One item I forgot to mention for day three is that it was the night of the Captain’s dinner. This is the most elegant night of the cruise, one of the reasons we had packed our fabulous evening wear. But remember, I had laryngitis that day and besides not being able to speak, felt spent. Gerry wouldn’t go to the dinner alone so we both missed this big event.

The players asked me to post notices that there would be informal bridge every day that we were in port. The activities director added this to the daily bulletin.

Day 4

When we awoke on day four, we were docked at Labadee, the cruise line’s private island. We went ashore to explore the island. It had wonderful trails to follow and miles of sandy beaches. We had been told about the “zip line”, a long cable stretching above the water from the top of a tower to a landing station on the far end of the island. I can’t tell you how long it was, but it was long! We watched as the chairs with people in them whizzed down the line. We decided not to take it. It didn’t look thrilling enough. Instead we waded in the water and followed the paths around the island.

When we reached the far end of the island, there were steps and a path to climb to a vantage point overlooking the bay. The path dead ended here and as we started to retrace our steps I looked through the trees and saw another path going in the direction we wanted to go. Being brought up in the Adirondack Mountains gave me training to recognize the barely visible signs of a “foot worn” path from one trail to the other. I convinced Gerry that we could save a lot of steps by crossing through the woods to the other path. This path was definitely a trail for people to use.

We spotted a small building off to the side of the path and, as we looked farther saw other small buildings. Being curious, we went into the first building. It was a shelter with a porch overhanging the water some 20 feet below. What a place to take pictures! There were lounges, plenty of towels and a cooler containing water and soda. We thought how wonderful it was of the cruise line to make such a comfortable rest area, but why weren’t there other people using them? We were enjoying ourselves immensely, (no, we didn’t help ourselves to the items from the cooler), when we saw a shape outside the shelter and heard a voice say “Who are you and what are you doing here?” It seems the shelters were part of a private compound for which people pay a very high price. We apologized profusely and left quickly in the direction we came.

After a barbecue lunch on the island, we returned to the ship. We went to the bridge room where we found enough players for a game of bridge. It was sorta’ assumed that we would run the game. Another enjoyable afternoon.

Then the usual, the show, and dinner at our very large table for two. There was a benefit to our waiter’s not having many people to serve. It started by him bringing a third appetizer, “I bring you very good food. You try,” and evolved into a third appetizer, a third main dish, and a third dessert every day. We tried a lot of dishes.