Wow, has it been five days already??? Yesterday was the halfway point, so I guess so. Sometimes I lose track of what day it is. I believe this is Wednesday.
The alarm woke me up this morning. I slept all night through. I guess all the walking yesterday wore me out. We arrived at the time my alarm was set for, so when I looked out the balcony, we were in the harbor at Road Town, Tortola, British Virgin Islands.We got dressed and went down to breakfast at the “Garden Café.” Then we returned to the room and got our swimsuits on and gathered our things and went to the Stardust Theater to await our tour. When it was our turn to leave, we boarded a “tender”, several of which I guess are kept on our ship. They are enclosed boats that they use to ferry people back and forth between the shore and the ship when the ship is anchored away from a dock. When we arrived on shore, we were taken to another open-air safari-style bus/taxi and driven a short distance to Dolphin Discovery for our dolphin encounter.
This was the highlight of my week! I LOVED this excursion. If I had it to do again, I might have rather done the “dolphin swim” which give you a bit more interaction with the animals, but I still loved it. I think they said they had 18 adult dolphins and three babies that were born in August. We saw the babies being fed by trainers in another pool area. We stowed our things, got into life vests, and watched an orientation video. Then we headed to the pool and climbed down a set of stairs to a submerged platform. We spent 30 minutes or so in the water, with the dolphin doing tricks and coming by us for us to touch him. The trainer showed us different parts, such as the pinhole ears and how to tell a male from a female. Ours was a boy named Al, by the way. And we each got to be kissed by the dolphin, kiss the dolphin back, and shake “hands” while we were photographed and the whole thing was videotaped. Of course they make a fortune off of that, since it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity and if you are in the water, you can’t very well take pictures or video unless you have someone out of the water with you.
After we were done, we took the taxi back to the dock and the tender back to the ship. Since we were already in our swimsuits and the boat was less populated than usual, we climbed in the pool for a while. The thing that I love about the pools is that on both sides of each, there is a wide area, sort of a ledge, that is only 2-3 inches deep. I sat there and was able to soak up the sun, but since I was sitting in the water, I kept cool. It was a beautiful day, around 84 degrees and mostly sunny. I think I added to my sunburn slightly! After a while, we went up a deck to the “sun deck” and 
I laid on my stomach to get the other side toasted and to let the sun dry me off for a bit. When I got too hot (my suit is 95% black), we went down to the “Garden Café” to eat lunch. Well, that is, after we explored that deck for a little bit. It’s the sports deck and there was shuffleboard and giant chess, a golf cage, and a basketball/soccer/tennis cage.After lunch, we came upstairs and I showered and Scott took a nap. I got ready and sat watching the scenery as we headed out to sea and played my DS again. Then Scott got up and got ready and we went down to the photo gallery to buy a new memory card for the camera! We went through about 600 pictures and videos! Anyone want to come see slides of our vacation? LOL, just kidding.
Then we went to the Stardust Theater for a murder mystery dinner. I had never been to one, but always wanted to. We were put in a group with Jeff and Debbie and one set of their parents, Greg and Mickey (the other set of parents were in another group). They were from Olathe and were really nice and we had a great time. Jeff played the part of Les Baggs, the escaped convict. Debbie was Nadia Seymour, the model. Greg was Chief Wiki-Wiki. Mickey was Leilani, the hula dancer. I was Holly Day, the wife of a billionaire and Scott was Joey Breakers, the surf dude and murderer! It was a lot of fun. Except I had to go home with a murderer!!!Then we got a drink refill and headed back to the room to veg. I tried to run to the shop upstairs to get some aloe since we are both sunburned from this afternoon, but they were closed. So we played gin rummy a bit
I marvel at certain things. Like how a huge plane that weighs so much can stay in the air. Or how this gigantic ship that holds nearly 3500 people including the crew and all the sundries that we need and want can float without sinking. We are really moving tonight. We have 800 miles to go to get to the Bahamas Friday, so we are traveling at 21 and a half knots (24-25 mph), when we were going 15-17 (17-19 mph) usually. Yesterday since we weren’t going far, we only went about four knots (four and a half mph). By comparison, 21 knots is fast and the boat is rocking quite a bit.
We went down to the “Garden Café” for a snack since dinner was fancy and a bit skimpy and since I am picky and didn’t care for the offered appetizers and picked out parts of the dessert. We came back upstairs and Scott was teaching me how to play Texas Hold ‘Em. Then we watched Kung Fu Panda on the movie channel, but I fell asleep towards the end, so Scott tucked me in with some Tylenol PM. We had to set the clocks back one hour, so I went to bed at 10 and he stayed up reading. It’s funny, I used to be the one to stay up late, now I am the one going to bed early.
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