As our friends know, Tami and I like to look at art.  (Not Art, we don’t know him that well.)  A major feature on board cruise ships these days is the art gallery and art auction.  They will hold an art auction several times over the course of a cruise, and with a largely captive audience they sell a ton of it!  Tami and I like to go to see if there is something we might like, as well as to hear about the various artists they represent.

Of course, to sell as much as possible to this audience, they have to carry a selection that will appeal to a lot of different people.  At the same time, it tends to be somewhat homogeneous to broadly appeal.  In the gallery right now there are two small Rembrandt sketches, and a Picasso I like very much (unfortunately a bit out of our price range).  At the other end of the scale is a piece Tami and I have dubbed the “Worst Piece of Art Ever”.

-M

The food in the main dining room has been very good, though after a while it does get a little monotonous.  Despite all the nationalities in the crew, they don’t push to get creative, ethnic, etc. with the food.  Of course since the passengers are mostly American, they have to offer what will most broadly appeal to that crowd.

There are a couple of upgrade restaurants on board, i.e. you can eat at them instead of the main dining room or the buffet for an extra charge of $20-$25 per meal.  We splurged the second night on the Italian restaurant, Sabatinis.  The food was definitely superior to the main dining room.  Tami had her Lobster Three Ways (tail, risotto, and sauce).  I had a soft shell crab appetizer and duck for my main course.  However, I was most impressed by some of the small touches.  The duck was accompanied by some small candied fruits (looked like cherry, grape, apple, etc.).  They looked like little translucent blobs.  What was most amazing was that when eaten, they weren’t just candied, they had also been infused with some kind of essence of mustard!  They were both sweet and spicy.

Then with my dessert there was a garnish that looked like a candy lemon slice, but it turned out to be infused with a licorice flavor, probably anise.

Unfortunately the upgrade restaurants have the same menu every night, so you wouldn’t want to eat there too often.

-M

This is a very large ship with many, many decks. Most of the restaurants, shops, bars, events, and the theater are on the 5^th, 6^th, and 7^th decks. Our cabin is on the 11^th deck. We take the elevators a lot. There are hallways that run along both the port and starboard sides of the ship. Some of the places we are headed are towards the stern of the ship, and some are towards the bow. Every time we get off the elevator, we have to make a decision about which way to head to get where we are going. We invariably choose the wrong way. We often have to look out the windows to see which way the ship is steaming, and then we know which way to head. Sheesh! You’d think we’d have this down by now! And then when we get off the elevator on the 11^th deck, both sides of the ship look the same, so we again usually take the wrong way. That’s how we’re staying so slim and trim.

-T

As we make our way across the Atlantic Ocean (we are nearing halfway), we are also moving through the time zones. Every night we turn our clocks forward one hour. It’s really a very civilized way to move from North American time to European time! The hard part is keeping track of what day of the week it is.

We continue to enjoy good weather. The seas have increased a bit, but nothing too dramatic. For part of today (Sunday) we had some whitecaps and a bit of a swell, but it is not too noticeable on the ship. When we are sitting or in bed we can feel the slow roll of the ship, but I am amazed how calm it is considering how far out in the ocean we are. Clouds have increased, but we still have mostly hazy sunshine.

-T

When we booked this trip, my main concern about the itinerary was this stretch of five days at sea and what would happen with Mike. Would he be completely bored after one day? I know I can read for days on end and be happy, but Mike likes to go and do and see. Well I needn’t have worried—we have found many things to keep us busy, and I am in fact wondering if one of these days soon I should just not look at the daily schedule so I can get in some solid reading time. I’ve only made it through one book so far!

They really do provide a great variety of things to do. One of my favorites is the series of lectures that they offer. I haven’t made them all by any means, but have made a point of catching the entire astronomy series, which has been very good. Tomorrow the lecturer leads our first star gazing, so we’re hoping it’s clear out. There is also a lecture on sea navigation tomorrow which I plan to see, but I understand they will not let us steer the ship afterwards. Darn!

Tonight we caught the Movie under the Stars, which they show on the top deck on a big screen. The audience sits in the deck chairs and they provide blankets and cookies. We watched “Midnight in Paris” and enjoyed it very much. We also had a very nice sunset just as the movie started.

-T

As I was lounging on our balcony in shorts and a T-shirt, and basking in the warm sunshine yesterday afternoon, I overheard a comment from the next balcony over. The woman outside was calling in to her companion inside the cabin, “you’d better bundle up if you’re going to come out here.” Guess they’re not from Seattle, are they?

-T

One huge difference between this cruise and our last trip to the Caribbean is the lack of anyone under about 50, let alone anyone under 21. Our trip out of Puerto Rico in 2011 was brimming with kids and families. We finally spotted a child when we were eating our wonderful dinner after our first full day aboard. She was out on the deck but she was an actual child. We have subsequently spotted two more small children but no teenagers. I guess they’re all in school. It certainly makes for more calm around the pool and buffet areas!

-T

How can I not write about our first meal on board? It was delicious. We were both exhausted, but some things are so important that they cannot be shirked.

I had a wonderful lobster and scallop pate followed by cream of porcini soup. My main course was a wonderful slab (no, that’s not what they called in on the menu) of prime rib with horseradish and a baked potato. Mike had barramundai picata, which was a type of fish we have never had. It was all very delicious.

-T

We slept the sleep of the dead, but eventually woke up feeling a heck of a lot better.  A major project today was locating all the restaurants on board and reading their menus.  It looks like we are going to treat ourselves to an upgrade to the Italian restaurant tonight, Sabatinis, so Tami can have the “Lobster Three Ways”, lobster being one of her all time favorite foods.  Tami also attended an astronomy lecture, while I played speed soduko.  Let’s just say I was not speedy.

-M

Disneyland lines

We managed to hit the cruise terminal along with the majority of the other passengers, so we experienced the full delight of snaking through winding Disneyland-style lines to make our way to the ship. The line started outside the building and when we finally made it into the building we were delighted with our progress. Being Seattleites, we were of course already wilting from the sun and the 75̊ weather. As we made our way into the large warehouse room full of snaking lines, we could feel the anticipation that soon we would be on the ship. We finally made our way to the front of the line, passed through the security screening, and on through the curtain… to another large warehouse of cruisers in lines that wound all over the room.

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Lunch at the Airport

It was quite a production getting ourselves to Florida to embark on our ship, the Emerald Princess. We left the house on foot at 7 pm on Wednesday night and walked up to the bus stop, hauling our heavily laden bags. Caught the bus downtown and transferred to the light rail in Westlake, which took us to SeaTac. At least at that hour, security was a breeze! We took the red-eye through Detroit to Fort Lauderdale and then caught the bus to the cruise terminal. We left dark, wet grey Seattle skies with distant thunder and landed in Florida to bright sunshine and 75̊ weather. Yes!

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