Saturday, October 29 –At Sea

There was a little rock-n-roll last night, just enough to lull us back to sleep when we got up in the middle of the night.  Seas had been much rougher as we left port but had calmed by dinner last night.  The overnight seas were just more of the same.  Skies are grey and cloudy, and there is a chance of rain.  It is not good weather for walking the deck. 

We ate breakfast in the MDR rather than the Lido buffet.  It is a much more refined atmosphere if not truly elegant.  The waitstaff is still getting its collective act together, so there were some lulls as we waited to order and then receive our food.  We were pleased that, strictly by chance, our breakfast server was Roy, our regular dinner steward.   MA was able to order her much-sought-after egg white omelet with goat cheese and basil.  She fought with the kitchen for what seemed like weeks on the World cruise to get this even though it was on the menu; often, it would appear with spinach instead of basil [well, it’s green, isn’t it?].  After breakfast, we returned to the room to read the New York Times before heading to the “showroom” to hear the guest lecturer.

We attended this morning’s lecture for two reasons.  First, we were curious about the topic and second, we wanted to “size up” the lecturer.  We’ll start with the speaker and our interest in him first.

Our friend from previous cruises, Kate Ross, was supposed to lecture on the first half of the cruise but, for complicated reasons, was not able to.  We have attended her presentations on other ships and enjoyed them very much.  Kate was supposed to join us for lunch in Florence later in the voyage.  Still, we promised Kate that we would check out the competition. 

Kate told us that HAL wanted speakers to address “destination-oriented” topics, so we couldn’t understand why today’s talk was on the extinction of the dinosaurs.  It was interesting but seemed geared to a more knowledgeable audience, with lots of scientific jargon around.  We soon discovered that this was not the first lecture in the series, and the speaker kept referring to information he had presented earlier.  There were lots of slides shown as he wandered around the stage and the pace of presentation was reminiscent of Connections programs with lots of cause and effect scenarios.  It will be interesting to see if any of his lectures are germane to this itinerary.

Background on the cruise: We are taking a 42-day cruise from Ft. Lauderdale to Ft. Lauderdale by way of Athens.  However, there are passengers who boarded the Rotterdam in Boston for a 48-day voyage and New York for a 45-day trip.  There are even a few who embarked for a Montreal-Boston segment and stayed aboard for the Not-So-Grand Med.

We were not hungry for lunch after having a late breakfast, so we relaxed in the room and worked on the NYT puzzle until it was time for Team Trivia.  We had decided that we would play as a team of 2 rather than joining complete strangers to make a team of 6.  There were others who were doing the same thing, so there was no problem.  TT was chaotic, though, because the Cruise Critic group [which we are ignoring] had created teams from members who signed up.  One woman, the self-appointed Mistress of Ceremonies for this and other activities, was going around trying to figure out who belonged with whom.  She added to her own confusion by assigning non-CC people to teams only to have to kick them off because they were not members.  We sat and watched the mayhem and shook our heads.  As for the game itself, we had fun if not acumen.

While our health is fine, we went for SCANs this.  For neophytes, a SCAN is a OTSenior Citizen Afternoon Nap.  Once we dragged ourselves back to life, we dressed for tonight’s Gala Night.  Gala Night has replaced Formal Night probably because people weren’t dressing anyway.  Still, D looked like a Swiss banker in his tuxedo and MA was all sparkly in black.  The highlight at dinner was the delivery of the tempura veggies.  Our waiter Roy promised that tomorrow he will bring the teriyaki sauce which was missing tonight.  Life is good.

And so, back to the cabin where MA caught up on Facebook and D caught up the journal.

TOMORROW – Another Sea Day