Wednesday, January 22, 2025

December 28, 2024 – At Sea – Pacific Ocean – Beautiful – 80F

Still not acclimated to the new time – up early again. This is the view from our porthole at 5:56 AM (yes, that time is correct).

The best news of this day was that, even though this is a sea day, I am not working.  

Pancakes and eggs this morning – Braulio, the super nice suit in the Windows Café saw the eggs and asked if there was any issue with the cottage cheese and sour cream. I told him I alternate that with eggs. I sat in the very first window seat near the coffee service area at the entrance. I got my own coffee and ordered the pancake and eggs. I got the timing right today. I also had a little bowl of frosted flakes and bran flakes with blueberries.  I was hungry this morning and the breakfast was perfect.  Even better, the Café was not crowded and the screaming lady, that buzzed over here from a Celebrity Ship, was gone and replaced by soft music. Breakfast as it should be on all ships.

Up to date at 9:10 AM CST.

I took my Iced Mocha Latte (a change up from my string of iced Café Americanos) to Deck 5.  The weather today is perfect – low humidity – a breeze – and smooth seas. 

We stayed there until lunch – today was Beyond Burger day – plus a Perino Beer (my first Italian entry on my beer travels).  

We ate inside because the veranda was very warm and there was no breeze.  What I don’t understand about the burger is that for some reason, they again put shredded black cabbage and a dollop of guacamole on the burger (I asked for grilled onions).  The burger was still good (I scrapped the stuff off) as were the onion rings. I also had some nachos with guacamole and salsa (the salsa is starting to go south) but I did like the baked nachos (better than the fried ones).

Some Cherry Gelato finished off the meal.

Back to Deck 5 – there is very little going on today. Chuck is the only speaker working today. Peter stopped by and told me he was scheduled to speak but his talk was taken off the schedule. It's all a mystery to me.

At 2:00 PM, I went to The Den to meet with Donald Harrison, who is a journalist for the San Diego Jewish World paper.  He likes to interview Jewish Speakers on cruise ships.  The interview went until about 3:14 PM and involved questions about my education, my career, my synagogue experiences, and most of all Christopher Columbus.  I shared what I knew about Columbus and I don’t know how Donald will frame that in his article.  It was fun.

Back to Deck 5.  The entertainment tuned out to be dolphins – the first marine life we’ve seen on these cruises.  There were a lot of them but only a few close enough to get a good picture.  You could also hear their vocalizations and it sounded just like you would expect it to sound.  I guess they were talking to each other.  We even saw a Brown Booby sitting on top of a dolphin. The dolphins were difficult to capture on my phone camera but it was quite a show. 











I finished “The Edge” – a little bit of trickery by David Baldacci in eventually revealing the bad guys.  I’ve read a lot of Baldacci books and this one had a different feel – didn’t even read like his other books.  It was OK and I’ll look for more books like this.

Tonight is “Taste of Morocco” in the Windows Café so we opted for The Patio (there was nothing available in the Dining Room either). We both had the salmon – I asked for peppercorns but they weren’t on the fish.  I also shared a baked potato with Ellen and had the corn on the cob (OK but very unusual).  Ellen had the sautéed mushrooms. The dinner was good but it’s a slow pace in that venue.  Darren and his family (I suppose) ate out there as well.  We have not liked the desserts in The Patio so we got some baklava and Greek Donut Holes and had them on the Veranda.

I decided to take a picture at dusk on Deck 5.  It came out nice.

Next stop was The Den.  We passed on the show – encore performance by Emilio Valle.  We were hoping for a little quiet before Bob came on with his set at 8:45 PM but the place was full and a constant chatter was going on.  Also, the loud jazz muzak didn’t help.  Bob did start on time and did a series of instrumentals and then some vocals – you could barely hear him above the noise of the crowd. The noise eventually got to us and we retreated to the room.

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