Sea Days 6-9

Day 6 started like any other.  A late wake up followed by a lazy day in bed.  At 9 am as usual, Ray came on PA system and told a bit of a joke "It’s busy out there, 2 ships and possibly a bird. Today’s lecture is on Timur a place we are not going to anymore, but good to listen to. Come on up to Horizons, an excellent vantage point if the bird comes back."  This of course made us laugh.  

I decided to go to the Chef’s cooking lesson at 11:15.  Today they made pizza dough and Duck with watermelon salad-asian style.  That night there was a pizza night using the dough that was demonstrated today.  We had dinner as usual in the dining room.  

At the midday announcements, Ray said "I was wrong about the bird, it was just a plastic bag in the ocean. Tonight just a reminder we have drinks in horizons, martini, and the insignia lounge I know I’ll be having one because we are still on our way to Los Angeles."

We again had a lazy afternoon in the room.  The waves were high and the boat was rocking all day.  I had to take the seasickness tablets and ate a lot of ginger. 

Once again, before dinner there were free drinks!  We went down and had one before dinner and then went into the dining room.  We finished our evening watching Mutiny on the Bounty.

Day 7 started out with me writing a letter to our room steward.  I told him we greatly appreciated his services, that we weren’t sick, and are on our forth honeymoon so he didn’t need to call and see if we wanted the room cleaned if the do not disturb sign was up.  When we saw him as we were heading to dinner he told us he appreciated the note and would pay attention to it. 

At 9:30 I went to a class on how to tie a saree.  I have many of them from Bali and Thailand, but have never used them for anything other than a skirt. I have now got an entire wardrobe I didn’t know I had before.

After lunch we played cards again and won.  We went back to the room after and finished watching the movie we had started the night before.  As usual, I fell asleep during it.  

Once more there were free drinks.  This time we went to a reception with a friend and listened to some music.  I simply love the sound of violins and this was as beautiful as any I've heard.

When it was done, we decided to try the Red Ginger night in the Terrace Café.  My opinion on this meal is very different from most of the guests on the cruise.  I did not like it.  The panic shrimp, while it tasted good, was just too oily as was the tempura.  They left the tempura sit in a pan on a banana leaf and that just made it worse.  The small shrimp chips were uncooked in places, but with as many as they are cooking at one time, this was to be expected.  I’m sure it is much better if served as individual meals rather than buffet style.  My problem is I have been spoiled by authentic Asian food and am not used the the American (or whatever nationality) version of it.  

We were sitting across from a crew member and were discussing the upcoming stops in Spain. We are really looking forward to it.  But I also discovered that even the staff on the cruise are reading my blog.  This puts pressure on me to decide between keeping my integrity and being honest about what I think, or to be polite and say nothing negative. Integrity won out as you could tell by my experience with the dinner. 

When we returned to the room we were told to move our clocks ahead an hour.  We are now back on LA time.  Land will be soon. We started to watch Caine mutiny as we fell asleep to smooth seas. 

When we awoke on day 8 the seas were smooth seas.  The sunlight was glistening off the water for one of the most beautiful wake ups I’ve had on the ship so far.  This day was yet another lazy one for us.  Once more we stayed in the room and did nothing much more than just watch tv and play games or do puzzles. 

The day was uneventful until 6:30.  At this time we went back to the Insignia lounge for more music and yet another round of drinks.  The amount of alcohol given out on this cruise is astounding.  I’m sure it was done to stop a passenger revolt. 

This evening we joined the ATW host and hostess and another couple for dinner.  When we sat down we were told they have the reputation of being the loudest table in the dining room.  I don’t think we were. While we enjoyed the conversations, everyone at the table was in a more serious mood I guess.  

Tonight I had three dishes that I simply loved.  The first is caviar on a bed of smashed potatoes.  I mean, you can’t go wrong with caviar can you?  I must say though, I think the ship is being a bit stingy with the caviar.  We have more at home in one meal than we have had on the cruise so far. And to think that cruise ships are the biggest consumers of caviar.  Apparently our ship didn’t get the memo.  

The second dish was a porcini and crouton soup with chunks of foie gras.  Again, you can’t go wrong with foie gras and the porcini soup was divine.  

The final dish was a ricotta and spinach cannelloni with mozzarella and a tomato sauce.  Amazing! I was served two tubes and managed to finish one.  Originally I was going to have a loaded baked potato for my main but changed my mind at the last minute.  I am so glad I did.  

The best part of the evening?  Meeting new people and setting up a diving group.  We are going 'round the world with these folks and they like to dive too.  So this is perfect.  We now have a big enough group to hire a boat to ourselves.  I’d like to thank Carolyn and Paul for helping to set this up for us. 

When we retired to our room we watched the rest of the Cain Mutiny and slept soundly.

On our final sea day we woke at 8:110 am.  This is a long lie in for us. Once we woke, I got us up and dressed quickly.  We needed to go take the COVID test again.  Ray came on and reported that "during the last cruise there were zero cases of COVID and he expected zero cases this time because-well-we haven’t been anywhere".  He also reminded us that "at 2pm the doors would open to turn in the Big O points for stuff you will never use the rest of your life".  For the first time, I understood George’s laughing.  Today the young man swabbing my nose tickled it.  He didn’t shove it up into my brain like the I had had the last few times.  

When I awoke, I looked out of the veranda doors at the sea-last night I left the curtains open so I could see the sea when I awoke.  It was beautiful. The seas were made of glass and with the sun glistening off the water I had this vision of gemstones reflecting back at me. I looked on the tv and saw that we were traveling at 12 knots.  (13.8 MPH for those non-seamen out there)

For quite a while today the internet didn’t work.  It was fine. We were watching the Olympics.  What is it about curling?  I love that sport. I mean, you have to wonder, who came up with the idea of throwing a rock across the ice and getting it to move by sweeping the ice in front of it.  That must have been one long dull winter when that game was invented. Of course I had to go look it up on google and it really is an interesting sport. Like golf, it began in Scotland. That must be why I like it?!?

We had lunch at the Terrace Café as usual and ended our afternoon with another game of Hand, Knee and, Foot.  During lunch I saw a ship out in the water-there are more and more showing up now as we get closer to land-that was going to fall off the earth.  The sea is so flat, when I saw that ship heading head first over the edge, I worried about it. You can just barely see it in the distance.

At 5 pm Ray came on with an early "bing bong" to tell us that once again we had no new cases.  This is very pleasing to hear. I’m afraid it won’t last when we get new people on board and the company lifts the mandatory masking. I know there are passengers on the ship who look forward to that, I don’t. I will still wear my mask when in busy places and off shore.  One can not be too careful.  

We spent the afternoon watching curling, the snowboarding and yet more curling.  Our dinner was at 7:30 in the Polo Grill. It was also very good.  George and I both ordered  the 4 oz filet.  I still couldn’t finish it, but boy was it good.  Tonight our bread basket had a tail in it and like the dutiful wife I am, I gave it to George.  The waiter brought us two more tails for later.  After we finished, we returned to our room to have dessert in bed while watching the US v. Canada Ice Hockey game.

Tomorrow morning we awake early to clear immigration and then it’s off to visit with a good friend in Los Angeles.  

Until my next update, Happy Puzzling and I hope you recover your land legs quickly.