue, but we both think that it would start to get a little monotonous.

Last night's evening entertainment was interesting. It was a hypnotist! He took 20 volunteers from the audience and then did some tests to see who doesn't qualify. 

Ruth volunteered as one of the twenty! 

Ruth is on the far left.

So the guy did this five minute hypnotic test, and four of the twenty were sent back to their seats. Depending on what article you read, anywhere between 10% to 25% of the population cannot be hypnotized. He says that there are about 50 degrees of hypnosis, with four of those degrees being very obvious. He proceeded to point out these degrees on some of the volunteers.

Notice that Ruth has her arms out and the rest of them in this photo look to be sleeping.

Ruth was one of the four that was sent back to her seat.

Then he proceeded to make these people do strange things. It was really funny. Some of them were definitely hypnotized. I honestly don't think they could have done some of these things without breaking out in laughter otherwise. 

We enjoyed the 7:30pm show enough that we went back for the 9:30pm show as well!

So, our very first cruise is coming to an end. As I write this, we are in the north Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of western Ireland on day 15 of 16.

In no particular order, here are some things that we have learned.

1) We don't have a lot in common with most people on the ship. We eat dinner at a shared table every night, usually with four to six other people. So that's been interesting, and we like hearing other people's story. And apparently other people like hearing our story. When they hear that this is our very first cruise, we get a lot of questions, because almost everyone we have sat with cruise on a regular basis.

2) The food is better than we expected. I have zero complaints. Ruth's only complaint is that they could easily have more variety of gluten free desserts with very little extra effort.

3) There are some high maintenance people on cruise ships. I mean really, do you need someone to come into your room twice a day to tidy up and make your bed? Apparently most people do, but we have only had him come in every four days or so. 

4) Many people spend a lot of money. Of course we also realize that many people have a lot of money available to spend! We have met people who have the upgrade packages that include up to 15 drinks per day, WiFi, "crew appreciation", among other items. The thing is, you can't possibly justify the price of the packages. But we have sat with people who have purchased the packages and it's been fun for us to listen to their reasoning, which never makes sense. Oh, well... each to their own, of course.

5) The official cruise ship excursions are ridiculously expensive. As an example, $110 USD to do a one hour walking tour! Many people do the official excursions with the number one reason being that the official excursions will guarantee to get you back to the ship in time for departure. But there are a lot of other much cheaper options that have so little possibility of being late for the ship.

6) The main reason we didn't want to do a cruise in the first place is due to the very short time in ports. As regular readers know, we like to spend enough time in a country that we have the opportunity to get to know the people, the culture, and see the many sights that every country has to offer. And now that we've experienced this, we have learned that our fears were totally correct. We always felt a little rushed and frustrated that we didn't have more time. Some people say that it gives you a taste of a country in case you might want to return, but we don't feel that it gives you an accurate enough taste. An 8 hour stop in a cruise ship port can't possibly give an accurate representation of the rest of the country. 

 7) We can't do it without WiFi. We admit it, we like our WiFi. And, as with other things in life, you can justify anything you want. Yes, the WiFi on board is ridiculously expensive, but the fact that I was able to do a couple of profitable stock trades while on board easily made up for the £136 ($254 CAD, $185 USD) price we paid to be online. The access is provided by Starlink, and worked perfectly 95% of the time. We had a few slow times due to the connection while in our room, but in the public areas it worked great. We were even able to access the ships Wifi a couple of times while on shore. Amazing.

Next up... would we do another cruise?

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Great deal on an 8' x 8' Popup Shade Canopy.

And in Canada...

Decent price on this Apple Watch Series 10.