Thursday - Day 28 - Sea Day

Thursday was our last day of the cruise, and a sea day - a leisurely day to enjoy the ship and all it offers.

After breakfast, we joined "Coffee with Jai" during which he interviewed a few of the Nieuw Statendam team members. We learned about different jobs on the ship, the backgrounds of a few of the crew members, and why they have chosen to live and work on a ship.

Jai then went over to the World Stage where he presented "A City at Sea" - telling us about all parts of the ship that make this city at sea work.

They presented many "gee whiz" numbers -- here the head chef was sharing that 90 pallets of food are loaded at the beginning of the cruise, and just 2 pallets of waste remain by the end. (I think that the 90 pallets would be for a 7 day cruise, because the presentation was a pre-created thing done on each cruise, and I doubt they customize for each cruise length.)

Captain Timmers shared some about his and his team's responsibilities. The audience was eager to applaud him for all he did to allow us to see the solar eclipse.

At the end, Jai invited many other team members to come into the stage area -- along with pictures of many more on the screens.

The team members were filling the stage and the aisles and we were all standing and applauding.

When we were at lunch, members of the food and beverage staff came through the Lido Buffet singing -- we joined in clapping and waving our napkins over our heads: https://youtu.be/J-RkOhx0XSQ

When we went through the pool area earlier in the morning, we had seen many towel animals -- we returned to enjoy the "zoo" on our re-christened "Zoordam".

Pictures of many of the towel animals combined into a video: https://youtu.be/wJjxlLQhb0E

We ended the day getting most of our things packed up to have our suitcases out in the hallway by midnight.