Sea Days 3 and 4

He Said . . .

The past couple of days have led to a few changes in routine for us.  Yesterday evening we went up to the Sky Lounge to redeem our drink coupons for the first time and met a few folks that were quite nice, Andy and Suzy, recently retired and Gary and Mikey, long retired.  They were pleasant enough but as always I felt that there were two new issues, now I had to commit their faces to memory on the off chance that ran into then around the ship and my level of anonymity was being be jeopardized since I felt compelled to provide them with my real name.  I had heard that people had played up some really wild profiles and let them play out real world; everything from British Royalty to Lucifer had been bantered about during a beer drinking ruckus that I happened to be in attendance of some years back and it had planted a seed.  So far it hadn’t germinated but going forward I thought it might, last night I thought I could run with it but I hadn’t discussed it with Ami and figured she wouldn’t be receptive.  Anyway we are going to meet them again this evening during happy hour, seems harmless enough.  

Otherwise the day was filled with finishing the 3rd Lincoln Lawyer and starting the second one, not sure how I got them out of order but they aren’t prequel so se la vie.  They are a quick read, a couple of days at best and they keep me from thinking about the 2,000 emails I will have waiting for me when I return to the office, I’m sure I’ll have to spend the weekend catching up. Hopefully we will have pushed out a Maintenance Pack (MP) as we call them to fix a bug that has been in the system since we launched IMS some 7 years ago, not sure how that happened but nonetheless it needs to get fixed and that should wrap up my capital dollars for the year, whooo hooooo, I can check that off my PA&D (Performance Agreement and Development)!!!  Back to the moment at hand…

Yesterday was my first day to hit the gym, 25 five minutes walking and 5 minutes running on that damn treadmill, the inventor was a true masochist I swear.  It felt good and I decided to add it to the regimen these last few days at sea, along with napping and reading, what a life, I could get used to this too!!  

Today is Halloween, and if you can believe it, some people decorated their doors in honor of the day, I can only imagine what gets broken out for dinner.  I haven’t ever seen a 70 year old in a hooker outfit, it’s gonna be an eye gouging moment I’m sure, a little prayer may be in order.  Not by name, just thought, if the big guy gets ahold of the name I might be in trouble there too.

First up was an egg drop contraption from the 7th to the 3rd floor with three raw eggs as riders, if they make it you score points and the team closest to the circle they had laid out wins, the crowd was quite large and if I didn’t know any better I would have thought that some of these people tracked down hardware to make their contraptions, quite fun and imaginative.  BTW, there weren’t many winners but all good fun!!

The weather is gorgeous, 78 degrees on the balcony on the 12th floor on the balcony overlooking a beautiful partly cloudy 1-2 meter swell that feels like glass on a boat this big.  If someone would have asked what at Atlantic crossing looked like I would have have given them the North Atlantic version with 20-30 foot seas and riding in the trough across.  That’s not this, it’s the way it was intended on a cruise ship and I’m so glad we took the long flight to get there, now we have a two hour, “big front seat” on Spirit to get home after sightseeing on Friday.  

Hopefully Brandon is still down there cleaning up after the hurricanes and living large, I will call him once we get in to catch up and find out where everything vetted out after we left.  I hope he’s still down there, I miss talking to him everyday and catching up.

Otherwise all is grand, life as a sailor is great, as a cruiser at least, but I’ll be ready to get back to our sense of normalcy when we get in, hope Fort Lauderdale is back to normal as well, more later…

She Said . . .

Happy Halloween!

Go Astros!

With those out of the way, as you would hope while you are in the middle of the Atlantic with the closest land being over 800 nautical miles, the last two days have been rather uneventful.

Activities

We while away the days reading and watching the ocean.  We have both spent some time in the fitness center.

I went to a presentation Sunday on the Galapagos Islands and what Celebrity Cruises has to offer.  Yesterday, we went to see the Future Cruise folks only to find out for the 2 of us, the price is over $30,000.  Now it was all-inclusive and also included machu picchu and a few other locations.  But having never priced a trip like this, we have no idea if it is a good deal or not.  It seems awfully high to both of us so we did not book it.  We also looked at Baltic cruises but we want one that includes St. Petersburg and the Norwegian Fjords and couldn’t find one that fit that requirement by Celebrity so we will look elsewhere.  Next year we want to go to China so we also looked at their options there and did not see anything that had everything we wanted to do in China.  We know Viking has it so that may be the choice.

Sunday I went to a wine tasting - one red and one white from 6 different countries.  Actually it was 8 different countries because they lumped Australia and New Zealand together and Argentina and Chili together.  My favorite white was the Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand and the red (can’t remember the name) from Spain.  Other countries/regions represented were France, Italy, and California.  Unfortunately, the California wines were my least favorites.

