First meal in the new dining room

It was an exciting occasion for all onboard this week when the newly refurbished dining room opened its doors for the first time. Apart from cabins, this is the first place on the ship that is really finished and it looks great.

All the families were given the opportunity to choose where they would like their table to be. We decided to stay in the same area as we have sat for the past 5 months.

We all put on our Sunday best and wiped our feet carefully as we came onto the newly laid carpet. The head of the catering team even ushered us in using Kara's Tinkerbell wand!

The galley did us proud and prepared a beautiful dinner that was served at the tables. Normally we collect our food from the serving counters. Even the new coffee and drinks machine arrived earlier in the day and was installed for the occasion.

While we ate, we were serenaded by the Logos Hope's version of Norah Jones.



It is just such a delight to be walking on carpet and sitting and nice new tables instead of the chipboard or scratched up ones that we have used for the past 8 months.

Another source of excitement this week was seeing the new furniture getting fitted in the school. This is of particular interest because much of it was paid for by donations given by our church in Edinburgh. It is great to see the kids getting proper desks, lockers and other furniture for their school.

The only real let down this week was last nights football result when Liverpool lost in the Champions League semi final to Chelsea. Ah well, there's always next year.

We are sailing.

Well some 2 1/2 years after first being asked to join the Logos Hope, and 10 months after leaving home, we finally got to sail on the Logos Hope this Saturday.

Now some will say that moving berth some half a mile up the river and having to be towed the whole way by tugs because you can't use your main engines, is not sailing the ship. Don't listen to them. For those of us who have waited so long to sail, the mooring lines were let go, the ship moved out into the middle of the waterway and we moved to another place. That is sailing!

Kiel is an increasingly popular crusie terminal and several cruise ships have started to call here in the past 2 weeks. As more come, the berth that we have occupied since November is needed.

So 5 months to the day since Logos Hope berthed at Ostseekai, we sailed up the river to our new temporary home of Bolhornkai.

It was a good opportunity for many of the deck crew who have never had to work at a mooring station to practice - they will get a few more goes in the coming weeks as we have to move twice more before the ship goes to drydock at the end of May.

So we enjoyed our short voyage up on our balcony deck and now we are nearer the center of the town and the railway station.

This weekend it was a great encouragement to have my boss, Mark Knight on board and to spend some quality time discussing many issues about the ships and Corporate Services. Then today we have had the privilege of having George Verwer, founder of OM, visiting the ship.

It is always such an encouragement to hear George speak and share about his life.

The kids are off school for a couple of days this week and much of the new school furniture is being installed. - Pictures to follow.