Statendam - Oct 21 - A Sea Day

A sea day - it rained for a couple of hours this morning. The rest of the day was cloudy - ugh!. But there were lots of activities on board the ship. We went to the special wine luncheon at the Pinnacle. There were only 11 of us there. More on this on another thread. All in all it was just a relaxing day. The fire alarms did go off again early this morning. This time the people next door to us hung a parrrot on a bar from their ceiling fire sprinkler - naturally the weight pulled it down - but fortuneatly for them, the water didn't come on. Late in the afternoon the captain came on and announced that the problem in the starboard engine had not been solved. Others are still complaining about the air-conditioning - or in most cases - lack of it. One couple that we have gotten to talk to in the Piano Bar now have keys for 2 cabins. They are testing to see which cabin is better before they make a move. At 2 AM, their air-conditioning quit and they spent the rest of the night in the second cabin.

We have also observed that the dress code is not being inforced. A couple of days ago we watch a couple go into the dining room for lunch wearing bathing suits. He wore bathing trunks with a t-shirt and she had just a see-through cover-up over her bathing suit. Nothing was said to them.

We have also watched people arrive for dinner very late. At our seating, we watched people come in as late 1 hour - no one says anything to them.

The flambee isn't started most nights until after 7:15 when most of the upstairs dinners have left the dining room.

There was a cocktail demonstration at 4 PM - again just showed how to make various cocktails.

At 10:30 PM it was country night in the Crow's Nest.

"We have also observed that the dress code is not being inforced. A couple of days ago we watch a couple go into the dining room for lunch wearing bathing suits. He wore bathing trunks with a t-shirt and she had just a see-through cover-up over her bathing suit. Nothing was said to them. "

Well, this certainly is a 180 degree turnaround from what my friends encountered back in April on the Statendam, when they were turned away from the dining room the first morning they went down to breakfast because they were wearing Bermuda shorts.

Something is definitely wrong here and I wonder whose fault it is. - new Maitre'd???????

The Maitre'D was Kristian Yahya. We saw very little of him on the cruise.

During the night we are to turn our clocks back an hour before we arrive in Costa Rica. (This is getting fun.)