I met a lovely man, Alister, currently living in Florida.  He is actually Scottish.  Left Scotland when he was 18 and went to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) as part of the military police.  He is 71 and now lives in Florida with his wife of 20 years.  His 40-year-old daughter just finished her last round of chemo in her battle against breast cancer.  She is an attorney in Florida.  His son works for a charity in D.C.  I saw pictures of both his children and his grandchildren.  It was funny, I guess one of the ladies (Celebrity employee) working the event, picking up glasses and dirty dishes, knew him from the dining room or something because she felt the need to come by and ask where his wife was and if she needed let his wife know he was talking to me.  It was very sweet - she was quite protective of his wife.  I think we were both just happy to find someone to talk to since our spouses did not attend.  I always like to talk to different people.

Last night we went to the Captain’s Club Elite happy hour where we met a lovely couple from Jackson Mississippi and another couple from Greensboro, South Carolina (Gary, the husband went Georgia).  We enjoyed talking to them.

Other than that, I’ve been reading my next David Baldacci novel, Saving Faith.  So far I am enjoying it.

The Boat

As promised, I’ll tell you a bit about our boat and accommodations.  We are on the Celebrity Reflection.  When we cruise, we more often than not, cruise Celebrity.  The crowd is usually older than us, at least when we vacation since kids are often in school when we go.  I think in general the folks on Celebrity are slightly older than us.

We have cruised enough on Celebrity, we have achieved Elite status in their frequent cruiser program, Captain’s Club.  This entitles us to certain perks.  As I said in an earlier post, we each get 90 minutes of free internet.  We also get free drinks at their nightly happy hour for Elite members and better, 1 free bag of laundry, discounts on bottles of wine, a free scoop of gelato, some match plays on blackjack or roulette, and some other things here and there.

While we don’t normally do so, we sprung for a suite this time since we were going to be on the boat so much.  This means the room and balcony are a bit bigger, we have a jetted tub in the bathroom, a personal butler in addition to our cabin steward, access to Michael’s Club (a private lounge only for suite people), and dinner in a special restaurant ( The Luminae).  We don’t really use the butler much.  I’ve asked him to make reservations for us and book our excursion, but not much else.  With Blaise it has become a joke, because every day, Rene, the butler, tries to figure out how he can help Blaise.  One day he tried to bring Blaise canapes. Another some bottled water.  And yet another, he asked if he could bring Blaise some wine.

I’ve really enjoyed the extra space and roomier balcony.  I have watched the sunrise numerous times from the balcony and spend time reading there.  We both enjoy the shower and tub.  The shower is exceptional and the jetted tub isn’t so bad either.

The boat is beautiful and very well maintained.  I don’t know what year it went into service but it may be the youngest in their fleet.  There are about 3,000 folks on the ship but it doesn’t really feel like it.

Dana’s Food Watch

Sunday’s Dinner:  I can’t remember what we had for appetisers but we both had the bacon wrapped trout for our entree’.  It was delicious.  I thought it had a bit more  spinach stuffed in it than I would have liked, but still tasty.

Monday’s Dinner:  Our little bite before the appetizer was some sort of caramelized apple slice with some creamy cheese that seemed like some version of brie.  For our starters, Blaise had the kale Caesar salad and I had the butternut squash ravioli (just 2 raviolis).  For our entrees, we both had the venison loin on a bed of pickled red cabbage with mashed potatoes, carrots, and one (just one) brussel sprout.  I’m not a big red cabbage fan so I only ate a couple bites of that.  For dessert, Blaise had his cheese plate and I had custard (they called it a creme’ brulee but it wasn’t a traditional creme’ brulee - more like a scoop of custard) on a biscuit/cookie thing with a scoop of some sort of ice cream.  No, I am not a food writer, so you get the food as best as I can describe it.

Injury Watch

Still injury free!!!

First 2 of 7 Sea Days

She Said . . .

This is the beginning of our third day at sea.  With two of the seven behind us, I am finding it quite relaxing so far - the Atlantic Ocean as far as the eye can see.  We have seen no land and no other ships since late Thursday night.

It is a bit ironic, as someone who does not know how to swim, looking out at the ocean and listening to the water is so very soothing.  I suppose it would not be as soothing if we had some sort of catastrophe in which I found myself in the water.

Time Management

No such thing here on the ocean.

We do whatever the hell we want.  I’ve sat on our balcony the last two mornings watching the sunrise.  We eat some breakfast then find a spot to sit and read.  The past couple days it has been on 4 in Cellar Masters.  We tried outside in the morning but with the wind in the morning, it is a bit chilly.  Just a small chill but enough for Blaise to say no. At some point, we may wander around, Blaise will do his thing, I will do mine.  We spend a chunk of time sitting on our balcony.  I have made my way to the fitness center too.  

