Day 5 Thursday 27th June Baltic Sea
Explorer must have gone through the Great Belt despite what we had been told at dinner in the evening before. I was woken up at about 5 am by a large gust of wind that rattled the sliding doors and I’m sure that the ship shuddered a little too.
We went for yet another buffet late breakfast to the Deck 3 buffet. I had a bowl of cornflakes and a bagel for a change. We sat with a couple from Australia who had been away from home for nearly four weeks already. They had been joined by their adult kids in London just before the cruise and they were now with them on the cruise.
Our table was then joined by an American who was dressed ‘ready’ for a fishing expedition. After placing his order for coffee he asked if this was a buffet, we told that it was and that he would have to go and pick up his own food. He sat quietly and pondered for 5 minutes before he slipped away to eat somewhere else.
After breakfast we went outside on deck for a walk on the decks for a couple of circuits. Higher up on the ship was the Flow Rider. We rode up the lifts to have a look and also to find out where we would be eating lunch later.
Just a couple of people were on the flow rider. A young teenager was riding the water up and down the watery slope – very impressive. Further around we watched passengers on the climbing wall, others playing golf and even more shooting basketball hoops.
Lunch in Johnny Rockets
Our lunch was in the onboard American diner called Johnny Rockets. This restaurant carried a small service charge. There was only one other couple in the diner when we arrived, a little early to have lunch with our friends.
I ordered a Bud beer while we waited I looked the replica diner that RCI I had created on board. We were sat at a table with a jukebox selected to outside. The counter had a row of high seats all along it and just passed them we could see the short order cook working on preparing meals.
The menu had a choice of burgers and sandwiches with fries and onion rings as starters. We chose to have fries with cheese and onion rings as a shared starter before our burgers. My burger was a combination burger and Linda had a cheeseburger which came with two patties of beef!
The quiet background music suddenly became a loud and YMCA belted out from the speakers. The three servers then danced to the track in front of the counter.
After it finished they returned to their normal tasks.
The burger was excellent and we had so many fries and onion rings that we had to stop eating them to leave room for the equally excellent huge sundaes that we had for dessert.
USS Mount Whitney
As we walked the decks we could see warships nearby. One of them was USS Mount Whitney and could be clearly seen as we passed by.
A quick check on the Internet confirmed that the ship had been the flagship of the recent NATO BALTOPS exercise.
Golf . . .
We all met up at 3 pm to take part in a golf challenge between the seven of us. It was a lot harder than it looked and I wish that I’d had a sneaky practice like some of my travelling companions.
After the golf we watch the climbing wall again as other passengers scaled to ring the bell before pushing off and descending using the safety gear.
To one side of the climbing wall I noticed yet another area cordoned off that was for the use of only Diamond club members. Yet another part of the ship where we could not go.
Formal evening
The evening was another formal evening and we all met in the lounge of the casino for our pre-dinner drinks. Our new table was almost in the middle of the Atrium of the restaurant. Behind it were three large tables, two oval and one round.
Now we all had room to move on the larger table. Our new servers were both from Goa in India and seemed happy to be looking after us. They quickly sorted out a round of drinks before we had even ordered our meals.
I started with scallops, then chicken Tikka Masala and for desert I had Key Lime pie which was delicious. A surprise was the gathering of all the servers on the stairs of the restaurant.
Back in our cabin we had a reminder that the ship’s clocks were changing and our ‘departure tickets’ from the ship when we were in St Petersburg.
