Today is Wednesday, February 6, 2008 yet when we go to sleep this evening we will wake up on Friday, February 8, 2008. This is all due to the International Dateline.
Here is how this change works.
If you are traveling in an easterly direction, you subtract a day as you cross the Dateline; you repeat the same calendar date twice.
Traveling in a westerly direction as our cruise ship is doing we simply add (or skip) another day as we cross the Dateline. For us, this means that Thursday, February 7 just doesn’t exist this time around. Instead, it is erased from all memory.
The key to all of this is that the calendar day begins at the International Dateline.
We hope this all makes sense to you. All we know is that when we wake up tomorrow it will be Friday, February not Thursday, February 7. Thank goodness we go forward one entire day and approximately 24 hours. The reason we say approximately is that we will also be turning the clock back one hour before retiring this evening. So, we also enjoy an extra hour of sleep in the morning. -☺
We enjoyed a great night sleep and the seas were quite calm. Keith got up a little earlier than normal and headed up to the Fitness Center and then Anne Marie joined Keith a little bit later. There were less folks at the Center than the past couple of days since today is a port day. In addition, about 25 passengers are joining the Golf Pro for a round of golf today.
After our workout we enjoyed another nice breakfast in the Lido Café. The only challenge is that the ship has just about exhausted the supply of bananas. Hopefully, they will get more bananas while in port today. A couple of our fellow passengers joined us for breakfast. We all talked about how nice last evenings Mardi Gras party was. Two parties were held last evening; one for passengers who have main seating dining and the second one for those passengers who have late seating dining.
We arrived in Apia, Western Samoa at around 8:00 AM this morning. About an hour before we arrived it rained very hard. During the Captain’s morning talk from the bridge he mentioned that there would be a chance of showers throughout the day so we brought umbrellas with us when we walked around the town later in the morning. The captain’s thought for the day is; “Friends are like stars; you don’t necessarily see them but you know they are always there.”
We went for a walk into town at about 8:30. It was mostly sunny and fairly breezy when we began our walk. On our way out of the port area there were lots of taxis and we were asked numerous times if we were interested in a taxi. Also, on our walk to and from town there were many taxis looking to pick up passengers. With so many taxis we are not quite sure how the drivers make much of a living from this work. We found the locals to be quite friendly. Many of the locals who we saw as we walked greeted us very warmly, welcoming us to Samoa. At one point we saw a marching band called the Royal Samoa Police Band. We walked into a couple of markets that sold a variety of items from food, to fresh seafood to clothing. We passed by several churches including a fairly large Catholic Church, which we walked up to. There was a service that was attended mainly by the school children. We walked about an hour and a half. By the time we headed back to the ship it was quite humid and muggy.
We spent the remainder of the day on the ship. We had a wonderful lunch in the main dining room.
After lunch, we decided to take a nice walk on the Promenade Deck. It has started to cool down a little bit and from a distance we could see rain showers. About halfway through out walk it started to rain but we were able to continue to walk as we walked under the overhang.
At 5:15 PM we attended a reception hosted by our travel consortium. They are having a reception on each of the eight segments of the world cruise. As we’ve mentioned, we enjoy these receptions as they provide a nice opportunity to converse with some of our fellow passengers.
We enjoyed a nice evening with a very nice couple that we had met when they cruised on the first segment of last years World Cruise. They enjoyed the cruise so much that this year they are sailing on the first half of the 2008 World Cruise. They joined us in our room for a before dinner drink and snacks. We then all dined in the Prego Specialty Restaurant, which serves Italian Cuisine. We enjoyed wonderfully prepared food, with outstanding service and wonderful conversation.
Tomorrow we will enjoy a day at sea as our World Cruise Adventure continues.
Keith & Anne Marie
