Six Days Crossing the Pacific Ocean

As a pretty active person, I really wondered how well I’d tolerate 6 full days at sea. Would I get stir-crazy? Turns out that even partaking in only a few of the ship’s activities, Hannah and I both had plenty to do every day and thoroughly enjoyed the pace of that week.

I still had to keep up with work, which is the one down-side to a job like mine. So I spent 4-6 hours each day on my laptop, either in the Exploration’s Cafe with some coffee or on our couch, looking at the ocean. During this time, Hannah caught up on extra sleep, read novels, watched movies, and edited photos from the trip. In addition to that, we did our work-outs, attended some great lectures that coincided with our location, did some line-dancing, watched some shows at the theater, and enjoyed conversation with numerous new friends at “Sip and Savor” or “Tea Time.” The selection of movies on the cruise tv was excellent and was refreshed often, so we enjoyed catching up on some we hadn’t been able to see previously.

Photos courtesy of Holland America

Seas were a bit rough for the first 2 days as we raced away from Japan to stay ahead of a storm. It was never uncomfortable or worrisome, but some of those onboard more sensitive to motion sickness did have some difficulties those days.

Crossing the International Date Line was intriguing. Practically speaking, we experienced living the same day twice, and then had to change our clocks every day to get to the right date and time when we got to Alaska. However, we also learned the historical and scientific background to the establishment of the International Date Line. That was one of our fascinating lectures accompanied by lots of slides that our special guest speaker onboard presented. Others included Magellan and exploration, constellations, Humpback whales, and history of the Alaskan and Canadian west coast. We also had some cultural lessons, such as understanding the reason and proper etiquette for traditional tea ceremonies in Japan.