Two days ago we watched a presentation on Celebrity’s 2018 and 2019 European cruises.  While we are looking at China for next year, in 2019, we are thinking of a Baltic cruise which includes the Norwegian Fjords and St. Petersburg Russia.  Is anyone with is? Towards the end of the presentation, an older guy went to leave and fell down the three stairs leading to the exit.  The falling down the stairs takes on a whole new meaning for me after last year.  People were staring at him entirely too long and I finally said to the people around me “Quit staring at him.”  My thought is let the people around him tend to him and let’s not embarrass him further by staring and making a spectacle of it.  Not that I’ve been a spectacle in a similar manner or anything.

Today, I will attend an Around The World Wine Tasting.  Blaise will sit this one out.

Books

It occurred to me, I didn’t tell you what The Rosie Project was about.  It is about a Ph.D geneticist, who teaches at a university in Melbourne Australia.  He has Aspergers but, while he realizes he is different than everyone else, he doesn’t seem to get he has Aspergers.  Anyway, he is 39 years old and sets about finding a wife.  “The Wife Project” includes women completing an extensive quiz which he uses to filter out unsuitable mates.  In the course of this, he meets a woman Rosie, who according to his criteria, is completely wrong for him in every way, but whose company he enjoys immensely.  It really is a charming book.

From there I went to The Winner by David Baldacci which I finished reading yesterday.  It is about a 20-year-old single mother who is quite poor living in an extremely poor county in Georgia.  I think my token Georgia friend, Dana, is now taking notice.  Anyway, a stranger approaches her and says he can guarantee she wins the lottery.  After she decided not to take up the offer, a series of unfortunate events occur leaving her feeling as though she has no choice but to take up the offer by the stranger.  Loved it!  But I love just about anything from David Baldacci.

Now, I have to figure out what to read next.

Blaise is more of the non-fiction reader.  He often brings technical manuals with him on vacation.  I always download a few novels for him in hopes he will relax with a good story.  He finished reading his The Number book early on and then started reading a book on “love languages.”  I appreciate that he is always working to make sure our marriage is strong.  The turn of events here is that he made ME take a test so we could determine what my “love language” is.  A love language is really just what I feel is important for my partner to do to show me his love..  I have a combo of “Words of Appreciation” and “Acts of Service.” Of course I had to make him take the quiz too.  HIs were 3 “Acts of Service,” “Physical Touch,” and “Quality Time.”  I guess I have my work cut out trying to keep him a happy husband.  There is a fifth love language “Gifts” which neither of us scored high in.

But now he is reading the sequel to LIncoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly.  I have succeeded in getting him to read a novel.  Perhaps all the free time had something to do with it.

Events on Boat

Apparently we had an event yesterday on the boat that caused the Captain to get on the loudspeaker and update the entire ship.  There was a slight flood on deck 3; a broken pipe as it turned out.  Unfortunately some guests on the ship thought we were sinking.  I suppose I can see how you would get there.  The Captain is quite the comedian.  He told us the first thing you do when there is water free flowing on a ship is to test the origin of the water.  If the water is salty, then you could be going down.  If it is potable water, then you are not sinking - you just have to find the cause of the water.

The other day, I went to use one of the public restrooms.  An older lady was standing at the beginning of the line of stalls and told me they were all in use.  I dutifully stood there behind the woman waiting my turn.  A worker who was cleaning the sinks kindly pointed out there were most certainly stalls available and opens a couple doors.  Turns out ALL the stalls were open.  I’m not sure what planet that woman was on; all the doors freely opened.  That will teach me to trust someone in that situation again.  I’ll check for myself from now on.

Also the other day, I got into the elevator and we started moving.  The elevator had glass on 3 sides and you could see the elevators across  from us - always have been able to see it - it hasn’t changed during the cruise. Eight days into the cruise a woman commented to her friend “Wow! It’s really cool you can watch the other elevators go up and down!”  As if she had not seen it before.  Where has she been all this time?  Not in an elevator I guess.  Now we take the stairs as much as we can, but especially when I am wearing heels, we use the elevators.

Dana’s Food Watch

Friday’s Dinner:  We ate dinner at one of the specialty restaurants, The Tuscan Grille.  I made this reservation because October 27 (Friday) marked the day Blaise is eligible for retirement.  Earlier this year, he reached that point if he were to cash in all of his vacation and personal days, but Friday was the day he could do so without cashing in any time.  To reach eligibility, his time in service at Verizon and his age must equal 75.  I thought this was cause for a bit of celebration, so I made the reservation.  Early Friday, Blaise started thinking and said, “hey, I think my day of retirement eligibility was actually September 27.”  He said he thought he remembered the guy wanting to onboard him before the start of the 4th quarter so he would be eligible for the 4th quarter bonus.  A bit anti-climatic, but still a lovely dinner.

