Travels And Tribulations

May 5, 2024

Before Bonnie Blogs, I’m going to try to post a couple of pictures tonight. I know, “Do or do not. There is no try.” Rachel Bryn, we really cannot go a day without a movie quote or a song.

Oh yeah. I started to post the blog and everything but our writing was in Spanish. No comprendo. Well, a couple of clicks and I outwitted it. A country boy can survive.

It is Sunday! And it is Cinco di Mayo. It is 3:20pm here on the Explorer of the Sea. We had laid down for a nap planning on getting up now and going to the ice skating show at 4 pm, however they just came on the intercom and announced they were changing the time to 4:30 and supper starts at 5, so we will have to go on Day 11. Best laid plans of mice and men.

Well, what have we been up to since we last blogged. Well, basically we have turned the clocks back one hour 5 times! In a day we sleep till about 6:30 am. We get up, shower and dress, and go to the Windjammer for breakfast at 7:30. It has been sparsely populated because of all the clocks changes. We enjoy a breakfast. Then he heads back to the cabin to study because he has had a talk at 10 am every morning. One of the best things about the cabin is that there is a real chair with a back for him to sit in and practice. Every other ship has a makeup chair with a half back, a very uncomfortable chair in which to sit.

I head to Deck 4 and outside to walk 2 or 3 times around. Sometimes I don’t get the whole way because they have it closed for cleaning but I can turn around and walk a shorter route. One of the scenic spots along the walk is the dog station (a box with straw in it and a box disposable plastic gloves) for those guests who have their “comfort” dogs with them. I have seen at least 3 older ladies with the tiny little pooches in the windjammer or the dining room. The walk is nice and sometimes it is breezy but it was only cold one morning. I enjoy the air and the walk. It is usually not too crowded at that time in the morning. I walk about 45 minutes to an hour. On one side of the ship is the smoking side. But so far there have not been too many smokers.

After finishing my walk, back to the cabin to drop off the kindle and earphones, earbuds won’t work without the internet. I pick up my crochet bag and supplies for the day. Since I last blogged I have finished 4 projects and am working on my 5^th and final project. I leave him in the room finishing up his studying and dressing for the talk and I go to the lounge on deck 5 forward to wait for the talk. There is a nice chair in the back by the door where I can sit and crochet and listen to his talk. He arrives about 9:45 and sets up his computer with the help of the tech. One nice thing about this cruise is they provide him with a bottle of water, sweet. Never done that before. But so far the art people have set up the art in the lounge blocking off anywhere from 1/3 to ½ of the chairs so people have no where to sit. It really cuts down on how many people can get into seats, but today should have been the last time he has that to deal with. He does his talk which takes about 45 minutes. When he finishes, he moves to the back by the door to be able to talk to people and I move to the front to disconnect and pack up the computer and stuff. Then, I move it back to my chair. There is a talk that follows immediately after so his stuff needs to be out of the way. He talks for about 10 or 15 minutes to people who like to ask questions and make comments. Always very nice things.

Then, we walk back aft, across deck 5, to the elevators for him to return to the room to work on the next days talk and me to sit in the lounge by the elevators and crochet some more. It is a great place to watch the people going to and fro or to the guest services, etc. He will usually work about 45 minutes to an hour and then come down to get me and we will go to lunch. We have gone to the dining room on deck 3 three times for lunch, a nice leisure lunch. The other times we have gone to the Windjammer. Sometimes after lunch we go to the library on deck 7 and play some cards. Then about 1 or 2 to the cabin for a short nap after which he will study his program again. He usually studies 3 or 4 times. Then, about 5 we get dressed for supper. Twice we have had formal night. One night was causal night and we wore our Mickey Mouse t-shirts that say “I don’t do matching shirts”. Everybody gets a kick out of that. We each have on the exact same shirt. Our waiter asked if he could take our picture.

After supper we have been walking out on deck and looking at the sea. The shows usually start at 7 and it is after 7 before we get out of supper. I don’t know why they don’t start at 7:30. But there really hasn’t been anything we wanted to see. We will go back to the cabin. I crochet, do puzzles and play games while he studies. Then, if we don’t have to do the clocks we play some cards.

The evening menus have been basically good. I had chicken parmesan with spaghetti last night. I have had short ribs, grilled chicken and a turkey pot pie. I have had mostly no sugar added desserts. The appetizers have been okay. Today in the Windjammer they had set up a bar where you could get taco chips with lettuce, tomatoes, sour cream, chopped onions, jalapenos, salsa, a very thin cheese sauce and a chile beef sauce. There was also chicken and soft taco shells, too. It was good and I made a plate of nachos and toppings. He got a hot dog, and their hot dogs are really good, and some sautéed vegetables.

