At sea 10.23.11

This cruise has had nine ‘at sea’ days, more than we have ever had before.  So, we thought we would give some insight into what happens onboard, not just what happens ashore.

Food onboard is always good, always available.  Well, less available than in past years.  The buffet is now open only from 5am until midnight.  24/7 was the rule in the past.  Besides the buffet, there are six restaurants on the ship.  For dinner we have early seating in the Provence dining room at 5:30 and there is also a late seating at 7:45.  The Bordeaux dining room has anytime dining from 5:30 until 10:00 for those that do not like scheduled dinner times.  We prefer the early seating so that we can go to a show after dinner and bed at a reasonable time.  Our headwaiter, Erno from Romania, brings the menus for the following day’s lunch and dinner each night so that the chef can make John’s meals without salt.  This works really well.

Additionally there is the Bayou Café & Steakhouse, and Sabatini’s, both of which have an additional charge for dinner.  The Bayou also has three English Pub lunch days, but is usually very crowded.    There is also a grill with burgers and dogs, a pizzeria, a coffee and pastries and sandwich venue called La Patisserie.  There is an ice cream bar as well.  No wonder so many passengers gain weight on cruises!

There is often entertainment in the atrium and on pool decks.  In the atrium there has been a good Dixieland band, a pianist, solo guitarist, a duo with violin and bass, and others.  There are several outside movies a day out by the pool.  The huge screen has a really good picture, even on bright sunny days.

Activities are ongoing from morning to night.  There are usually two, often three, trivia contests daily.  We have been winners (twice) but usually finish 2^nd to 4^th.  We team up with three Brits, but none of us are good with movies and that costs us quite often.  An ideal team would have Brits, Canadians, Aussies and us, but teams are limited to six persons. 

There are several art auctions each cruise and we attend some.  We have purchased art in the past.  There have been several basic Spanish classes.  “Hello”, “how much”, “please”, “thanks”, “don’t shoot, I have no money” and more.  There is a casino and boutiques, jewelry, clothing, liquor, cosmetics, and sundries.  These are open when the ship is at sea.  There are culinary demonstrations, craft classes such as card making, wine tastings, dance classes, cocktail parties with the Captain and movies in the theater.

Lectures and port and shopping talks are on a daily basis.  We usually attend the shopping lectures and the port lectures, between which we usually have a pretty good idea of what we want to do in the port.  We usually have selected our excursions from home.  The Panama Canal lectures were very good, with lots of historical data.  There is also a lecturer on board that was part of NASA during the Apollo era of US space travel and gave several good talks.  There was a lecture that gave us a pretty good idea of how GPS devices work and a bit of their history.  There is usually a “Future Cruises” talk that is basically a selling attempt, but this time we attended the one on Australia, New Zealand & South Pacific that got us interested in a long cruise around Australia and New Zealand.  We are looking into it.

We don’t go to all of the evening show, but here are some that we saw on this trip.  The list will give an idea of the variety that the cruise ship offers.  We saw a great production show called “On the Bayou” and another called “What a Swell Party”.  “On the Bayou” was one of the best we have seen.  It is really amazing the quality of shows onboard.  We have seen two comedians, Scott Wyler and Jim McDonald, on different days.  Gaetano the illusionist was great as usual.  He is a cruise ship regular that we have seen several times.  Colleen stayed up last night to see a late entertainment show by the ship’s crew.  Tonight we will see a ‘comedy hypnotist’.  The ships often have a ventriloquist, but there hasn’t been one yet.  Tomorrow night will be the last chance.  Two of our tablemates have been on the ship the 15 days before our cruise and there was a ventriloquist on the first leg, so it might happen.

Of course, there is television, though the number of channels is limited.  There is international CNN and ESPN and ESPN2.  The Nancy Grace channel, HLN, is unfortunately on and a number of movie channels as well.

There is a cocktail waitress in the Explorers Lounge where the Trivia contests are held that is a favorite.  She brings John a Coke with no straw when she sees him.  Once she placed one on the table of our Trivia team before we even arrived.  The staff always tries to please, but some go beyond the norm and she is one.

The Dixieland band on the ship from one or two levels higher up in the Atrium.

These are our Trivia partners with the fantastic prizes we won today.  Key chains with flashlights!  A great trio to play with.

John & Colleen