Sunday, February 23, 2025
There is a motion sensor light in our cabin located under the edge of the closet doors that provides illumination for night time bathroom trips which woke me up around 3:00 am when Bob got up. I was aware that he was taking longer than usual which I knew was not a good sign. When he came back to bed I asked him if anything was wrong and his reply..."I have diarrhea". He said he didn't feel sick at all, but continued to get up periodically through the rest of the night so neither of us got much sleep.
We phoned Jon and Michelle around 7 am to let them know we wouldn't be at breakfast and both of us tried to get more sleep. Around 9 am I got up and showered but Bob just stayed in bed.
I thought about running up to the lido to at least get some coffee and a little breakfast, but by the time I was ready I knew the buffet would be closed. Instead, I went to the shore excursion desk in the Crow's Nest. On the way I saw our room steward and told him to just skip cleaning the room because Bob was sleeping.
I wanted to check on the status of an onboard credit that I was to receive but had not yet showed up on our statement. The credit was from submitting a request and being approved for HAL's "best price guarantee" for their shore excursions. Michelle and I have booked a submarine tour in Aruba and I had found the same tour online for a lower price. HAL's guarantee promises an onboard credit for 110% of the difference if a lower price is found online for an identical tour. The gal working tried to tell me that there was no such offer and even told me she thought the confirmation email that I had received from HAL was a scam. Eventually she took the matter to her manager who confirmed my story and said the credit should show up a couple of days after I took the tour. Mission accomplished. ✔
Bob and I had also purchased a HAL snorkeling tour in Guadeloupe which had been charged to our credit card. I requested that they refund the cost and rebook the tour using some of our onboard credit. Second mission accomplished. ✔ ✔
By the time I returned to the room, Bob was awake and feeling OK. The night time symptoms were also gone so he wanted to go to the promenade deck and get some fresh air. About the same time Michelle sent a text saying they were also headed to the promenade deck but when we all got there, not a single chair was available. By then it was almost 11:30 so we went up to the lido and ate a little lunch. Bob just had a banana and I had a small serving of fish and chips.
Jon & Michelle reported that they had attended the 9:00 am interdenominational church service in the Rolling Stone Lounge and said it was a good service and well attended. Normally the service would have been held in one of the meeting rooms, but those were all reserved and filled with sewing machines for a quilting group that was onboard.
Back on the promenade deck, our second try at finding chairs was successful. The four of us sat on the open deck enjoying the view and dozing off and on. At one point, Michelle and I did a (slow) lap around the ship which is 1/3 of a mile...a long distance for my knee.
Later in the afternoon Bob was feeling totally OK and decided he wanted to check out the watercolor class. After taking the water color classes the previous year on our Hawaii cruise on the Koningsdam, he had decided he really wanted to pursue painting and had purchased brushes, paints, paper, etc. But...it ended up that I was the one who really got interested in watercolor and have been trying to practice and learn the medium, not Bob.
We made it to the MDR for our 5:30 reservations and Bob just ate cautiously. The comedian, Jeff Burghart, who we saw on the first night, was doing another show in the main theater. We all agreed that we didn't enjoy the first show enough to do a repeat. Instead we sat outdoors near the Sea View Pool and played cards. There were only a few people out there including some of the singers and dancers who sat nearby. Tonight our card game was Hand & Foot which had a million different rules but was still easier for me to understand than some of the other games that Jon has tried to get me to play.
With plans to meet Jon & Michelle for breakfast the next day at 7:00 am, we came back to the room where I got things ready to go ashore for my submarine tour. Who knows if what Bob had was the dreaded "norovirus" or perhaps just something he ate. Either way, the timing was fortunate and didn’t disrupt any plans. AND it was resolved very quickly.
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