Day 13 - 25 July - At Sea to Russia - Day 3

Overnight we lost July 24, 2019; for this cruise July 24, 2019 never existed. Plus we gained an hour so the net loss was only 23 hours. Put another way, from today's perspective, yesterday was really the day before yesterday. Does that sound confusing?

In any event this was a pretty relaxed day. I wonder if the cruise line scheduled it this way so people would be rested up for our first Russian port visit tomorrow.  

Like most sea days, we started with a coffee chat at 9 where Lance, our Cruise and Travel Director was interviewed by Gloeta. We learned that 900 guests are going out on Tours as that's the only way one can go ashore without a visa or hold a passport from a nation that Russia doesn't require a Visa. Immediately following the coffee chat, Lance presented a port talk on Petropavlovsk which was standing room only. He found this surprising since 900 are on excursions and one can't leave the excursion and wander around either before or after. There's this thing about being in a port city that is home to the Russian eastern submarine fleet! But we're all curious about this first Russian port of call.

Jason Kelly followed up with a humorous presentation on Zodiacs which included pictures of our voyage on them earlier this year in the Maldives. And so ended the presentations for the day until the nightly entertainment and Evening Insight.

At lunch and again up in the Crow's Nest we were treated to whales and Dall porpoises on multiple occasions! And then there was the mountain range and very large volcano that presented themselves off our starboard side.

Unfortunately, today we learned that we cannot keep our present stateroom and will need to move on August 28 at the start of our last 42 day segment.

There was no programming of interest in the afternoon so it was spent whale and dolphin watching plus the beautiful Russian coastline and volcanoes. The picture below shows one, Mt. Kronotsky which is sometimes referred to as Russia's Mt. Fuji due to its symmetrical shape.

The evening entertainment was Ryan Ahern, a terrific pianist from Las Vegas. Next was Al Trullijo's excellent Evening Insight presentation on echolocation of whales & dolphins. Afterwards we watched an old Sean Connery movie, The Russia House.

Later on at 11:30 local time we saw what seemed to be volcanic activity from a distant hill. It's on the right in the picture.

Today our passports were collected for an early inspection by the Russian immigration personnel. The ship arrives at 6am and supposedly we get them back by 9am. And we gain another hour tonight.