Sea Day #5

Must be close to time to end this trip.  It is a lot of consecutive sea days and Ft. Lauderdale will sure look good, even though it is supposed to be raining when we arrive.  Wish I had been able to visit the nieces in West Palm and Orlando.  That would be fun, especially to see the babies.

Last night we again set our clocks back but did not sleep late this morning.  About six it sounded like they were building a new ship right on our balcony.  Weird.  Never did find out what was going on.  When I opened the balcony door after my very hot, head clearing, shower, there was a girl singer practicing her songs for a show this afternoon or sometime soon.  A very strange start to the day!

Anyway, this morning we skipped the early swim and had breakfast in the dining room.  If you are on board a Celebrity trip I do not recommend the apple pancakes.  I guess they were made with apple sauce because there were no pieces of apple in them.  And they were brown and very heavy.  Maybe buckwheat?  And served cold.  Had they been tasty I would have reordered but no worth it.

The conversation was also weird.  The two couples we sat with were very nice.  The older one was from Chicago and now lives in Port Charlotte in Florida.  The younger one was from Detroit.  When I asked what he did he said he was ‘postal.’  We all laughed.  She was a nurse so the whole conversation turned to how modern heart valve replacements are done.  Very interesting and practically non-invasive.  We then quickly slid down the slippery slope to the causes and treatment of Ebola!    What a breakfast conversation we had!

10:15 trivia tuned into a bit of a battle.  It started early so they repeated some of the questions but then wouldn’t repeat others.  One man got particularly hostile when he did not like the Big Ben question…how many hands or on the clock of Big Ben.  He wanted the answer 8 since there are four sides to the clock.  But many people know that the bell itself is really know as Big Ben and that has no hands but then it isn’t the real name of the bell either!  We didn’t do very well on the next trivia which was TV theme songs.

I sat in the sun with a cup of tea (fighting a cold!) after that and Elva and I visited.  Then Joy and her husband Peter and I chatted awhile.  They are on the morning trivia team with us.   Elva went to the art auction and I continued on with the theme of trivia.  Progressive was off to a bad start because of the way this ship does it.  You play trivia but then there are challenges.  Yesterday we had to bring something red, today you got a point if you had a photo with crew members.  There had to be two team members so I couldn’t take the picture because I don’t know the other players.  But two of them got a picture with five crew for five points.  One team interrupted some meeting and had 28 crew members in the picture for 28 points!  Hard to overcome since there are usually only 15 questions a day!  Our team would like to be judged just on what useless information we can dredge up!

At 2:30 we went to a matinee performance by two of the cast singers, Megan and Crystal.  They are working together on the ship but became friends when they were both at Disney World.  Megan was Nemo in the live performances of Finding Nemo and Crystal was Snow White!  We saw clips of them there and crystal still has the perfect voice.  There songs were well done but for the first time the show was very loud.  Janis Joplin and Heart, I guess, don’t work well if the volume isn’t high! 

We played the afternoon trivia, enjoyed the sun and then a glass of wine on our balcony.  While we got ready for dinner we watched the lecture of Lisa on Italy: Plots, Popes, and Poison.  I have to remember to look her up on line and see if she has any lectures downloadable.

Fran and Jan with whom we had dinner the other night stopped by to give me their email so that I could tip them off on cruise ideas and websites.  Not sue why people always think I know about magical secrets of travel but it is flattering.

At dinner we sat with Catherine and Jim with whom we were on a couple of tours, Realie and Bill from Finland, and a lady whose name I did not catch.  This lady was in the early seating with her travel friend but did not like the table or company so switched to Select.  Our table tonight was not good.  It was at the far back side of the restaurant, next to the serving pantry, and set for eight.  Super noisy and we really had to shout to talk to our table mates.  The service was very slow and although we had dessert we were unable to have coffee or tea. 

The main show was very good and the entertainer was a pianist who spent a good part of his time with humorous stories.  He seemed so disheveled and hulking that I didn’t really ‘like’ him but he was extremely talented and overall the show was very good.  Elva and I never miss the evening show and we haven’t been disappointed yet.

The game show was Are You Smarter Than a Ship’s Officer and I guess I am.  The officer team got 6 and I got 10 correct!  Elva did well with 8 and we each were ahead of most of the room!    

I got my usual hot tea and was happy to go to bed early.  This cold I have caught is sapping my energy.  I couldn’t even tell you the last time I had a common cold but this timing is not good!  I hope my head clears up before I have to fly home on Monday.  Stuffy head is not a good thing when you are in an airplane as yours ears can really be damaged.  Cross your fingers for me.