Day 60

Day 60 – Reykjavik to Halifax – Saturday 14/7/12

Weather – Fine and Sunny 12C - 16C

Sunrise – 4.29am

Sunset – 11.45pm

Time difference - minus 11 hours ex Sydney (back an hour last night)

Today was the first of four sea days in our transit of the North Atlantic Ocean as we make our way to Nova Scotia. At 10am this morning Sun Princess exited the Icelandic Basin which extends 200 miles from the coast of Iceland. Throughout the day we maintained a steady south westerly course passing over Reykjanes Ridge. Sun Princess is currently in the Irminger current, which is an ocean current that flows in a north easterly direction. Today we maintained a minimum distance of 300 miles from the east coast of Greenland on our starboard side.

The first of many sea days in our return journey back home, so that means a lot of relaxing, reading, socialising etc etc :) As we go further south the temperature should start to inch its way upward which will be nice. It has only been a week since we left Dover, but it has been cool to cold as we went north up to the top, which has kept most people indoors.

Today there were quite a few folk top deck soaking up the sun, but the wind chill factor kept almost everyone in shelter. We have had a gastro outbreak on board again, this time it is even more widespread than the last one a couple of weeks ago. They are saying it was brought on board in Dover by embarking passengers, not sure how they would know that though. We have been lucky enough to avoid it so far, touch wood we continue to do so. We avoid eating up in the buffet as much as we can, it is only when we miss the dining room times that we go up there, as we expect that is where most of the contact occurs.

This morning Donna weaved her creative juices through the ceramics masterpiece, while I attended the mundane chore of laundry duty. After lunch we went to the Ballroom Blitz Dance Class to learn how to do the Cha Cha. I am sure those onlookers thought it looked more like the Clash of the Clumsy Bigfoots, but we did OK for our first lesson. We even went to the Wheelhouse Bar before pre-dinner drinks, and practiced some more!! Lesson 2 tomorrow !!

CC group had a get together in Shooting Stars today, which we attended briefly before dance practice. The numbers attending have really dropped off since Dover. We used to get around the 100 mark at events in the Sydney to Dover legs, but now it is down around the 20-30. It may bounce back, perhaps everyone is in hibernation :)

Tonight we had a treat at dinner. The other night was Country and Western night, and a few of us had been talking about stuff when the subject of 'grits' came up. Arizonian, Randy, explained what grits was and how much he liked it, so we asked our waiter if we could arrange to have some at dinner one night coming up. Yeah we know it is a breakfast food, but that was going to be even harder to arrange. So we had it last night.

Randy joined our dinner table for the night to share in the delight, and instruct us in the art of having grits. Now I have to say a bowl of creamed white corn does not look very appealing to the uninitiated, and then a dollop of butter, and a topping of salt later, it looked even less appealing. However, I must admit it did not taste all that bad. It wont make it in my top 10, and the doc would be aghast at the butter and salt, but at least now we can say we have had it :)

Samantha – we did not book a 'package'. We just booked an inside cabin Syd to Syd, it was not part of a package.