Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Day 96: At sea

It was 2am last night (this morning) by the time we reached the end of that exciting national championship game (really, it was a great game), returned to the cabin and completed nighttime ablutions. I began seeing double midway through the 4th quarter (so tired was I), but refused to leave before the end. We've had three perfect days of football on MUTS. What would we do for fun tonight?

Oh, that's right. We're on a cruise. I almost forgot about that, what with all my excitement about football. ;-)  

One time while we're on the Emerald Princess, I'll post the following from Princess@Sea. It's a sea day's worth of activities and events...













Thank God today was a sea day, and we could sleep until we woke up naturally. That happened about 8am, and we made it to the DaVinci Dining Room in time for breakfast. It was nice to have G dine with me today, and he was thrilled that today's special entree was the minute steak with two fried eggs, hash brown potatoes and sautéed mushrooms, also known the cardiologist's beach house. I had my same egg white veggie omelet, and I am loving those. 


Suzan texted me that she was going to go to line dancing with Yazmin at 10:30am in Club Fusion, so I had time after breakfast to return to the cabin to take morning pills and search for the CD we had with a digital copy of our formal MTP photo on it. You might recall that we were so happy with our MTP picture for the Princess Patter while we were in French Polynesia that we actually had the file put on a CD just in case we were ever lucky enough to be #1 MTP again. (I pictured us 40 years from now finally having the opportunity to use that photo, and everyone commenting how good we look for being 100 years old). ;-)

Well, apparently neither of us thought we'd ever need that photo on these Caribbean cruises, because the CD is at home, probably next to the laptop, and not with us on the Emerald Princess. Since Captains Circle host Melissa told us last night that we will likely be the most traveled passengers next cruise and might want to have a photo taken tonight while we are formally dressed, I knew that today would involve a fair amount of primer and angled, blending and eye shadow brushes, as well as a bit more detail in styling my hair than standing under the vent in the ceiling of the midship elevator lobby on the Riviera Deck can allow. 

Luckily, line dancing with Yazmin took my mind off of all that primping that lay ahead. We Achy Breaky-ed, and then did another country line dance (the Bootstrap Boogie) and then danced to Play that Funky Music White Boy, which was a lot of fun. And then it all turned ugly as we had to split up with half of us playing the man and half the woman. Guess which one I was?  Just once in my life I'd like to be the woman in dances like this when I'm not with my husband. But when you're 5'10", I think your fate in these things is sealed.

Anyway, my first partner was Suzan and that was fine, but then the women started moving up in the circle, so I had a new partner, and then another new partner, and another, and I had to hold both hands with these strangers and when it was all over, when I should have been thinking how much fun I had, all I could think of is that I had to wash my hands, stat!  I'm a little OCD like that. 

I joined Suzan and Greg at the large table in Vines where Greg had been reading and we chatted almost until noon. I hadn't seen my husband since breakfast, so I returned to the cabin to find him and, around 1pm we went back to the DaVinci Dining Room for lunch (because it had been a respectable four hours since we had eaten breakfast). We had waiter Chayiut again, and assistant waiter Finley from the Philippines and lunch was a feast. I was already tired, not having gotten enough sleep last night, and that's when I let myself make bad food decisions, like the fritto misto (deep fried squid, shrimp, scallops and fish) and a glass of Gewurtztraminer and baba au rhum for dessert, also known as the cardiologist's second beach house. 


We decided to play hooky the rest of the afternoon (especially from the Grapevine wine tasting) and returned to the cabin for a two hour, deep, deep, under the covers kind of nap. The bed is so comfortable and our inside cabin is so dark and quiet that it was easy to do so. Luckily, I had set an alarm for 4pm, and then spent the next hour getting ready for a 5pm photo shoot. That is not easy work. 

Photos complete (we tried two different backdrops and countless poses to find one just good pic), we went to dinner and had a second, smaller feast (escargot and lobster for me) and one of the Norman Love chocolate desserts that we've only had once before, pistachio mousse on an almond paste and marzipan base, also known as the cardiologist's private island. 

Sunset from our dinner table


We went sooo early for the 8pm performance of production show Disco:  Blame it on the Boogie, but at least got the seats we wanted. That show has definitely grown on me, and I really liked it tonight. The singers are great and we love that dancer Igor, who we've seen on the Emerald Princess for years, is now the Company Performance Manager.  We had four production shows on this 10-night cruise- I Got the Music, Disco:  Blame it on the Boogie, What a Swell Party, and Magic to Do- and, despite our football commitments, managed to see three of them. 

The tail end of a great sunset and crescent moon as seen from the Promenade Deck

Back in the cabin, we changed out of our formal clothes and noted that, when we had written in something different on the Elite canapés for formal night (cookies), we got nothing. Hey, it was worth a try. Due to our two hour afternoon nap, we are able to stay up later and are at MUTS watching the 10pm showing of the movie The Intern, and it's a perfect end to our 'do not one darn thing' day. 

This is cruising at its best. :-)