Blaise and I both had the crab cake appetizer which was even better than the one I had a few days earlier.  Blaise had the ceasar salad and I had the arugula and goat cheese salad with balsamic vinaigrette.  For our entrees Blaise had the filet mignon and I had the lasagna, in my continued search for the best lasagna.  While this lasagna was great, it was not even near the lasagna at Marco G’s in Rome.  Blaise had no dessert but I felt I needed to order some even though I was full given we paid $45 each for the meal.  I had spumoni donuts, which, sadly were a bit chewy.

Dinner Saturday:  Our little bite before the appetizer was a duck liver mousse which neither of us liked at all.  Blaise’s comment is “it was dog shit.”  It really was.  Blaise has seared prawns and arugula.  Blaise says they were “tasty.”  I had the heirloom tomato salad with a pistachio dressing which was also very tasty.  For the entree’ Blaise had wild mushroom pot pie which although dry, he seemed to enjoy.  I had the lobster minus the bed of fava beans they wanted to put it on.  For dessert I had the Bailey’s Irish ice cream sundae.  Yummy!

The only other food to note were the scones Blaise turned me onto yesterday.  At 3:30 every day the Oceanview Cafe’ (the buffet restaurant on 14) has afternoon tea items.  He had had one of these delicious scones a few days earlier and couldn’t get it off his mind, so I had to try it out.  It was a cinnamon raisin scone with raspberry jam and clotted cream.  The scone was warm and so delicious, I can’t stop thinking about it either.

Injury Watch

No injuries.  Almost 2 weeks into this vacation and 9 nights into the cruise and we are all good!

He Said . . .

The problem with writing about sea days is they’re supposed be about like Saturday mornings at home, sleep in a bit, grab breakfast, at Dove Creek if possible, and run the week’s errands.  Well that’s about the extent of it most of the time, but yesterday we had some excitement.  We hear an ill timed announcement from the Captain about 11 or 12 about if you see a water leak and it’s fresh water it’s all good, if it’s salt water it’s bad.  Then he went on to say that this was fresh water from a burst pipe and that all was just fine, I saw the containment area a few hours later, it must have been pretty bad, they even had to move the artwork that was on display to avoid it getting soaked.  BTW, there was a third option concerning the water that I considered when he enumerated the first two but thought if it’s option three they better not taste it…

Otherwise there has been lots of reading, I think Ami mentioned what our love languages turned on to be and that was helpful, if you haven’t read it give it a shot, it’s a quick read and could be helpful to know what your spouse/significant other is and how/why they react the way they do to your displays of love.  

I have moved on to the second or third Lincoln Lawyer and am about 55% complete with it, it’s heating up nicely at this point.  I will probably be done with it tomorrow is my hope.

I am definitely jonesing to get back online so I can catch up on the record breaking run-up in the market, and the musing of the Trump Dossier and tax cuts.  I would like to see what we might see as I hear good things on the small business front may help Ami somewhat.  

Lastly, I’m quite surprised at how calm the seas are at 20 knots, it’s typically 3-6 foot swells with most of it trending toward 3 feet, it’s beautiful for 25 hours a day, yes about every other day we cross another time zone and have to move the clocks back another hour.  It’s been great for sleeping for the creaking that once plagued Ami’s sleep has now crept into my psyche, I think she did that on purpose if I know her.  I’m not sure you guys play little mind games on each other, but we do, every morning I get up and think of a new song to sing while in the bathroom/shower, then I go to town, I even play the old videos on youtube on occasion, why, to plant the song seed to see if Ami will come home and be mad about me planting “that” song seed.  I’ve had her stuck on a song for a few days to a week or two; it’s great fun!!!  First world problems as Brandon would say!!!  That’s it, resting, relaxing, sleeping and watching the rolling waves.  

I will say the best thing about vacations this long are that you lose track of the day of the week; geez I so look forward to that.

Oh and one final note, we ran into a retired Canadian couple that I asked what do you do now that you’re retired, his comment, I’m so busy I can’t figure out when I actually had time to work.  Not sure I’m there yet but we are making plans for China in 2018, Baltic back to back for 2019 and Machu Picchu for 2020, I need to be done by then…

He Said . . .

We are expecting the sea days to be fairly low key so we are planning to combine sea days to not spend cycles discussing how the chest rises and falls while breathing and waiting for the next meal to show up.  That said let me catch you up on our sea day and our stop in Tenerife Canary Islands.

Our sea day was spent reading a counselor’s book on marriage, nothing wrong but I am always on the lookout for ensuring that we are working on it so as to not let it go “unmanaged”; I will provide a few morsels from the Cliff Notes version.

