DAY 25— January 28, 2017 — Cruising the North Pacific to the MARSHALL ISLANDS

Celebrating Chinese New Year today with special decorations and cooking classes.

And for some reason, we are also celebrating Spam, the miracle food that was created to feed the troops in the Pacific in WWII and has remained wildly popular in Polynesia and Micronesia.  You can get SPAM in just about any flavor now and it even has become a flavor of its own.  Yum. 

DAY 26— January 29, 2017 — Cruising the North Pacific to the MARSHALL ISLANDS

Ron and I spend the afternoon with the ship’s popular and amusing Cellar Master, Jacques, learning how he chooses food and wine pairings for this voyage.   The program included some appetizer samples to try with an ample pouring of the Amsterdam’s best 3 buck champagne. There were no tastings of the wines he was discussing.  But, then again, it was a free event.  And it was fun.  There is little pompousness surrounding the wine program on this cruise.

The NFL Pro Bowl was televised at 3:00 pm with hardly a single guest noticing it. 

We have one of the voyage’s special theme Gala nights tonight, featuring the Black and Silver Ball following dinner.   It turned out to be a large, lively party with hundreds of attendees and the wonderful Amsterdam orchestra providing the dance music.  There is quite a ballroom dance contingent on this cruise and they partied (almost) like they were young again.

Day ??? — January 30, 2017 — Cruising the North Pacific to the MARSHALL ISLANDS

This day literally disappears in preparation for crossing the International Date Line.

DAY 27— January 31, 2017 — Crossing the INTERNATIONAL DATELINE

On this world cruise we will receive 24 notices to set our clocks FORWARD an hour so we can stay current with the time zones we are passing through.  Today, we received a notice that the ship’s clocks would be turned FORWARD 23 hours as we passed from the Eastern Hemisphere to the Western Hemisphere.

The International Dateline has no force in international law, it is simply a matter of convenience for travelers circumnavigating the globe.   It was drawn by the British Admiralty in 1921.  Magellan’s crew was the first to realize they came back home one day earlier than they thought had passed on their voyage.  Jules Verne capitalized on this mysterious time travel when writing about Phileas Fogg in his attempt to race around the world in 80 days.  Fogg thought it took him 81 days and was surprised to learn that he had lost a day along the way, enabling him to actually win the bet.

The International Dateline is also not straight.  It wiggles around a bit to accommodate the political and economic alignments of the various countries affected.  We crossed it on

January 31st at 7:47 pm

11°17.2’N

179°59.9’E