Sea Day

Today we spent the day at sea.

The daily rhythm of ship life has been morning wake up and head off to morning stretch class.  The studio is on the upper deck with floor to ceiling windows.  Other studios put up posters of what we are seeing outside.  There have been massive icebergs, towering mountains, and sea birds all around.  The landscape in Antarctica is just incredible!

After stretch it’s breakfast time and I’m absolutely pigging out on the roasted veggies every morning: yum!

If we are at sea for the day we have a little time to mill about before heading up to the “Ice Lounge” for the morning lecture series.  The naturalists, historians, geologists, etc are all amazing and top notch.

Then we mill about a little more, I usually do as many sets of stairs that I can do to get a good work out in and if it’s not too windy, I go out on deck to take in the landscapes and try to photograph some of the beauty.

Lunch is at noon every day.  There are about 120 passengers so I’ve been spending a lot of time getting to know the amazing individuals that are on this ship.  It feels like there are less of us ‘first timers’ on board.  I’ve met many people that this is there 2nd, 3rd, 5th voyage.

After lunch it’s more stairs, socializing, and pictures with another lecture (sometimes they do two in the morning and two in the afternoon).  We have tea time around 4 and I usually skip the scones but I was peer pressured into eating a scone yesterday.  I admit it was good, but it was with whipping cream and not clotted cream.  Apparently I’m a scone snob.

We meet for cocktail hour around 5:30-6:00, recap the days events and then discuss the plan for the next day.  That’s followed by dinner.  Every day there is a choice of a vegetarian, meat, fish, and pasta dish.  Everything has been so good which means I chase dinner with another set of stairs!  I walk from deck 2 up to 7 and do several laps of that.  There is added difficulty with a swaying ship so it’s been good for me.  There is an exercise room but I don’t think I could stomach a treadmill on a swaying ship.

Tomorrow we will stop by Peter 1 Island: hopefully make a landing on a small rocky beach if the weather is good and if not, then we will take a zodiac cruise around.