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There are 2-3 at balconies with passengers observing the crossing.

The coast of Africa.

We are crossing the Strait of Gibraltar. The Rock is not lit up, but its ghostly outline is unmistakable.

The movies playing on the stateroom television are dreadfully old. So far (of what I have seen) there was: 1. Chariots of Fire (1981) shown last night 2. My Cousin Vinny (1992) shown last night 3. The Entity (1982) showing now It's like Celebrity bought a bunch of VHS tapes from a garage sale at a great price of course.

You are correct. Constellation is an M class ship just like Infinity. In fact Constellation is the youngest of the M class ships while Infinity is the second oldest. As far as my particular experience with walking around Rome and taking the train between Rome and Ostia, we felt very safe. It seemed to be overrun with tourists like us. Our guides did warn us about pickpockets, which worried me because I was carrying a DSLR around my neck during the whole time in Rome.

So when I went to get a pen from Guest Relations, they gave me a cellophane wrapped pen whose outer shell was made of cardboard. And then I found evidence of Celebrity cutting corners on this trip. It was with their playing cards, literally! The playing cards are now round. The woman at Guest Relations giggled at me when she handed me the playing cards. I mumbled something about needing to check out the casino.

I went down to Guest Relations to get an envelope (for the slot pull list for guysdolls66), a pen (with which to address the envelope), and playing cards (for Marcia). When I called for the elevator to go down to Deck 3, the door opened and there were 4 masked people in there--all of them officers. So after exchanging pleasantries, I asked them if any of them knew when we would be passing through the Strait of Gibraltar tomorrow. One of them said "the Captain said 5 o'clock" as if I had not been paying attention in class.

Oh, I forgot about that. Was planning on sleeping in. Hmmmm. I think I will set an alarm.

8166. The starboard corner FV on Deck 8. I took several photos as we entered the cabin for the first time. I will post them at a later time and I will tag you.

We left Cartagena under sunny skies. I had a chance to talk to our balcony neighbors ( @biggerboat47) for a few minutes before my wife and I headed off to dinner. We are now making our way to the Azores (Ponta Delgada) which involves two sea days and two favorable clock changes.

About half an hour ago a medical emergency was called out over the PA system (star code) while we were finishing dinner. The location for the call was port side Deck 5. Hope everything is ok. Meanwhile on the starboard side, we were treated to this:

Wayne, I meant where you were seated. So, Cellar Masters. Thanks for clarifying. See you they're tomorrow at 5pm. You are not required to wear your trademark Yorkshire rose shirt for identification.

I like that feature, too! It's from Speedtest by Ookla

Perfect. So I can get indigestion after dinner watching the game at 7pm ship time.

Waiting patiently to go ashore

Cartagena port information in the Celebrity Today newsletter:

We are pulling into Cartagena, Spain now.

@Tee & Chilli, For comparison, here are the onboard connection speeds I measured on our last two cruises. The Jan 2020 readings were from Solstice while we were sailing on the Tasman Sea toward Sydney. The Jan 2019 readings were from Reflection while she was sailing in the Caribbean. The reading at the very top of the table in the screenshot was taken at an airport lounge.

@Tee & Chilli, The internet connection is "very slow" and, according to the Celebrity newsletter, is about to get slower during the mid Atlantic Ocean stage of our cruise. Having said that, the internet is currently functional which is the good news although my needs are not large. I can attach photos to my Cruise Critic posts and include photos with emails/texts to my family. Most importantly, we are able to see photos of our dog, Daisy, sent by our dog sitter. I also can place voice calls through FaceTime. I haven't tried video calls nor video streaming yet. We have the Premium Wi-Fi package from the start of this cruise so I cannot comment about Standard Wi-Fi performance. I ran a speed test just a while ago for you to see the performance data.

I have not located the hardcopy menu in our stateroom. I had presumed that it was a Covid casualty and was removed like I have found with many hotel rooms that I have stayed in.

Yes, you are right. The room service page on the app does indeed show the phone number. Thank you.

A few random thoughts: 1. Angeline, our stateroom attendant, did not have our room made up for us after we returned from dinner tonight and last night. She apologized and said that she didn't realize that we had early seating until now. So we should be good. 2. Last night was Evening Chic. Knowing that there is a recurring question on this CruiseCritic board about how many people actually dress up, I counted the number of males wearing suits that I could see from our table in the MSE. The answer was 18 out of 60 (including me who was in a suit). So 30%. One data point. Early Seating. 3. I've been reading about how long room service can take. We've called room service twice. Once for a late lunch after we got back from our flat tire shore excursion at Toulon (45 min turnaround time). Another time was tonight when we ordered dessert (49 min turnaround time). There is no way to order room service using our stateroom television. None of the short cut buttons on our stateroom telephone go to room service. You have to know to dial "52". After dialing there was no hold time before a live person answered. 4. NFL football games were shown on our stateroom television. The big problem for me was that my Steelers (@ Dolphins) had a Sunday night game. Normally a good thing because it guarantees I can watch them at home, playing on Sunday evening was not a good thing on this cruise because it meant that the game started at 1:30 am since we're in Europe and so I couldn't watch it. It didn't matter because they lost anyway. It's going to be a long season.

Thank you. Our CD is Tim Bolton who I have yet to see because we've been hermits on board so far.

A couple photos from the pier as we got back on Constellation today. Seeing the fresh food supplies being loaded at Palma made me wonder how well the food holds up during our six straight days at sea.

During the end of our tour of the city of Palma, our guide introduced us to an impressive olive tree that was 750 years old.