Sailing through the Caribbean, we had our first real bridge lesson (opening leads to a no trump contract) and played duplicate in the afternoon. To our amazement, we actually won the duplicate (7 tables I think)–amazing because we had our communication problems and, in one hand, went down 3 doubled. (Apologies to readers who are not bridge players). We had a port talk about Grenada–our stop tomorrow–and in the evening went back to Manfredi’s, the Italian restaurant we ate at on Jan 4 for my birthday. We had a waiter, Andre, from Indonesia we especially liked and asked to be seated in his section again. That put us in a cozy area of 3 tables for two. The woman next to me was there for her birthday as well (which brought a special cake with an electric candle) and she asked for 6 plates so all of us shared her cake. Very pleasant evening.

Our San Juan excursion was to El Yunque National Rain Forest. Being a ‘National’ Forest means anyone working for the forest is working without pay due to the government shutdown. Also today is Epiphany or the 12th day of Christmas, a holiday in Puerto Rico so much, including parts of El Yunque are closed. We drove into the rain forest and saw some pretty waterfalls and flowers but, on the whole, the trip was disappointing. Returning to the ship, however, we enjoyed a proper afternoon tea complete with scones and small sandwiches and cakes. To our delight our resident strings duo performed during tea as well. And then the ship departed. I really love watching us sail out of the harbor in the evening with the darkening sky and all the lights, preferably from our balcony with the wind in my face.

We passed very close to the Dominican Republic today but it’s not a port of call.  Too windy to be walking the circuit around the ship as I did yesterday.   Mostly we had a quiet day today—did some reading, some exercise, attended a lecture.  The lecturer was by a man involved with Sea Watch, which studies migratory patterns of various sea animals, mostly dolphins and whales.  He encouraged people to watch on their own or with him and to report any sightings to add to the repository of information. After dinner we sat in the “Viking living room” (an atrium with two floors of wrap around balconies or mezzanines) and listened to the resident violinist and cellist followed by the pianist. Very pleasant.

Flights to Miami went smoothly—even comfortably since our trip included first class; I could get used to that—and we boarded the ship successfully. First order of business was the mandatory (maritime law requirement) safety drill with life jackets and gathering place. Later it was very pretty sailing from Miami in the dark with all the city lights.

View from our table at dinner

our cabin

 Above are a view from our dinner table and of part of our cabin.  We are at sea all day today and tomorrow headed for Puerto Rico on Sunday; we passed Cuba close enough to see land.  We had an introduction to bridge on board and that includes an excellent instructor.  Beginning in a couple of days it will include duplicate games but today we just played ‘socially’.  A lecture on the age of exploration by our ‘resident historian’ was disappointing but there are other lecturers on board.  Since it is my birthday, we made reservations for Manfredi’s the Italian restaurant; it was very nice (albeit too much wine and sweets—they made me a beautiful cake) and we’ll try to go more often.  A violin/cello duo playing in the Atrium rounded off the evening.  Being this time of year, the Atrium is festooned with greenery and silver and gold balls—festive.