At Sea - January 19

Sea Day

Ahhhh sea day! The most relaxing days of cruising. The clocks were moved forward one hour last night so sleeping in until 9 am is justified. The roll call is set up for 10 am and the turnout is great! It was nice to put a face to a name and many officers attended.

Checked in with the Captain Circle Host Peter to see what happened to our Elite Lounge invite and menu for the cruise. No one has received one from our group, so something is up. He is going to look into it. We also invited him to the sailaway tomorrow in St. Thomas, we are getting together for wine to say good bye to St. Thomas.

The Matre’D has arranged for us to be able to make reservations in the dining room and when we return to the cabin Ivan has phoned too see if we would like a reservation tonight, sure I say, he then says 6 pm or 8 pm, I said neither we would like 7 pm, he said he can’t do that time the best he could do is 7:30. We take that and arrange a table for six, but I have a feeling we will just opt for no reservations in the future because for us having a set schedule is something with live by every day in our job and something we try and stay away from on vacation. But it was very nice of them to offer, and I will thank Nicola the Maitre d’hotel for doing it.

There just was a knock at the door, with chocolate covered strawberries a gift from the Maitre d’hotel Nicola, ahhh another reason to thank him. Since we are meeting friends for some champagne at the Outrigger before dinner we will bring them to share.

The poor cruise Director Tim is really ill, poor guy but Ben the Deputy Cruise Director is stepping in and doing a great job. It is nice to see him again, he was on the Grand with us two years ago and it was nice to catch up with him and give him a hard time about still being engaged to his girlfriend from Argentina.

Martini demo in atrium

Tonight’s dinner I have been told is Caribbean night. There is a Comedy Juggler called Chuck Gunter performing in Explorer’s Lounge and a Comedian by the name of Rodney Johnson in the Princess Theater (who we will probably see). Also tonight is the 50’s Sock Hop Dance Party with the band Phoenix Rising.

Movies on board: Easy A, Wall Street, Switch, Knight and Day, Killers and Christina Aguilera in Concert.

We arranged to meet with friends in Skywalkers for some drinks – drink special for Platinum Elite was the Chairman of the Board. But we still have not received a menu for the lounge.

We went down to the Davinci dining room for our reservation and Francesco the Matre D’ took great care of us assigning us to a table in Audrey (from the South Africa) took great care of us. The menu was Caribbean, not our favorite but we didn’t starve. I had the pineapple appetizer and the steak fajitas and the sorbet for dessert. Bernie had the cold pear soup, Caesar salad, and the pasta – penne with mussels (appetizer size) and the key lime pie for dessert. Francesco checked in a few times and offered us this table for the remainder of the cruise if we wanted. We thanked him and said we would like that but our table agreed that it wasn’t set in stone and if someone didn’t want to make it that was okay too. We’ve arranged for escargot for tonight’s dinner and Francesco is also going to bring a nice tomato mozzarella salad too. Great now I am hungry again.

After dinner we just wandered, there wasn’t too many things scheduled that we were interested in. The 50’s sock hop was happening in Club Fusion and we stopped in and danced a song or two. We walked the Promenade Deck and then chatted with some of the staff, photographer and the stores staff.

We were back in the room around 10:30 and watched a movie and were fast asleep.