Captain Fortezze, I've decided, is a master of understatement. :-( But at least it's sunny, and that allows people to be dispersed outside on the open decks. We have been shaking and shimmying all day.
It was also a very bouncy night, but it didn't keep us from sleeping well. I awoke first this morning and tried to do my morning thing and slip out without waking G but it didn't work. He said he'd join me in the DaVinci Dining Room for breakfast in about 15 minutes. For once, I was saying good morning to Awesome Ambrish before G did, and when G finally did appear, Awesome teased him about being too tangled in his sheets to be able to get out of bed. That's been an ongoing joke...G told Ambrish two days ago that if he heard G's name being announced by the Passenger Services Department as being missing, Ambrish should first look for him buried alive in bed. ;-)
Filip from Serbia in the International Cafe saw me standing in line to get my coffee, and told me there were donuts with sprinkles today. He knew I would want to take one to G at breakfast. There I was, with a plate with a donut on it in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, and my iPad squeezed against my body under my arm, starting to walk up the curved stone Piazza staircase to Deck 6 and the DaVinci Dining Room for breakfast when I overheard two people sitting at a table at the International Cafe say, "Heatherdowns, Byrne and Schneider Road," and I turned right around and went back down the stairs to meet these people who were talking about the neighborhood in Toledo where I'd grown up.
Sure enough, they knew the street where Mom had lived until just last May, but had gone to competitive Catholic schools of the ones which I had attended (Central Catholic, Mom). And they knew exactly where Mom was living now and commented on it's excellent reputation and we spent a few very enjoyable minutes talking about growing up in that area (they live in Sylvania now). Really, what were the odds of that encounter?
G joined me shortly in the DaVinci Dining Room, and I was an instant hero for bringing him a donut. We had orange segments, and I had a veggie egg white omelet and G had three boxes of Frosted Flakes (just another example of craving food he eats at home, I guess) and he bounced around the ship like Tigger for the rest of the morning.
I stopped into one of the shops on my way out of breakfast. I have not yet mentioned (but must remedy that now) that the perfume/makeup shop on board (I forget its name) sells Smashbox products. Smashbox! I went in there to ask if they have any waterproof eye liner (they do...Smashbox) and nearly hyperventilated when I saw the Smashbox display. I now have a shopping list for the first day of the cruise tomorrow...if I spend $100 I get 10% off plus the 10% off for being Elite. Smashbox is one brand that I can't find discounted at home (and our local Ulta doesn't allow their 20% off coupons to be applied to Smashbox products). So, listen to this deal...the Smashbox Photofinish primer is $36 each at home. I can get a 2-pack for $58 on the ship. They also have the contour kit ($44, I think) and the eye liner ($18). Less the two discounts. Woohoo! As you know, I am not a shopper for 'things' but love my consumables!!
G had picked up a copy of our onboard statement at the Passenger Services Desk, and I took a deep breath and sat down before I looked at it. We had just received a letter documenting the 'computer glitch' that removed $150 in credits from earlier cruises. We've also had the myriad of other issues we've had corrected. It's been a challenge, for sure, and I do advise any other people cruising a series of B2B cruises to keep an eye out back to their embarkation date for postdated discrepancies. But today's statement yielded no nasty surprises. Yay! I have to admit that the new system of maintaining running totals instead of cleanly cutting off each cruise at its end is not an improvement.
I then logged on WiFi to download today's mail and news. I receive such really wonderful emails from blog readers that keep me motivated towards the end of a cruising season, and I received one today, also asking for some clarification and suggesting a correction. First, when we were in Grand Turk last cruise with the Celebrity Constellation, and we went down to Governours Beach, I posted a photo of the Mega One Triton wreck with the cruise ship pier in the background. Since my waterproof camera had already stopped working, and we didn't want to leave our iPhones on the beach there while we swam, we didn't take a camera with us that day. That photo was taken during the taxi tour we'd had of Grand Turk nine days earlier. I posted it so you could see the wreck and also the proximity of Governours Beach to the cruise ships. Gregg noted that it didn't look like the Celebrity Constellation in the photo, but a Carnival ship, and he was exactly right.
And, just to clarify, harious isn't a typo. I know the word is hilarious. It's just that we have used the word harious since McGee first said it when he was two years old. Harious=Hilarious; Frying=Crying (Patch at age 2); Fuzzy water= club soda (G at age 32). I also know that I often use a semicolon when I should be using a comma. That is merely a function of typing this blog while lying in bed with my iPad sitting on my stomach. Four fingers of my left hand are used to support the iPad and my left thumb does all the typing for my left hand. I aim for the comma, and instead touch the semicolon just above it. When I go home and read over my blog entries from the prior winter, I try to correct those things. No matter how awkward it is to type on my iPad while lying down in bed, it's a huge improvement over using my iPhone as I did for several years. Instead of typing a post every night using two fingers, I use three fingers...my left thumb and the second and their fingers of my right hand. And I have a larger keyboard to do it on. It's been a wonderful change for me.
Things continued to get bouncier throughout the day. We went down to have just a small lunch (I had calamari and gazpacho), since we were having dinner tonight at S h a r e, and returned to the cabin, astonished at how much rougher it is back here than in the middle of the ship. There was a post on Cruise Critic asking about the noise in these cabins on the back of Riviera Deck from the Horizon Court Buffet just above us. There is no really noticeable noise, but, good grief, we may need seat belts in bed tonight. Still, this movement does not make me seasick the way that I was for a couple of days on the Pacific Princess. It's definitely more of a shaking motion than a rolling motion.
