It's swell...and that's why I'm popping Gravol.

Luckily, Torsten seems to have inherited Ingo’s sea legs and lack of motion sickness! The wind began to blow quite hard yesterday evening and has continued all today, causing quite a lot of movement on the ship. Torsten takes it all in stride.

Yesterday was pretty uneventful – we tried out the main dining room for breakfast, and were a bit taken aback at the small portions and slow service. Upon consideration, that’s the drawback of “Freestyle” cruising – everyone wants breakfast around the same time, and as there’s no assigned times or seatings, there’s bit of a scrimmage. The poor servers are kept hopping, and many passengers get vaguely disgruntled. The same thing occurred at lunch. Scattered around the ship are displays that inform passengers of how busy each restaurant is, but it’s only of limited assistance.

We met a nice Swiss family with a little girl around Torsten’s age, and they played reasonably well together in the “Under 2 Zoo” (which consists of a room where they’ve scattered random age-appropriate toys for toddlers to play with). Other than that, we spent most of yesterday exploring the ship – looking at the tacky tourist stuff in the ship shop, checking out where all the bars and cafes were, and generally following where Torsten led. He received many compliments and really enjoyed being able to run the length of the ship. More importantly, there are loads of stairs to climb! He showed us his new skill – climbing a few steps without the benefit of holding hands, rails or other support. We also discovered a new skill – calling room service for snacks!

Today we woke up to a moderately rough sea, which caused me some difficulty. I popped a Gravol and some ginger pills, but they only helped a little bit. Happily, we found a table for breakfast that was outside but sheltered, so that I could get some fresh air. At 10, I headed off to the spa/salon to get a haircut. Unfortunately, the motion of the ship was quite extreme there, so I was thankful when the girl cutting my hair made a quick job of it, with only a quick blow dry to finish off, not the usual eternity of blow drying and styling. Gratuity is included, but I felt a little bad about simply scrawling my name and running off – I’m not even sure my name hit the signature line anywhere!

After a few deep breaths of fresh air outside on deck by the pool (where nobody was sitting – the only people I saw were hurrying to shelter from the wind), I went off to find Torsten and Ingo, who turned out to be on the deck above. We wandered around outside for a while, but it was a bit too windy – one gust propelled Torsten a few feet into my arms! The deck below was a bit better, as it had some shelter, and we stayed there for a bit. There was even a small buffet area where I snagged an apple (which was really tasty). Sadly, we couldn’t stay outside for the entire day, as it was too cold, so we went inside. Being inside made my head spin, so we went down to the cabin where Torsten and I lay down for a nap. After Torsten woke up, he and Ingo went out for lunch while I continued to nap. They came back an hour later with lunch for me (a nice fresh hamburger and fries), and, after I ate it, they went out to explore some more while I went back to sleep. That Gravol really knocks you out!
All in all, we’re having a pretty good time. Torsten is having a nap right now, but when he wakes up, we’ll go for dinner, look around a bit more, and then – what else? Sleep!!!