April 14th

At Sea

I do need sea days to recuperate from shore days.

This one turned out to be fairly typical with us spending the morning in the Commodore Club watching us sail through the passing rainsqualls and attending lectures.

I had been looking forward to the talk on artwork and design aboard the great ocean liners, and although it was a good talk, she really didn’t present any novel information. What I did learn was that the new Royal Caribbean ships carry over 8,000 passengers. I don’t know how accurate this really is, but here I am thinking that our 2,000 passengers are a lot of people. I became very side tracked from her talk while I pondered how they got all of the passengers off the ship in tender ports, so she may have said something amazing, but my mind was elsewhere.

Later, when I walked by the line dancing class I was reminded of our driver yesterday who played Country and Western music in his taxi. I wondered if this was because he thought we were Americans, and this would be our obvious preference. Achy Breaky Heart would not, however, have been my first choice as we drove along the picture perfect tropical coastline. His assumption that we were from the US also reminded me of when we were in Dominica many years ago, and we were in a store that displayed a picture of the Queen on the wall. When the shop owner found out that despite our English accents we lived in America, she promptly turned the photo over to reveal a picture of Ronald Reagan. Trying to please everyone.

In the afternoon I tried to download the movie from my video camera to my external hard drive so I could start to work on editing it. I had succeeded with doing this with the video from our September safari, but could not get it to work today. I could download it to the external drive bypassing iMovie, but then I couldn’t work out how to edit it in iMovie. There isn’t enough space on my hard drive for me to download the whole movie to my computer. All in all it was very disappointing, especially as I had previously been able to do this, I am sure. All of a sudden the afternoon was gone, and I was no further along. At least I was able to make a back up of the movie, but if I can’t edit it, it’s kind of pointless. It was soooooo easy on my old computer. I hate the way that new and improved computers only make things more difficult.

All of a sudden I realized that the afternoon had gone, and the sun was setting. No time to walk around the Promenade Deck today alas.

Tonight was another formal night, and I decided to wear my black dress with the blingy bolero. It continues to shed sparkles wherever I go. I had really hoped that by now it would have stopped shedding. Still, if I get lost on the ship I will be able to follow the trail of sparkles back to our cabin.

Most of the Japanese guests have disembarked, so there wasn’t a kimono in sight. I do miss seeing them, and the miso soup and fixings that they had in the Lido. They do still have sushi, but no other sign of Japanese food alas. There must still be some Japanese guests on board though – I was offered a Japanese menu the other night by mistake. I wonder what culinary delights it offered. Or maybe it was just braised beef with Brussels sprouts in Japanese.

I don’t think anyone told the kitchen that it was a formal night as our menu, although very good, was not as special as it usually is on formal nights. Not a snail or lobster tail in sight. No soufflés alas, but there was a good steamed pudding and custard, the type we used to get at school. I still love all of those stodgy puddings.

There is a hosted table next to ours. They have a superior flower arrangement. I had planned to swap our rather pathetic one for theirs, but alas someone was already at the table when I got to the dining room, so I didn’t feel comfortable making the switch. Maybe I’ll do it tomorrow night if we get there early enough.

The hosted table is only occupied on formal nights, and I don’t know if it is because of the free flowing wine, or that the occupants are chosen for their talents of lively conversation, but it is always very noisy. We can hardly have a decent conversation at our table due to the noise, but it is fun eavesdropping on their lively discussions. It is looking very much like we will not be blessed with an invitation to dine with the staff on this voyage, there are only 2 more formal nights left ☹.

After dinner we went for drinks in the Commodore Club with an Australian couple, Iain and Jane, who Brian had met at the single malt tasting. They turned out to be great fun, and it was amazing how many experiences we shared in common. All of a sudden it was 1:30 AM, and they turned up the lights as a not so subtle hint that we should go back to our cabins. It’s been a while since we have been thrown out of the Commodore Club. It felt good.