First my own morsel, I was taught many years ago that marriage was really very easy by a couple I had heard on a cruise ship years ago while watching a self made version of The Newlywed Game, it was both profound and trivial I thought, here it is… Make your spouse your best friend, that’s it!!  At the time I brushed it off but over the years have come to learn that it is so very true; back to the book, the author says that your spouse/significant other wants to be loved in one of five ways, they are, Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Gifts of Love, Acts of Love and Physical touch.  Now it’s his belief that it’s pretty easy to figure out which one of these is your spouse’s primary motivator, the one they complain about the most with regard to you not doing something is their key love driver.  Once you figure out which one is their primary love driver, fill that and you will never have a failed marriage.  Remember it’s not YOUR primary love driver, that’s for them to figure out for you, unless you tell them, this is their primary love driver and if you manage to fill that need their “love tank” will get filled, I’ve heard this referred to as “love bank” which I like much better but either way, focus on their love need and you will be rewarded with a much improved relationship.   That was day one of my readings, let me know if it works for you…

In port at Tenerife, we opted to take an excursion to see the volcanic crater that dominates the landscape of this small island chain; what we got was a drive that left me once again addressing my fear of heights and 1000 ft plus sheer cliffs and having to trust my life to a stranger that most probably had no training beyond passing a class C driving test, I was worried.  It was touted as a panoramic view of the crater that was marked as strenuous and mentions of hiking and getting in touch with the landscape of the crater.  It was extremely moon-esque in its look, all obsidian rock and totally void of vegetation; I recalled somewhere that one of the Planet of the Apes movies was done here, and that was confirmed.  Additionally, Raquel Welch did her clothing optional, worst ever, movie here as well, sometime back in 2000 I recall, and another 5-10 westerns back when westerns were still made, if you remember that.

Back on task, this was what we really received, we drove for an hour had to stop to let all the walnut sized bladders relieve themselves, back on the bus for 30 more minutes to arrive at the crater, then for the highlight, off the bus for “20” minutes to walk around and take pictures, I was really unhappy with the time given, I thought we would be there for a couple hours so we could fan out and really get personal with the surroundings, not to be and after checking out the tram, which I would have loved to take to the mountain summit, we were back on the bus and heading back.  It may have been one of the worst excursions we’ve ever taken and speaks to why we continue to venture out further on our own as we get more comfortable with not being left behind by the cruise ship.

I suspect the next cruise we’ll probably be totally on our own!!  Unfortunately we arrived back at the ship with about 2 hours left and were told that it takes 45 minutes to get to town so we were basically done with the Canary Islands without seeing a huge portion of it.  Now it has never been on my short list but I would like to get more up close and personal with another trip if it happens to work out.

One item of note that was new for me, the Canary Islands are only 240 km, 120 miles from Africa; I thought they were due west of Spain, not at all, much more southwest and much closer to Africa than Spain, lesson learned.  

Today’s only comic relief during a lull when the woman running the excursion if there were any questions and someone in back, at just the right time, yells out, isn’t this the airport where they had that terrible crash?  She says I won’t speak about that in public and if you want to discuss it see me afterward, I thought I hadn’t seen that on Air Disasters so it couldn’t have been to big a crash.  Later, on the way back she asked again if you there were any questions, I whispered to Ami, “yea, can we talk about that crash?”, I didn’t say it but it did bring a smile to my face.  

The rest of the day was just enjoying the last views of land before leaving as well as relaxing around the room before the world’s best shower that I am totally addicted to, 45 minutes per night in there, it’s unbelievable!!

Other than that my stupid quip of the day happened at about 10:45, it was almost lights out and Ami says there is some sort of squeak next to the bed that’s driving me crazy, can you take a look?  I said, I don’t have a tool box, I’m not sure what I can do but I’ll take a look.  I tore through the area assuming something was rubbing on something else but didn’t find anything, I said I can’t find anything.  She said, if I lay in this really awkward, uncomfortable position it doesn’t make the noise, see?  I said, good night, she called me an expletive and we turned out the lights.  BTW, in the morning it was still squeaking but by then we had learned to live with it, it was white noise by then…  

Gambling Update

We lost $35 bucks playing quick hits but it was all Ami’s idea so we are at

Blaise - up $1.67

Ami - Down $55.00 [Editor’s Note - It was a joint loss - we did it together]

Prune Watch

Not required!!!!

She Said . . .

Well, it is Friday, October 27 and our first day of 7 at sea across the Atlantic.  At the end of this, we will either want to get off this thing pronto or be so relaxed, it won’t matter.

Since we last wrote, we had another day at sea and visited the Canary Islands.

Day at Sea

Wednesday we spent another day at sea traveling out of the Mediterranean and into the Atlantic to get to the Canary Islands which is 240 kilometers (about 148 miles) from the continent of Africa.

It was a relaxing day filled with lounging around and reading in the Solarium pool area and our balcony.

