Tues July 2, 2024
Hi All! While we did have a relaxing sea day today, it was also very invigorating at times which I’ll explain in a bit.
We started off sleeping in and missing breakfast. Unheard of to miss TWO meals on a cruise. But we made it to lunch and had a nice sampling from the Lido buffet (had to make up for missing breakfast!). Then after lunch came the invigorating part!
Since we will be crossing the Arctic Circle tonight around 4 AM, we followed an age old tradition to get our blue noses at the Blue Nose Ceremony. What does that mean exactly? The Order of the Blue Nose (Domain of the Polar Bear) is a certificate awarded to sailers to mark their crossing of the Arctic Circle. It recognized the cold bodied sailors that had proven themselves worthy of the cold arctic winds and ice, and capable of handling themselves in this sailing environment, as they crossed the Arctic Circle. In the 19th century the line crossing ceremony was often quite brutal, often involving beatings with boards and wet ropes and sometimes throwing the men overboard and dragging them! Well we are having none of THAT today! Lol.
What we did to get the Blue Nose was to do the “Polar Plunge”! At 2 PM we all gathered around the outdoor pool and they dumped tons of ice in it to get it really cold. Then we all jumped in! After jumping in, we lined up around the pool and all swore an oath to Boreas Rex, the King of the North. Then they painted all of our noses blue! So fun!
After getting dried off and warmed up, we went to see the movie by Disneynature Studios called “Penguins”. It was such a cute movie and kept with our Arctic theme (although there are no Penguins in the Arctic, they are only in Antarctica!).
After the movie we went back to the room to get ready for dinner. That’s all for now and I’ll post more after dinner. I’ve posted a couple pictures from the polar plunge but will try to get ones of us actually jumping in or in the water since those are on Stuart’s camera. Happy Tuesday to all!
The Wandering Italian 