Days 4 and 5 ( plus extra bonus features including clown stories and travel plans in Italy)

Hey Guys!  I just wanted to give you all a quick update.  Today has been a hectic day!   Six of us have been planning our independent travels in Italy and beginning to book tickets.  Our plan for the 7 days: 

 

Day 1: Travel from Ship (just outside Rome) to Rome and explore

Day 2: Vatican Museum and more then fly to Venice at 21:05

Day 3: Explore Venice

Day 4: Explore Venice and then fly to Naples (our second port) at 18:15

Day 5: Day trip to Capri

Day 6: Day trip to Pompeii

Day 7: Explore Naples and ship leaves at 22:00

 

What a plan!  We are going all over and seeing everything we possibly can.  I know this sounds like a lot, but this is the port where I think I will spend the most money: 1) We are there for a whole week, 2) It is going to be amazing, and 3) It is going to be amazing and we are there for a whole week!!!!!!!! 

 

It is getting late, so I will just hit the highlights of the past few days.  On Day 4, I ate lunch with my roommate Nick, the inter-port lecturer, and his wife.  The inter-port lecturer is a faculty member from UVA and is going to be the Academic Dean for the entire next voyage…I am so jealous!  We had a blast!  They have traveled to Spain many many many times so they had some great advice on where to go and what to see.  At 21:00, he spoke again about all of the foods to explore while in Spain including Huggy’s favorite: tortilla espanol!!!!  So I guess that means my dad can only cook one meal…a Spanish meal!  Way to go Huggy (aka Dad, for those of you that don’t know his nickname)!!!!!  It was extremely interesting.  After talking with him at lunch and hearing him speak twice, I decided that Barcelona was going to be full of so much stuff to do that I really didn’t need to go to Madrid.  I would much rather spend it somewhere else like a hot air balloon ride or something. 

 

Today was Class Day 3 and Day 5!  While on the ship, we use two different schedules.  We use a continuous count of days since we embarked in Halifax and the second is the count of class days.  I hope that is not confusing…  Anyways, we have been having a blast overall.  Today has been another day in the neighborhood.  Except we are now seeing signs of wildlife!  While at dinner, we saw many sea birds flying around and there have been numerous reports of whales and dolphins.  I am mad that I haven’t seen any of them yet!!!!  I hope I see some soon!  You can also tell we are getting closer to the Mediterranean because it is getting a lot warmer (about 70 degrees)!   Ohhhh, before I forget, we saw the weirdest thing yesterday at breakfast!  There was a tiny little sail boat sailing along about 1 NM from the ship.  It was soooo small and the waves were huge.  I am surprised that they were out there.  We were not close to land yesterday and we are still pretty far away from land today.  I have no idea where they would be coming from.  It was cool, since that was our first encounter with any type of life outside of the ship!  Tonight, we had a little different type of Explorer Seminar: a clown.  The Academic Dean for our voyage is a drama professor and an expert historian of the circus; therefore, Grandma  the Clown performed for us tonight and told us all about his experiences traveling the world as a non-speaking clown, as well as his adventure in Clown College!  It was really entertaining!!! 

 

Everyone onboard is also very tired!  There are many reasons: 1) everyone is taking sea sick medicine which puts you to sleep, 2) the boat rocks you to sleep, 3) we have changed the clocks back one hour each night that we have been on the ship except for the day we left Halifax (today was the first day that we were on the ship for a whole 24 hours).

 

BTW, the water today is sooo beautiful.  It was the bluest water I have ever seen!  I also purchased a few field directed practica excursions today, so I hope I get to go on them.  It is done lottery style if too many people sign up for them.  The last one I signed up for was in Croatia and I didn’t get it.  Anyways, I signed up for a cultural dance performance thingy in Turkey and a few service visits.  Danielle and I signed up for the same trips so hopefully it will work out well.  The sunsets are awesome from the ship!  There were so many people laying out by the pool today and a few went into the pool.  It was an awesome day!  I really enjoyed hanging out on the back decks of the ship for hours and I can tell this is what all of us will be doing unil we get to Spain.  Me encanta lo!  If you don’t know what that means, then go to McDonald’s!  Anyways, I got to go to bed it is 1:15 here!  Good night America!

 

Here is today’s noontime report:

 

We are 1569 NM from Halifax traveling an average speed of 18.10 knots.  Since noon yesterday, we traveled 464 NM at an average speed of 20.17 knots.  The sea swells were much smaller in the last 24 hours, so we could pick up some speed.  We are 1889 NM away from Barcelona and 125 NM away from the Flores Island, which is the nearest land to the ship.  At 6:00 tomorrow morning (like in 5 hrs), the Azores Islands will be visible by port side at 7 NM.   Sea swells are 3.2 ft and the water is 8448 ft deep.