At Sea in the Norwegian Sea

 Now that we've been to the top, there's nowhere to go except back down the coast of Norway.  We were scheduled to continue east and visit 2 Russian ports, but someone who shall remain nameless put the kibosh to that.  We slept in a bit again and had a light breakfast.  Not only has the scale given me some alarming news, but now I've noticed some bulges that I don't remember before, so I really have to get serious.  No carbs at breakfast or lunch and I'm planning on no dessert at dinner, just cheese and a cracker or two.  The real challenge will be the bread - it's so good.  Maybe just one small piece of the healthier brown bread in the evening?

 We are delighted with the laundry service.  If we have it outside our cabin door before 9 am, we have it back that evening. Last night we came back to our room to find our laundry returned in a black box instead of our usual grey, and the shirts in a reusable suit bag instead of a plastic wrap covering.  Interesting.  This morning our room steward apologized that the laundry had made a mistake, but we could keep the suit bag.  But now I'm wondering who normally gets the black box and suit bag.  Ours had the wrong cabin number on it initially, which was corrected, but there must be something special about the people in that cabin because the cabin class is the same as ours.  Perhaps they are at a higher level than we are. Love these little mysteries.

Went to the lecture on the future plans of NASA which include a space station on the moon and eventually a trip to Mars.  I hadn't realized just how involved the commercial companies are, particularly Elon Musk's SpaceX.  But as Lt. Col. Rothschild points out, private companies can do things less expensively than the government, or even publicly traded companies like Boeing or Lockheed Martin.  Those companies are still involved, just not often in direct competition with SpaceX.

Later Michael hit the fitness center and I went to hear Terry Bishop talk about the history of war in the Norwegian fjords, especially during WWI and WWII.  We were good at the Asian buffet lunch and only had meat and vegetables, no starchy carbs.

The day's a bit dreary with gray skies and seas which are a little rolling.  Even had the odd passing shower.   We spent a very lazy afternoon playing on the computer and reading.  Not a good day at Trivia, but at least they've moved it back into the theatre so we aren't so cramped anymore.  Trivia is by far the most popular game played and some people take it very seriously and stake out their spots early.

There was another Captain's Regent Circle Party and this time the cruise consultant said there were 340 passengers on board.  It's interesting how we get different numbers from different people as Nino said it was 365.  Afterward, we had dinner with Pam and Ralph from Danville, CA.  The show was a repeat of a prior production show so we returned to the cabin and watched the second Indiana Jones move, which is my favorite.