I finished my book The Rosie Project.  If I had more internet time, I would look up who recommended it and thank him/her.  It was a delightful book but, dammit, there is a sequel.  Which I must now read.  It will have to wait until I have unlimited internet and can download it.

We specifically have chosen to not buy an unlimited internet package because one of the points of going on a cruise is to turn off the communication devices.  The only reason we can blog is because of our status on Celebrity Cruises - we each get 90 free minutes of internet.  If we didn’t have that - no blog for you!

We saw some news about the uprising in Catalonia, where Barcelona is.  Looks like their regional government is going to try to take over for Spain.  I am not sure that is going to go over too well with the Spain’s national government.  Catalonia is significant portion of Spain’s economy.  There were more demonstrations in Barcelona after we left.  Don’t think I would be paying much attention to this if I had not just been there but it will be interesting to see how this plays out. I will be following it.

Tenerife, Canary Islands

We booked an excursion this time.  What we got was not what we expected.  Where we went was, but what we did, was not.  The excursion was marked “strenuous” and said we would walk and explore the crater next to the dormant volcano, Teide (pronounced “tA-dA” with the A’s pronounced as they are in Ami).  This was more of a let’s-ride-around-in-a-bus-and-observe-through-the-windows kind of excursion.  Not our favorite.  

We got out once to take pictures, once to potty, drink coffee, and shop, and once at the crater for only 15 minutes.  15 minutes is all we had to “explore!”  That’s it.  We thought we would have time to hike around the crater for a while.  Nope.  Very disappointing since the terrain was unlike anything we had ever seen before. Just amazing!  The area is a national park.  I would love to return and hike there.

We were quite late coming back to the boat so we didn’t get to wander around the town.  That was a bummer.  The last thing we wanted was to go roaming around and miss the boat being that our next stop was over 3,000 nautical miles away in Florida.

I have to mention to drive.  The road was your typical winding road up a mountain with a grand fall on one side of the road.  I could tell Blaise, with his fear of heights was extremely uncomfortable at times sitting next to the window.  I sat by the window on the way back and even though I really don’t have a fear of heights, I have to admit it quite harrowing at times.

Sangria Tour of Spain

Sadly, the sangria tour of Spain ended in Malaga.  We had zero time to go back into town after being dropped off at the ship from our excursion.  So in my limited exploration of Spanish sangria, I found the best to be in Barcelona, followed by Malaga, and then Cartagena.  All quite yummy. Blaise’s order is Cartagena, Barcelona, then Malaga.  I will miss the sangria.  It is not the same in the U.S.

Dana’s Food Watch

Wednesday’s Dinner:  While I cannot remember what we had for breakfast or lunch that day, the waiter offered to do a surf and turf for me for dinner.  I said that is fine so long as it isn’t a full portion of both.  I received a full portion of the sirloin steak and of the fettuccine with calamari and shrimp.  Blaise and I both ate some of both but not all of either were completely consumed.  Blaise had the barramundi on a bed of bean puree.  If you have never had barramundi, you must have it at least once in your life.  That was Frank and Barbara Litt’s recommendation when we went to Australia last year since it is only found in the waters off of Australia.  We had it in Cairns, Australia the night before we got back on the boat after my broken nose debacle.  I would have been “in” this time had it not been for the bean puree. I cannot recall what we had for our appetizer.  For dessert, Blaise had the cheese plate and I had some sort of chocolate dessert with vanilla ice cream.  Mine was lovely.  Blaise’s cheese plates feature one special cheese with corresponding complementing accoutrements

Since we don’t do anything special for breakfast or lunch, I will only talk about dinner from now on unless there is something of note otherwise.

Last night for dinner, we had a scallop ceviche for the chef’s mers bouche.  Blaise and I both had pate’ for the appetizer.  It was tasty but the portion was so large, I could not finish it.  Blaise had roasted chicken with creamy polenta which looked delicious.  Blaise said he really enjoyed it.  He doesn’t normally like polenta (I think that’s crazy!) but said he loved that one.  I had braised short rib ravioli in hopes they would redeem themselves from my disappointing short rib two nights earlier.  They did.  I love this chef’s pasta!  I don’t know what he does to it, but it is some tasty stuff.  For dessert, I had the chocolate souffle’ with some sort of ice cream.  I’m not a huge souffle’ fan, but this was the best souffle’ I have ever had. It was amazing!  Worth every calorie!  I could not define the flavor of ice cream but it was not vanilla.  It took me a few bites to determine the perfect souffle’ to ice cream ratios but my, oh, my!

Injury Watch

No injuries.  How can you injure yourself if you are on a bus all day?  The acrylic nail on my left pinky popped off though.  I kept it in case the salon on the boat can somehow glue it on.

Malaga Spain

She Said . . .

Malaga was our last stop on the mainland of Spain.  It is a charming little city.  Everything we wanted to see was centrally located.  Definitely a walking city.

