On Board The Emerald Princess

On Board The Emerald Princess

Saturday, and we’re at sea…slowly making our way to Stockholm. The big surprise on boarding this beautiful new ship is that we received a strict warning that there was an outbreak of a gastrointestinal virus on the previous cruise that affected somewhere around three hundred passengers. The ship was completely sanitized in Copenhagen before we boarded, and strict sanitary measures are in place today. The Captain has made announcements and all passengers have received notices urging frequent hand washing and the use of available hand sanitizing dispensers. In addition, there is no self service at meal time. You have to ask for everything to be handed to you, even packets of Splenda! Oh well, this isn’t the first time this has happened on board a ship. The good news is that the outbreak seemed to have been contained toward the end of the previous cruise with fewer new cases reported.

Computer access is slow on board since it is satellite-based. Nevertheless, we should be able to post trip reports to the blog. Hopefully Blogger will get its act together and we will be able to post photos again soon.

Today (Saturday) we are at sea for the day. Tomorrow morning we will be in Stockholm. Since we have not been in Scandinavia for 26 years it will be like visiting this city for the first time for me.

:Last evening the ship hosted a get-together for gay/lesbian/bisexual/trans passengers. We were delighted to meet five other gay guys who are also passengers on this cruise. Tonight our group will have cocktails and dinner together.

Jim