June 1st – 30 years to the day since our first date…
Although the clock went back an hour last night, we managed to sleep a bit later than normal. After a hearty cooked breakfast yesterday, back to a light breakfast of two waffles and fruit today. (Plus maple syrup and a dollop of fresh cream.)
With a 10am trivia (no win) followed at 11am by a Seafarers (Cruise Critic} meet and greet. This time, the senior staff did attend, including the Captain, William Kent.
Love his dry sense of humour. Commenting on world cruises and including the Baltic’s next year, he shrugged his shoulders and said that it would probably be very foggy and the passengers wouldn’t see anything - and he’d probably have no idea where they were anyway!
As mentioned in the blog yesterday, Angus and Cynthia hosted their own meet and greet - but we missed it as we were losing at trivia.
We grabbed a coffee from the ice creamery and sat and enjoyed being outside before heading back to the cabin to keep the blog up to date and to see if there were any important emails. A fair few spam messages on the server as usual, but not too much else.
Back down to deck 7 for round 2 of our “Cruise Long World Trivia”. John was just finishing off the dance class. (see pic)
He gets off in Dubai and we believe ACD Sarah who takes the morning Zumba may be taking over the class. I think she knows already that progressive dances and a minimal learning time are putting people off, so we’ll just have to see. If she does a good job we’ll stick around and really support her, as will Kevin, as she is a nice lass and deserves the support.
We are in about equal tenth place after round one of the cruise long trivia and the chances are we won’t move up the table after round 2, given that the bonus question was ‘How many volcanoes are there in the world.’ As that was worth 5 points, whoever gets that, rockets up the table.
Once again, this raised several issues. Active? Dormant? Above sea level? We’ll just have to wait and see. (Seems we were only about 600% out.)
We called in at the vista for another game show, just to watch. “Passenger Feud”. Weird name, dumb game… Based on the common answers in a survey. Judging by the most popular answers, that survey must have been done in the USA.
Back again not much later for the normal afternoon trivia where a couple of American’s joined us along with A & T. Seems that a tax accountant and a retired teacher of social studies and history from Minnesota, couldn’t remember the name of the children’s show, “The Teletubbies” either… We had a collective brain fade.
Needless to say, our #2 afternoon team didn’t win either.
The highlight for the day was probably the Indian meal in the dining room. Paula and I managed the beef jalfraizie, tandoori chicken and also the prawns, between us, but only the beef really had enough sauce, which was a shame. We should have asked for more.
The late show was another performer we had seen before – twice, Danny McMaster, a comedy impressionist, with a slide show backing and a very good one too. Apparently several people either walked out early or would have done if they’d been nearer the aisles, but we thoroughly enjoyed it, though I am not sure that we’d watch it again, if he doesn’t update his act. I’m constantly surprised at these regular cruise ship performers who don’t seem to realise that they need to update their acts at least every six months. This was a 100% repeat of the two previous times we have seen him.
June 2nd was very similar to June 1st of course – meaning that we didn’t win trivia - though we were only a point behind the winners in the morning. I wasn’t sure what a farmer would do with a mangel-wurzel, feed it to the animals or stand it in a field to scare the birds (remember Wurzel Gummidge?). We (I!) took the wrong option.
Just for a change, there was an afternoon tea dance with the duo providing the music. The floor generally wasn’t too crowded so we managed a dance or three - and dance instructor John took Paula for a spin. I think Paula and I have a better rumba routine.
Somewhat surprisingly, given that it was an Indian meal last night, we had a Thai meal. The two curries – vegetable and a green chicken curry, were quite mild, but very nice.
Oana, our head waiter heard me say “No Thank You” to our waiter Robert when he came to collect the dessert orders.
“That doesn’t appear on the menu Robert!” Consulting the menu, she shook her head. ”Definitely, there is no, ‘No thank you’, on the menu.
Sure enough, a few minutes later, she pulled the usual Princess trick and brought out a plate, with “No Thank You!” written in chocolate sauce.
I ate the “No”, and waved the plate, just showing the “Thank you” when she next went past…
It was bit chilly in the theatre just before the show and Alec from Tasmania was feeling the cold, so much to amusement of those around him, his lovely wife Eileen lent him her shawl! (see pic) He then disappeared to the cabin and came back proudly wearing his expensive NZ possum and merino sweater - and also clutching a $10 Chinese made sweatshirt just in case I was cold. So thoughtful.
The show was Kiwi Russell Hamilton again. (see pic) Another top class performance from this most likeable of performers, who really engages the audience. Well worth a 9/10.
More sea days ahead now and thanks for the comments and emails – and even comments from people on the ship who are reading the blog.
Apologies for the layout and any typos, but with a slow internet, corrections and improving the layout takes too long.
Tip
For those intending to do an on board blog with pics, in the future, you need to copy your original camera pics and shrink the copies then attach the copies. Uploading a 4mb pic straight from your camera is a bit pointless and will take rather longer than it takes to upload this blog and read the emails on line. These pics have been shrunk to about 70kb or less.
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