Getting Into Town

We did not, again, do an excursion through the cruise line.  I had downloaded a book on my Kindle about doing day trips on foot to see the highlights of Malaga; something I had forgotten I had done about a month ago.  It was written by a British woman who now calls Malaga her home.  So I figured if we could get to town, we would be OK.

As luck would have it, the Celebrity Today information left in our room the night before told of a 10-minute bus ride for 5 euros apiece or a 40 minute walk into town.  Since we had walked I’d say nearly 20 miles put together in Rome, Barcelona, and Cartagena I was fairly keen on the bus option.  Fortunately, and perhaps sensing my sentiment, Blaise offered to buy the bus tickets.  I wa surprised this did not take some prodding on my part.  Even taking the bus, we did a great deal of walking, much uphill or stairs.

The bus ride into town did indeed take about 10 minutes but Blaise makes several comments on the bus ride in, there is no way that walk was 40 minutes.  I disagreed and still disagree.  I was sensing a future suggestion to walk back to the ship.

Our first order of business was to grab a map from the tourist information location quite near where the bus dumped us off because again, the map provided by the cruise ship was just flat useless.  With the new map in hand, we headed to the closest location - the Malaga Cathedral.

Malaga Cathedral

The cathedral, a less than 5 minute walk from Tourist Information building,  seemed rammed in the middle of a bunch of buildings.  While the outside was beautiful, it was impossible to get a picture of the entire building due to the close proximity of the buildings near it.  There was a charge to get into the church which we noted as annoying when we discussed it the night before visiting the site.  But as luck would have it, although the church was open, the ticket booth was not yet manned so we got in for free.  Somewhere in the middle of the building, mass was going on.  Many “chapels” were found around the inside perimeter of the building so we could take a looky loo without disturbing the worshipers.  It was beautiful!  I am not architecture or art enthusiast but it didn’t take that type of knowledge to see the Spanish influence everywhere.  Unlike other churches we have visited this one was quite quiet.  Very respectful of the purpose of the building.

We had learned reading the book we had on Malaga, that this cathedral was built at the location of a Muslim mosque after the Catholics ran the Muslims out of the area, something that happened in many places in this part of the world.

Picasso Museum

We decided what trip to the birthplace of Picasso would be complete without a visit to his museum, the day before his birthday (October 25).  So for two non-Picasso fans, we have spent a lot of time with his work the past few days.  I can say after listening to the audio guide with this museum visit, I understand his point of view even more than I did before.  I am still not a fan of most of it but I did see a few works in this museum I liked.  Now I say I understand his point of view but since my brain is not wired like that of an artist, I could never get from his point A to his point B.  But I can now see if you were an artist and thought like an artist, how you could get there.  Blaise is convinced his artistic style was a product of Picasso’s attempt to monetize his craft.  I disagree.

Alcazaba

We next headed to the Alcazaba.  What is the Alcazaba?  Best I could tell, it was palace/fortification built by the Muslims before they were run out of the area.  It was quite different than any other structure we have seen thus far with lots of outdoor garden areas and architectural details that look more middle eastern as I would describe them.  I am now wondering if, what I have always thought of as middle eastern architectural details, are more based in the Islamic religion as I do not think the Muslims who inhabited this area came from, specifically, the middle east.  It was gorgeous!  If not a bit trying on my asthma since it was on a hill.  It was not a palace housed in simply one building.  The structures had a wall around it, like a fortification but the inside was a series of buildings connected by lovely gardens and walkways. We will post the pictures later on Facebook when we have free WiFi and maybe someone could help out with my understanding the origins of the architectural details.

The Sangria Tour of Spain Continues

Next was my search for a place to sit, relax, and try some Sangria in Malaga.  After walking quite a bit, we found a place off the beaten path.  I had a “shrimp fritter” tapa and red sangria (since I had red in Barcelona and Cartagena, for comparison purposes, I had to stick with red here).  This sangria came with a straw and a spoon for all the green apples that were in the sangria.  It was tasty but so far my favorite is still in Barcelona.  Who knows, maybe the Canary Islands have the best sangria.

Back to the Boat

While drinking the sangria, Blaise hinted at walking back to the boat.  Not the first time he had during the day.  I really don’t mind the walking but we had walked a great deal since vacation started so I didn’t think taking a bus back to the boat was a bad thing, especially since we paid the 5 euros for the roundtrip bus ride.  On the walk back to the bus, Blaise finally said outright, “I’d rather walk to the boat.”  I was not interested.  Had the walk been entirely or even partially in the shade, I would have been OK, but the whole of the walk was in the sun.  Now it was only 72 outside but with that sun beating down on me for 40 whole minutes, the walk was not going to produce a happy wife.  We both hopped on the bus and headed back. No arguments or anything.

