Nature's Wonders

28 August 2013. On our way from Naples to Kotor we had a day at sea. While it is always fun to explore new places, we both were glad to have a day where there was little scheduled and where we could recharge a bit.

As we passed around the boot of Italy, we sailed by Stromboli, the site of an active volcano. They had told us the night before that we would sail by it at 5:40 AM. So, I set me alarm for 5:30 and went out on our verandah to see the volcano. For the first 5-10 minutes I could vaguely see a dull red glow. The camera with a telephoto lens gave a better view. I had been instructed to wake people up if it was worth seeing. I considered it, and then thought, no, it isn't worth getting out of bed to barely see a red glow in the sky. Then, I saw a brilliant flash of red shooting out of the mountain and then a few seconds later could see red hot lava streaming down the side of the volcano. I managed to get a bit of a picture of it. 

Volcano Lava

That part was quite spectacular. Once again I thought about waking people up, but didn't. It was a good decision because it didn't happen again and we sailed away from Stomboli as it got light.

During our day at sea, we caught a Pat Donahue performance, one of the excellent musicians on board. We played a game of SkipBo with Gene and Mary. Chuck took a nap as he gets up quite early. At noon Caroline and Mary had dance practice and Chuck went to a spinning class where he says he gets tortured for an hour on the bike.  Todd and Joy, dance instructors from Minneapolis, give a variety of dance instructions during the cruise. Mary and Caroline decided to join the country line-dance class for fun and exercise. Well, it turned out to be more than just fun as this year they decided to have a dance contest between all the various dance styles. It was quite stressful to say the least for both Mary and Caroline but they stuck with it.  There were lots of steps to remember and not enough time to really feel comfortable getting up on a huge stage with about four hundred people watching. See the next post for more on the dance contest.

The show that night was a "Broadway show" where the libretto was written by Garrison Keillor and the music was familiar songs from hit Broadway musicals. The performers were incredible and the libretto was pretty funny. One of the highlights was a song entitled Urea sung to the tune of Maria from West Side Story. You get the idea.

After the show and before dinner, mother nature provided us with another show. The sunset was incredible. 

Even though the sunset was incredible, I couldn't resist taking a picture of another of nature's marvelous sights.

Sunset
Caroline

Caroline was imitating Heather Massy who sang a broadway song during the show. We had a great time with our friends all week long. Below is a picture at our dinner table.

Dinner

Front: Suzanne, Cynthia, Chuck, Caroline. Back: Katy, Gene, Mary


© Charles Eklund 2012