Rock It Till We Dock It

Basically a day at sea heading for Seward (Sue-Wood) at a very leisurely pace as we don't want to arrive till the morning.

Meant that we could choose from a whole variety of exciting on-board activities to keep us occupied like an Abs Class, Windows 8.1 Basics, Introduction to Chinese Medicine, The Art of Flower Arranging, Body Sculpting Boot Camp, Secrets to a Flatter Stomach, and a Slot Tournament, and that was only some of this morning's excitement.

So we settled for doing laps of the Promenade Deck in an effort to maintain some semblance of fitness. Actually we've been getting a bit of exercise whether we like it or not. To get from our stateroom on 4 Deck aft to the Crows Nest on 12 Deck forward is a decent walk and 8 sets of stairs, and we seem to be doing that kind of a walk many times a day. Our quads are gaining shape, and our waists are losing it, though to be fair there are always healthy and sugar free options available on every menu.

After our laps we headed into the cafe for a cuppa for morning tea, to find queues of people lining up already at 11:30 for the buffet lunch, presumably just in case the ship ran out of food. Honestly, who needs 2 piled plates of food at 11:30 in the morning, but maybe some of the guys had worked up a huge appetite at the Flower Arranging workshop.

After lunch we did go to the Chat and Backstage Tour with the Show Cast, which was great. Got to see the pokey dressing rooms, the wardrobe and the sets area, and hear about their life on board, and their careers so far. Seems that they are hired, trained and flown in by an external company who has the show contract, and that company does the choreography, arrangements and makes the costumes. After a five week rehearsal period on land, they are normally contracted for an 8 month season at sea doing 16 shows a week, though the Alaskan season only lasts 4.5 months (as they can hardly do a show about Going North to Alaska whilst in Hawaii can they!).

For some reason Mandy baled out of the afternoon Hula Hoop Challenge, even though I reminded her of the endless times that she had tried to convince me that sport was "all about the participation not the winning". Yeah, right. Her preps don't fall for that line either, but apparently the laws of the universe are 'different' when it comes to hula hoops.

Went to our last show of the cruise - a second show by the resident magician, who no doubt needed to make his bar bill disappear before we docked. Then it was dinner in the Dining Room where the entire crew ceremoniously bid us farewell with procession and song, and up to the Crows Nest to catch the final night of music, and watch the sunset over the gradually appearing land. Sunset is not an easy thing to see. It's the longest day of the year today, and sunset is not until almost 11:30pm, so there is only token darkness for about 2 hours. Sunset is also much harder to see when it's raining. Oh well, it was a romantic thought.