Making Waves

I'm too tired to upload new photos tonight, so you get this one from London.

Filipino Crew Show Supplement

I woke Dave around 10:40 and we headed to the Vista lounge, where Devlin the magician was still floating the table around. We wanted to get there early to be sure to get good seats, but it turned out that because the show was so late there was plenty of room, but still a good turnout. They did the three standard dances – the castanet dance, the candle dance, and the dance with bamboo sticks. Two guys came out and sang two songs, and one of them was our wine steward Anthony – he has a wonderful voice and the moves like Jagger. They also sang a couple of traditional songs in a larger group. My favorite, though, was 4 guys in tank tops doing a muscle beach song. I will bring it up in the Nia class since we have a muscle beach song too. I’m always delighted by the crew shows, which are amateur performances in the very best way. The audience was good, too.

28 October

I woke up at 6 and decided to get up anyway. I was at the gym by 6:35 and there were already mats down – by 6:45 all the mats were gone and people were still coming in. Jesse did a good job with both classes and seemed more engaged than usual. I spent some time thinking about replacing Soul Trippin’ with a song from a different routine just to add some variety for myself – I’ve danced nothing but Feeling for the past month. When I presented the idea of replacing a song or two to the class they were enthusiastic – but I get ahead of myself.

I headed off to breakfast and sat with Ms. Chris, who plays poker with our tablemate Jim, and two folks from Vancouver BC whose names I’ve forgotten, which is too bad. They are on their first cruise, and aren’t sure how they feel about it, because they’re the kind of people who like to rent an apartment and spend a month or so getting to know a place, which is a different but equally interesting way to travel. Funnily enough on this trip they had spent a month in Cluny, which is very close to where we were in Macon. They had relatives there, and had even played Petanque! They’d also been doing some hiking in Cinqueterre in Italy, which was recently named a UNESCO world heritage site and so has become very touristy. We had a very fun time chatting, although they asked me about Nia and I’m afraid I may have talked a bit much. But Chris came to class, so that was maybe a good thing.

I had a cup and a half of regular coffee with breakfast, which is maybe half a cup too much, so I was completely wired when it came time to teach at my new 10:00 time. There were very many people there – over 20, both repeaters and new folks. People were dancing in the hallways. And we finally reached critical mass of people who kind of know what they’re doing, so there was lots of hooting and hollering. I had the most fun yet, and people came up afterwards and said things like “great class” and “how come I didn’t know about this earlier” which made me very happy. The nightclub where we are isn’t a great venue, but it’s what we have and I’m loving it. My class was from 10-11, so by the end of it the Queen’s lounge next door was filled with people there for the culinary demo, including Dave. We did the ending where you make increasingly loud noises as you clear the space, and Dave said he could hear us. It was a total blast.

Meanwhile Dave had been attending HAL university. He started at 9 by attending a lecture on the inner planets of the solar system, which had some very interesting photos from the NASA planetary missions. He stayed put for your location guide Brett’s lecture on the Punic wars, which he said was fascinating and informative. Did you know that many historians believe that if Hannibal and his elephants had continued on to attack Rome, we might be using Carthagian numerals instead of Roman ones? After those two lectures he had to rush over to the Queen’s lounge to learn how to make two yummy dishes from the Cannaletto, the Italian restaurant on board.

Meanwhile I had gone up to the gym to do a little more stretching, and then I went back down to the cabin for a much-needed shower. As I was getting dressed Dave came back from the culinary demo. He said the demo was good, but Ashley the culinary host continues to be a disaster – when the chef asked how to tell if pasta was al dente, she said “throw it at the wall,” and he gave her a look and said, “I’d like to see what your house looks like.” The correct answer is you taste it. Also she said that to tell if an artichoke is ripe you make an indentation in the outer leaves, and if moisture comes out it’s not ripe. 1. Who ever heard of ripe artichokes? And 2. Who wants one with no moisture in its outer leaves?

