A beautiful day at sea.
I used to have a great table in the Oceanview Café for breakfast but over the last week or so, another group of folks have commandeered my table. No matter how early I get there, they are already seated and chatting.
Today, I ventured over to the other side of the ship and found a similar seat on the Starboard side – it’s quieter over there and it was just me, the waves, and the rising sun. Perfect. I had two pancakes and a scrambled cheese omelet – wonderful – along with the absolutely perfect LavAzza Coffee.
I went up to the Aqua Spa Café to fix up my fourth talk – a perfect place to work – ocean view, new age music, and endless coffee.
It’s been four days since my last presentation but today I am scheduled for 11:30 AM in Celebrity Central for “Forensic Detectives: The Search for Jack the Ripper”. At 11:10 AM, there was already a lot of people in the theater. The attendance was SRO, with some people sitting on the floor. The problem was that people would come in, see that there were no seats, and leave. A shame. The talk took about 50 minutes due to some comments and interactions with the audience. The best talk and reaction of the cruise so far. (NOTE: While working on the talk earlier, I inadvertently deleted an important slide [the names of the five victims] – I made do but it was probably confusing for the audience). NOTE: Celebrity Central seating capacity is 208 so SRO audiences probably consist of about 220 folks.
By the way, the ship does great graphics in their adverts for lectures – a good example is the one for today’s talk. Neat, huh.
When we went to the Oceanview Café for lunch, we found it slammed – there simply aren’t enough seats for everyone at lunch (perhaps, the attendees from my talk all came up here to eat). We eventually found two seats. The café offered an interesting soup today – “Hot and Spicy Vegetable Soup”. It was as advertised but it was so good, I had two bowls. Today was also “Falafel Day” and four different types of falafel were offered – however, there was no pita bread and tahini. I tried the different types of chickpea balls along with a green salad. I will look for this soup on our next voyage on the Eclipse.
It was a windless day on Deck 5 so we found two deck chairs and spent the afternoon out there reading (and dozing off). In the water, I noticed this orange slick of organic material – don’t know what it is but we’ve seen it before – this was the largest slick to date. I checked into this and found that the Coast Guard said a similar material in the Mississippi River was algae.
Algae Slick
We ate an early dinner in the Moonlight Sonata Dining Room. I had the potato plantain soup off the veggie menu plus herb crusted haddock and spaghetti marinara (off the veggie menu). The pasta and soup were good but the fish was swapped for salmon.
Showtime tonight is the “Intimate Broadway Cabaret Concert”. We have seen this kind of show before on other ships – each singer or group of singers performs a show tune. Tonight’s show was a clear winner – I knew it would be when Charlotte (from the UK) and “I Want to Be Your Star” from Smash. I found the singer’s names – Charlotte (UK), Christine (Malta), and Ta-Ty (from Chicago); Caleb (Florida), Dan (Blackpool UK), and Elijah Avraham (really) (New Jersey). The numbers included “Bring Him Home” (sung by the guys) and “I Don’t Know How to Love Him/Maybe This Time/ On My Own” medley (sung by the girls), “This is the Moment” (done wonderfully by Caleb), and “Stand By Me” (Finale with everyone). Thoroughly enjoyable show.
Let Me Be Your Star
On My Own/I Don’t Know How to Love Him/Maybe This Time Medley
Finale – Stand By Me
After the show, we caught a little bit of the “Back Before Sunset” Party Band. The lead singer is terrific and the music is not that loud. We should have discovered them earlier in the cruise. Curious what their name means.
Back Before Sunset Band
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