It didn't keep G out of a hot tub, but I was happier just reading this afternoon. Another of my Overdrive books from the library, this one an autobiography ebook by Leah Remini, is going to disappear from my iPad tomorrow, and I wanted to finish that up. I showered for the evening with one hand on the shower bar to keep from tumbling out of the bathroom. Our reservation for S h a r e was early tonight, at 5:30pm. We had asked for a table by the huge windows overlooking the back of the ship and hoped to catch the sunset while we dined.
What can I say about S h a r e? Perhaps most appropriate would be to wear a t-shirt emblazoned "I survived dining at S h a r e with my meat and potatoes husband". And then on the back it would say, "But it wasn't easy!" I knew we were in trouble when we first sat down and nearly slid out of our seats. Several of the tables have wooden chairs with leather seat cushions on them. They're not large chairs and the seat cushions are very slick. They also lack arms. G tolerated that for about 30 seconds before asking if they couldn't change our chairs out for some bucket shaped ones. Of course, they gladly accommodated his request.
G next commented on the lack of tablecloths or placemats on the tables. In fact, most of the surfaces in S h a r e are hard (the entire decor is upscale contemporary) and sounds do echo. The lady at the next table had a FaceTime phone call from her kids during her dinner and everyone in the restaurant heard every word. The lack of a tablecloth became more of an issue when the water goblets started to sweat. The ship was really bouncing in the restaurant's location on the back of Deck 16 and G caught a wine glass just before it danced off the table.
I was hopeful, though, that the food would overcome these petty issues. We had the standard charcuterie platter as a starter, which we, of course, shared. The whole premise of this restaurant is to feel free to share food from common plates set in the middle of the table.
Our food choices were as follows:
Appetizers
Tagliatelle with crab (me)
Cavatelli (G)
I was very happy with my tagliatelle. This pasta is made fresh daily, and I love fresh pasta. It was light and delicate and very delicious. G chose the cavatelli because he also like pasta, and likes brussel sprouts and doesn't mind beets. The issue was that it was all served mixed together and the brussel sprouts were just a few outer leaves, not the whole sprout. It was not his favorite, but he did eat it.
Mains
Butter poached lobster (me)
Twice cooked duck (G)
Immediate issues here: there were bones and skin on the duck. G does not do bones and skin on anything. Then it was dark meat. Does duck even have white meat? But he liked the smoky flavor.
G's choice here was a real surprise to me. I thought for sure he'd choose the beef cheek pie. What I had not realized is that he had talked to the chef, Christian, at the S h a r e Open House and was told that the cheeks from which this beef came were not the butt cheeks but the face cheeks. After a few days of thinking about this, G decided that these cheeks were too close to the lips which are used to make hot dogs and he wanted no part of beef cheek pie. God help us.
So he ordered duck. I can count on no fingers the number of times I've seen G eat duck. But his other options were seafood or vegetarian, so duck it was. And to his credit, he did eat it. But he left little doubt that he would have been happier tucking into a filet mignon instead.
I was, frankly, disappointed with the lobster. The lobster itself was as tender as any I've ever had. But the carmelized endive did nothing for me. And I intensely disliked the endive foam (even setting aside that it was unhelpfully described on Cruise Critic as cat sick). It was neither hot nor cold (and I have a thing about that), it didn't look appealing and the flavor was very odd. I like endive; I guess I just don't like it carmelized. Or foamed. I suppose that same thing would hold true for many foods I eat.
Cheese course
La Gruta (me)
Shaft blue (G)
Steady on, we next moved to the cheese course. God bless him, our waiter Cristian rightfully explained which of the four cheeses were made from sheep, goat or cows milk, or a combination of two or three of them. But I cringed when I heard that...the only cows milk cheese was the blue cheese. G won't touch anything but cows milk cheese. One would think that G, who loves blue cheese dressing, would adore blue cheese itself, but he doesn't unless it's very mild. This one, naturally, was not. He took one bite and set it in front of me. Luckily, I do love all sorts of blue cheese. In fact, I don't often meet a cheese I don't like, and finished his as well as my own la gruta cheese plate.
Dessert
Ricotta fritters (me)
Dark chocolate crémeux (G)
I had finally heaved an audible sigh of relief (that echoed and echoed and echoed...) when we reached the dessert course. Surely G would adore something made up of dark chocolate and burnt vanilla ice cream. Well, he did love the dark chocolate but said the ice cream tasted "funny". I have never, in all the years I've known him, heard him diss any kind of ice cream. On the other hand, we both adored my ricotta fritters. They were like fresh, warm donut holes, and were the biggest hit of the night. I was full of cheese so G got most of this dessert.
We drank a lot of wine and enjoyed attentive service by Cristian from Romania. And, to be fair, the tables on either side of us, made up of two ladies at each, raved about the food (because, of course we heard their comments). One of them said that if they had discovered S h a r e on the first night of the cruise, they would not have eaten anywhere else on the ship. It was also well attended; we had not been able to get a reservation on formal night, and, with our MTP and Captains Circle parties this cruise, tonight was the only night that worked for us.
We lingered over the meal and ended up spending over three hours there. By that time, I was thankful that G had insisted on getting our chairs changed out. We would never have lasted that long in the chairs we were originally seated in. I am glad we tried S h a r e once, but, unless/ until the menu changes, it is not something we'd do again. As G helpfully (though not totally correctly) pointed out, we could dine at the Crown Grill twice for the same amount of money (it's actually $25pp vs. S h a r e's $39pp). Frankly, I'd rather eat at the Crab Shack than either of those two specialty restaurants, but G has always refused to eat there. That I even got him to go to S h a r e was a coup.
But tomorrow, his life will return to normal. Our adventures in creative dining will be over. He'll have beef tenderloins for lunch followed by prime rib for dinner, and peace will reign.
Insert deep sigh of relief here ____________.