April 16 - What a difference a day makes!

 Here I am in Palma de Mallorca on a blustery day with intermittent showers.  I've decided this will be a sea day in port.  I'll be back here in a couple of weeks and perhaps the weather will be nicer.

I'll catch up on what I've done since boarding the ship.  Last night after dinner I went to the show which was "Detroit Sounds." Yes, it was all Motown and it was fantastic. I had been told that this was a new cast of singers and this was their first time performing this show.  They were probably the best performers I've heard on a ship in recent memory.  It didn't hurt that they were performing my kind of music.  After the show I went up to the Observation Bar briefly to say hello to Merle and Barry, the duo I got to know very well on my last cruise.  They are wonderful performers and just such nice people.  I don't normally go up there but I shall have to to listen to them.  Next I went down to the Club and stayed until it closed.  There were two groups that played and both were fabulous.  They played lots of music that I like so I did have to get up and dance.  I'm careful because a knee has been bothering me, but maybe the exercise is good for it if I take it easy.

I should write something about this place. Palma de Mallorca is the capital and largest city in this archipelago of islands (the Balearics) in the western Mediterranean off the coast of Spain.  It's a province and autonomous region of Spain. There is evidence of habitation on the islands dating back to the 3rd millenium BC.  At various times the islands were under Phoenician, Carthaginian and Roman control.  One quite interesting thing I think is that the men were renowned for there abilities to use slingshots and they served as mercenaries for those civilizations going into battle with little more than their slings.

This morning when I looked out and saw the gray skies I rolled over and stayed in bed a while longer.  It's easy to become lazy on a ship. So here I sit in Seabourn Square with an excellent cappuccino watching the people go by.  I'm not sure what the distribution of nationalities on board is, but from conversations I've heard I think there are quite a few non-US passengers.  I kind of like that because I can learn lots of new things in conversations with people from other places.  At breakfast I sat across from a retired professor who lives in the Cotswolds in England.  At dinner last night a gentleman I spoke with was a retired attorney from Lima, Peru.  I think meeting people from all over and from all walks of life is one of my favorite things about cruising.

This is what it looked like from the deck this morning.  This is a big ferry port where ferries from all over the western Mediterranean come.  In the distance beyond a ferry you can see the cathedral which is very beautiful.

At this rate I won't have many exciting things to write about, but I will have made new friends like Fernando from Peru and Keith from England. Those kind of memories are, as the commercial says, priceless.  More later .....