Wednesday, February 15, 2012

2012-2-15 Panama

We never did go ashore in Panama. One of the serving staff told us that we didn’t miss much. I would like to see it one day.

Last night there was a movie in the big Showroom at Sea on deck four forward. I heard a lady say, "Is that the room at the pointy end of the ship?"

We saw “Tower Heist” with Ben Stiller. I thought it was fine. It was a send up of the heist movies with a social message attached. The little people took revenge on a Bernie Madoff-like character who stole their pension money.

I ran into a new friend this morning. She said they had a wonderful time on their trip to the Embara Indian village except that the traffic added two hours to their trip. Panama City has a spectacular skyline. It’s easy to see the money they are making on the canal. I counted 26 ships lined up to go through the canal yesterday. Those were just the ones I could see.

We were getting the Latin version of CNN International for a few days. I like it a lot better than CNN Asia or even CNN Europe. They cover the world with a new hemisphere emphasis. We saw Fareed Zakaria on Sunday and Anderson Cooper in the afternoon.

Of course, we get Fox News and all the reports about Whitney Houston.

I was on Facebook this morning and it’s good to see that things seem to be going well at home with all my friends and family. I do miss you all. I also miss the friends we made on the Hawaii part of the voyage. I wonder how John and Lore are doing, as well as Susan and Erwin. I will get in touch with them when we get home.

Speaking of our last cruise, I would give our gift bottle of wine to John if he was still on board. He really liked wine with dinner. I tried to give it to our cabin steward, Dodi, but he says he is a Muslim and doesn’t drink alcohol. I am still looking for a likely candidate to palm it off on.




There are displays set up on the Rotterdam selling Valentine’s Day items such as teddy bears and chocolate dipped strawberries. I told Bill that this trip is enough of a gift for me. It also covered Christmas and our anniversary.

We saw another amazing Magician/Comedian named Craig Diamond. Bill and I both think we remember him from the Tonight show with Johnny Carson. His comedy routine was as good as his magic.