Tonight, I am going to give the French onion soup another chance, the first time I tried it had no onions and tasted like water. They are having a Mojo-marinated pork chop with steamed broccoli, roasted parsnips, sweet potatoes (which means you get one broccoli spear, one parsnip and one sweet potato) and a cumin-orange -lime reduction. No kidding about the vegetables. There is never more than one broccoli spear. There must be a run on them. There is a mediterranean spinach pie that sounds good. It has spinach, sun-dried tomatoes, feta cheese and bechamel sauce under a flaky pie crust. Maybe I will be daring and try it. They do have the warm chocolate cake with molten center for dessert.

We will come back to the room after supper. He has made changes to his Woman in Gold talk and will need to work on it for tomorrow. It is a port day tomorrow and he usually doesn’t do a talk but the docking was scheduled for gangway down at 1:30 pm with all aboard at 9:30. The captain came on and said in his noon talk that we were going to dock early at 11:30, so we don’t know if his talk will be changed or not. There is only one more sea day and that is before we get to Malaga. He will be doing his “Purple and Picasso” talk on that day. We shall see what tomorrow holds. We don’t know where we are docking tomorrow, so we don’t know whether we will be able to get off and wander around. It depends on how far out he is docked.

For Tuesday we bought a 4 hour tour that will take us on a 40 minute bus ride to Puerto de la Cruz. We get to roam around and shop, lunch, etc on our own. It wasn’t expensive and it was the only tour in the four ports that was not sold out, except for the two Spanish speakers only tours. There were 3 spots left and we got 2 of them. It should be a lot of fun. We aren’t sure whether if it will be possible to walk off the ship in the other 2 ports and look around. It all depends on where he parks the ship.

And now here is sleepy head who is finally up from his loooong nap!

So, here is sleepy head who was napping until SOMEONE said, very loudly, “Do you want to get up?” No! I want to nap! Well, guess who got up.

This is Day 8 of our cruise, and I very honestly say, this has been one of our best cruises ever. Lots of fun doing the talks. Great table mates. Fun card games (I actually won one out of two). Good food (but then I eat most anything – are there snails tonight?). Good audiences. Positive interaction with many of the crew (David’s Cruising Rule – or really any other activity rule – get the server’s/helper’s name, talk to them, ask questions about their day, their home, their family and be genuinely interested in them. It is the right thing to do and they will go out of their way to be friendly and helpful. So many cruisers are slugs who treat them like they are dark colored and picking cotton while the overseer stands with a whip ready to beat them half to death).

Well, my Cruise Buddy has brought you up to date on most everything that has happened, but I do have a couple of amusing anecdotes to share.

Yesterday as I was walking into the Star Lounge a couple stopped me and asked me when Bonnie and I were married. The lady recalled that I had said August, 1968. She asked what day. I told her 24. And she tapped her husband’s hand and beamed, “That’s the same day we were married.” She told me that they have met one other couple who were married on that day. I told her, Suzanne, and her husband, Charles, that I knew another couple who were married on August 24, but not that long ago.

After the talk, about John Harrison, the man who “created” longitude (actually created the chronometer that allows us to learn our proper longitude), a man asked me if I could explain to him how they judges of the longitude contest – the winner of which would receive the equivalent of $2.1 million dollars in today’s money – could determine that his winning clock had lost just 5 seconds in 81 days with all of the other clocks being so bad. I told him, “No, and I’ve been asked that before and so far have been unable to find the answer, but I’ll look again.” This time Sergei Bryn and the boys at Google did better for me and a I learned the 2 ways they made the determination. One was, when the ship Harrison was on docked at Port Royal Jamaica they had previously stopped at Kingston and the exact longitude had been determined there years ago with the use of a complicated mathematic formula. That’s how they knew the 5 seconds. The other way was using “mean solar time.” I relayed the question this morning and my answers, explaining I had no idea what mean solar time was, reading them, in a hurried, comedic style a paragraph from the Wikipedia entry on “solar time.” We all had a big laugh. Those of you who are nodding off, do you want to wake up now?

After he left a man from England stepped up with some comments, and we ended up talking about Michael Portello, Rumpole of the Baily, Midsomer Murders, and other great British TV programs that Bonnie and I enjoy.

Speaking of Rumpole, She Who Must Be Obeyed just told me I have 5 minutes, just enough time to tell you about the plate of strawberries covered in chocolate (the strawberries, not the plate) that was delivered mysteriously to our room yesterday. It starts several days ago when the six of us at Table 515 were moved there, against our will from Table 503. Two nights ago I got a bowl of strawberry ice cream for dessert and it was awful. Previous servings had been very good. I asked Bonnie to tasted it and she agreed it was lousy. The waiter noticed I wasn’t eating it and I described the taste. He said they must have given me sugar free ice cream instead and went and got real ice cream. The strawberries and chocolate must have been an “I’m sorry” offering. We took them to supper and shared them with our tablemates. And after we had all been seated, the head waiter came with a bottle of champagne for the table. We had told the head at 503 we didn’t want to move, but they explained the reason and we moved. I think the champagne was another “sorry” offering.