So we headed off to the Pinnacle Grill for lunch. The food there is better than the food in the dining room  - for one thing, they have a way lower customer-to-staff ratio. The thing is it doesn’t blow our socks off. But after talking with people who have cruised on many different cruise lines, we’ve come to the conclusion that the problem is not with the quality of the Pinnacle – the problem is that we’re completely spoiled by the Portland restaurant scene. Similarly, there’s a cellarmaster’s dinner there tonight, with special wine pairings (and a special surcharge), but we’ve finally realized that neither the wine nor the food will be as good as we can get at home for about the same price, and we’d miss dinner with table 304 which would add insult to injury.

During lunch Captain von Danselaar came on with the daily report about position & weather and so on. They keep promising 15 foot swells and not delivering. He says we should get them tonight and if we don’t I am going to the front desk to complain. There’s a fairly nasty weather system to the north, so we are taking a two – heading trip, first mainly south, then mainly west, to avoid it. But there could be another one brewing South, so there’s a chance of high seas. It was cloudy in the morning, but started to clear up while we were eating, and by the time we got to the cabin after lunch it was very blue and very much time for sitting on the veranda until the next thing - 72 degrees, light breeze, a little more humid than I prefer but well within tolerance limits. I also want to take a moment here to mention the ventilation in our cabin, which is very quiet. On the two other ships of this class that we’ve been on, it’s been quite noisy – a constant loud hum – but it’s very quiet on this one. Dave says it may not be working quite right, but it is keeping our cabin a good temperature and I like that it’s quiet.

At 2 Dave headed off to another talk, this time about navigation, and at 3 he went to another that was given by the ship’s 2^nd and 3^rd officers which was much better and covered a very wide range of topics, such as the responsibilities of the various officers, the Exxon Valdez, and the problems caused by whales without running lights. I spent a while remembering Nourah from Canta, which I’m putting in to the Nia routine tomorrow. Next up I went to dancing with the stars part II, the tango, which was just as impenetrable as it was on our last cruise, so after about 15 minutes I gave up and got in the pool, because we are sloshing – yes, the promised seas and winds have arrived and the mid-ships pool is the place to be, as far as I’m concerned. I spent a little over an hour playing in the waves, and then went and showered so we could see the sunset.

They have closed off the main door to 9-forward, the deck in front of the gym, but on this ship (unlike the Oosterdam and Westerdam) there is a secret door on the other side of the deck, so we went out there to watch the sunset. I had to do some major hanging on to my skirt because it is windy out there. It makes us laugh because in London at the exhibit where we saw the Harrison clocks they had a great display on the wall describing what happens at various levels of the beaufort scale on land and at sea. Force 8, gale, is just described as Aaaaaaaagh! And that’s what we’re in right now – with the ship doing 18 knots and the wind blowing hard in the other direction, our apparent wind velocity is hovering around 50, with nice swells to go along. You might recall that our cabin is quite far forward and also up on deck 8, which means we get a lot more motion than you would in a lower cabin mid-ships. Wahoooo! Is what we say about that.

Wrapping up the night, Jim and Paula had dinner in the Cannaletto restaurant, so our table was a tad off balance but we had fun as usual. The show was a concert pianist who turned out to be surprisingly enjoyable to listen to, except that I kept falling asleep. Kieron made the joke that even though we’re in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, we’re never more than 7 miles away from shore – straight down. Although we’re following the mid-Atlantic ridge, so the ocean depth really isn’t that deep right here. Anyway, the pianist was very good, and he finished with a rendition of Pirates of the Caribbean with the HALcats that worked very well even in the wrong ocean. We went to the Queen’s lounge for a set with the BB King all-stars, but they’re loud and we’re tired, so we’re turning in early. No extra hours tonight.

Tonight’s towel animal – we have no idea. It’s a very compact, single towel animal, but we don’t know what it is.