At Sea - November 06, 2012

A great day at sea. Weather held pretty well, gave us a long period of sunny skies with some cloud cover and a bit of shower activity. Temperature held between 21 and 26 so not too bad. Pictures today are of some of the people that have made this cruise great. First up is Ari, he greets us everyday at the Manhattan Restaurant with a great smile and always remembers what we enjoy after our meal, dates and ginger for Jan and two happy pills (mints) for me; Yari our assistant dining room steward; Herry our dining room steward who always makes the best recommendations to us; our assistant dining room manager taking care of all our needs; the Adagio strings always playing beautiful string music after our dinner; Aji, the main guy keeping our room looking great and taking care of all our laundry; next up is our Captain, Captain Vincent Smit who here is hosting but another mariner party, I believe this is four during this cruise for us - great job and wonderful seeing him at these events; Jan with the Hotel Director Marco Van Belleghem usually the co host of the Mariner events, again great seeing him at these wonderful and generous HAL events, Mr. Van Belleghem is also a accomplished photographer and has held a few sessions including some of his great work in this field as well as successfully operating all the hotel managing functions of this ship; last but definitely not least is our cruise director David Shea, great energy from this guy, always with a smile and where necessary always gives you his ear. A great team effort by the staff to ensure that whatever you do or choose to do it is available for you. This is very important as we cross on a seven day stretch as the needs of the 2100 plus passengers can be very diversified, so far great job and we are not anticipating any problems whatsoever. Tomorrow will be some of the artwork that the beautiful Nieuw Amsterdam has to offer.