1. Passage Day

The very first day was a day at sea. We spent this with exploring our floating hotel, unpacking the suitcases (of course the captain had not left before the suitcases were on board), a first sunbath and a nice cozy breakfast.

Inclusive was breakfast in one of the two buffet restaurants. But we didn't feel like queuing up for coffee early in the morning and decided to upgrade for breakfast in the steak restaurant. Trying our luck we went to the restaurant and were actually able to book one of the last upgrades for the trip.

Here it was pleasant, everything was brought on order (café crema was even from Starbucks), in addition there was a small buffet. And even if we were somehow on the American continent, there was German bread and buns.

The ship's language was completely German: letters, board news, on-board announcements, service. And even though most of the staff came from Asia, they really did their best to speak German.

At this point a small site excurse about daily ship life, which was so new for us:

Every evening we found the board news on our cabins door, with information about the destination of the upcoming day, excursion highlights, daily program on the ship and presentation of one of the professions on the ship.

The passengers were all German, so most of the sun loungers were reserved early in the morning for the whole day with a towel – at least on the central pool deck. A little further away from the bar, there were usually still free loungers to find, but according to new friends of us only, because the ship was only traveling with reduced passenger capacity due to the pandemic situation.

Actually, we have to change the description of a “floating hotel” to a “small floating town”, because in addition to cabins and several restaurants and bars, there were also various shops, a gym and the spa. Whereby – maybe we should talk about the “floating village”, because we should see the “floating town” a few days later – we will come back to it.

Most guests had All Inclusive food and drinks. Accordingly, the first cocktails and alcoholic beverages were served in the morning at the latest. We usually stuck to the "Virgin Cocktails" until the afternoon, but that also will lead to overweight.

Food was actually available around the clock. Start 7:00 am with early breakfast, over lunch in the buffet restaurants or on sea days on the pool deck under certain mottos, coffee and (German) cake in the afternoon in the bars and dinner in one of the 8 restaurants until 11 pm. Nobody could starve to death here, but there were still complaints when a trip lasted longer, and the lunch time was over.

The entire crew did their best to pamper us passengers. Everyone was nice and accommodating and they made a monkeys out of themselves as amusement of the guests.

And it had (almost) never rained! Don't believe it, but that's the way it is!
We had so much time to get from one destination to another that the captain always steered the ship around rain fields.More than a few drops never reached the deck.  That was a good thing because the pool deck had no dome.

Wintertime? Christmastime? Everyday's life? What is that?
The environment and temperature made it possible for us to switch off almost immediately. Cheers!