Week 17: Transatlantic cruise, from St. Maarten to Azores

Our cruise continues. The last Caribbean stop was St. Maarten, a little bit too touristic for our liking, followed by 5 days at the sea. Food, work, gym, lectures, shows, books, sleep. If I sound more cheerful this week, it might be because I've read Harry Potter in the evenings, instead of Game of Thrones. Today we are stopping at Ponta Delgada at Azores, in the middle of the Atlantic. It's raining outside, so we are sitting in a cafe, enjoying Portuguese pastel de natas.

Welcome to our weekly recap! This one's for April 24th-30th, which is week 17, 2014.

Most memorable moment: I saw probably my first live ice skate/dance show (yes, we have an ice-skating ring on the ship). They were, well, very good at spinning around fast in different positions. Forgive my ignorance on the subject.

Surprise of the week: The first surprise was a bit inconvienient: our toilet stopped working for hours one day. The second surprise was more pleasant. As we came back to our state room in the evening, a bottle of rose wine with chocolate covered strawberries was waiting for us as a compensation. We felt much better at once.

Workwise: We've been writing a lot and planning our next steps. We've been mostly without the internet, just a few minutes for downloading emails every other day. Somehow the other guests being on vacation here doesn't seem to distract us that much, but it makes me wonder what this would be like if everyone else was in fact working too on something during the day.

What did I learn: I've learned that I can read a book while walking on a treadmill, if I just make the text size large enough on my tablet and keep my pace and posture steady. I also learned it's much easier to read when cycling, but I need some walking practice and test driving of my new shoes before we start walking the Camino in Spain.

Food love: The food on the ship is always quite good, and there is a lot of it. It's easy to eat too much here, and I've already noticed my body raising some objections about the things I'm feeding it. I've switched bacon and eggs to oatmeal at breakfast and the three-course lunch to a one big salad. I've even cut down on the delicious chocolade chip cookies.

Random thought: There are about two thousand guests on the ship, but we keep on running into the same people all the time. No matter what time we go for lunch or dinner, they are there at the same time. If we go to a show, they will be there too and pick a seat close to us. Strange.

Tip of the week: Some of the newer ships are fully booked for their cross atlantic cruises, but ours has a lot of empty rooms. More supply than demand means _______________.

Arriving at St. Maarten. We chose a cafe instead of jet skiing.

Somehow the sunsets were bigger events last time when we were traveling west, even though they were as pretty now. Maybe we should start getting up early this time to admire the sunrise instead?

The weather has been great the whole time. Little foggy here and there, but the going has been easy, and sometimes the ocean's been almost perfectly still.

The swaying ship brings a little extra excitement to the ice dancing show.

Pastel de natas at Azores brought us back to Portugal...

And that's it for our week. How was yours?

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This post is part of Instagram Travel Thursday and all the pics are from our Instagram account. Instagram Travel Thursday ia a gathering of Instagram related blog posts every week. You can find a list of other participating posts, or add your own post, at Destination Unknown, Skimbaco Lifestyle or at many other hosts' sites. You can also participate by tagging your Instagram pics with #igtravelthursday.