February 25, 2025 – At Sea – Caribbean Sea – Mostly Sunny – 78F

Two straight sea days coming up – sounds great to me.

Up early – it’s raining outside but that probably won’t continue later on – tropical rain.

So for almost all of this cruise I have had the same breakfast routine – pancakes topped with cottage cheese and sour cream (one of the few ships I go on where these items are always available) and then topped with orange marmalade and strawberry jam (always available, too), a small scoop of delicious scrambled eggs (Celebrity does that better than most ships), a small biscuit, and two cups of Café Americano (coffee:water (1:1)) in to-go cups (the coffee stays hot longer and the cups are bigger than standard cups).  I also do two thing during breakfast – stare out at the sea (calming) 

and read a magazine (Smithsonian this time).  

I rarely finish a magazine on the cruise (I read a couple of pages a day).

My third talk – “Forensics and History: The Search for Jack the Ripper” – is back in Celebrity Central at 10 AM because the Captain is giving his navigational talk in the theater.  This is the first time that the Captain and I are scheduled at the same time.  One of the passengers told me (and maybe he was joking) that I was outdrawing the Captain.  In any event, it was SRO in Celebrity Central with many people leaving for lack of seats.  The audience – perhaps largely Canadian – was terrific – chiming in with comments and then staying around to chat for a few minutes after the talk.  It was a ton of fun.

After lunch, we went back to the Lawn Club; today, even though we did find seats in the shade again, it was still too warm to stay out there.  Our next option would be the Sky Lounge, which has nice seats, great views, and is generally quiet.  That worked out pretty well until Sameer and the Afternoon Trivia started.  Sameer is a pretty funny host but the trivia crowd is not a quiet one.  We did stay there until it was time to head down for dinner.

Dinner in the Oceanview Café was pretty typical.  They finally had Vegan Chili on the menu tonight but it was very different from the last time I had in on Eclipse.  No beans, onions in strands that were too sauteed.  I ate some and it was OK but very different.  Some pizza, which has improved since the cruise began.  Still staying away from iced tea in the PM.

Not going to the show tonight – “Rock City”.  Tonight, there will be an encore performance by “Shades of Buble” in the Grand Foyer at 7:30 PM.  We got down there early and set up two chairs with a nice view of the Foyer. First up was Kelly Rose and her introduction of Captain Morfis who thanked everyone for coming on this voyage and gave kudos to the hard working crew.  The senior officers were then introduced and got several rounds of applause.

The stage was then cleared for “Shades of Buble”.  Every thing was going OK until a bunch of unclear individuals set up camp standing right in front of us so we could not see the performers. We stayed for a little while and then decided that it was not really worth it so we went up the Café for some dessert and tea.  I did get a picture of the guys from the elevator.