I don’t really talk much about our time on the boat because with 7 days at sea, I’ll have a great deal of uneventful time thus less to talk about thus more time to talk about the boat and life on the boat.

Such a lovely day with my husband!

Notable

The streets here were even fancier than in Cartagena - beautiful tiles.  People seemed to have no concern about people driving on these, what appear to me to be too-delicate-for-heavy-multi-ton vehicle, streets.

Dana’s Food Watch

Breakfast - buffet items with no inappropriate commentary from a stranger

Lunch - I had a chicken salad sandwich and one small piece of pizza.  I cannot remember what Blaise ate since we were at the lunch buffet.

Dinner - Our little single bite thing tonight was a puffy pastry with goat cheese on top.  Blaise is not necessarily a fan of goat cheese but he did comment how delicious this was.  For an appetizer, I had the octopus and Blaise had burrata with pistachios and crostini.  We both had the braised short rib for our entrees.  Blaise said his was delicious and fall-of-the-bone moist.  Mine was not.  It was chewy, confirmed by Blaise when he tried the part I left on my plate because I was tired of chewing.  To make matters worse for me, the short rib came on a bed of beans.  Blaise had the cheese plate for dessert and the Luminae redeemed itself with me with a delicious, creamy mascarpone cheesecake with berries.

Injury Watch

No injuries, not even a single trip.

Coming Up

Tomorrow is a day at sea and then our final stop on Thursday is in Tenerife, the Canary Islands.  For this stop, we actually purchased an excursion through the cruise ship to see the craters from the volcano, or something of that nature.

He Said . . .

Today’s stop is Malaga, a quaint little “city” at the southernmost point of Spain.  Originally I was extremely excited to be stopping here because I knew I would be close enough to Gibraltar to take a side trip there via an excursion, it’s only 2.5 hours by car, and originally there was an excursion scheduled for a visit; it was pulled from Celebrity’s website about June or Jul and I was extremely disappointed, I was so looking forward to it.  That being the case I had no real locations of interest that I was particularly looking forward to, must haves so to speak and we went about the creation of our “Malaga on your own” as we had done for the first two stops on this cruise.  

Having seen the Picasso museum in Barcelona we thought we owed it to ourselves, and all of the people who had so diligently invested in our upbringing and culture since birth that we would have to see the Malaga Picasso Museum as well; he was born here in Malaga and they have a beautiful museum of some twelve studio sized rooms that contain most of his later cubist works.  I say later, we’ll say post 1920 works, that for me is the travesty of the exhibit, I find a miniscule number of pieces after 1903 that I truly love, there are a few but not many.  I did listen to the audio for the exhibit (since we weren’t in a hurry) and I came across a morsel that helped me immensely, the guide said that in his early years he painted what the subject’s outward manifestation told him to paint and later (I’ll assume somewhere around 1903 and his run in with the avant garde in Paris) he painted what HE interpreted were HIS emotions of the subject.  Now that made some sense to me and it truly confirmed why I liked his earlier works so much more than his later works.  Now armed with that bit of knowledge I felt complete in being able to defend my stance on his place in art history, Velazquez still has nothing to worry about, and Prof. Dilson would be proud of my growth, had it only occurred 20+ years ago in the class…

On to the Roman ruins, nothing to grand and not nearly as well developed as the Cartagena ruins but always an interesting glimpse into how early man progressed; fortunately this was next door to the Alcazaba fort and ruins.  It was extensive and we traipsed all over the site, Ami didn’t want to walk the massive hill to get to the pinnacle of the fort so we went back down without seeing all of it; I didn’t want to either but I would have soldiered on had she been all that interested.  I was grateful she wasn’t!!  We did manage to see the working bullfighting ring from the top and did not feel the need to go see it at ground level; I’m not certain how I feel about the sport, I’ve never given it much thought, on it’s surface it seems barbaric and cruel to the animal but there are times when the bull gores the matador to death; I wonder if he is put out to pasture or does he go back into the line to be used in the next bull fight?  Nonetheless it is very much a part of Spanish culture and I wouldn’t want to judge it too harshly without requisite knowledge and research, I’ll have to give this some thought; where to fall on the matter, outlaw or embrace?

Last stop for the day was at a lovely side street cafe where Ami could compare and contrast the Sangria in each of the Spanish ports we had visited, Barcelona was her favorite, I personally liked the Cartagena version best; don’t be misled, they were all fantastic, they reminded me of Long Island Ice Tea, you have know idea they aren’t tea until you stand up to go to the restroom, these were just like that, can’t taste a bit of the alcohol, you know it’s gonna be bad.  Ami had a shrimp tapa and I had a welcome glass of water in a beautiful cobalt blue decanter, I thought why don’t they make cars this color, they’d fly off the assembly line!!  We enjoyed the down time and held hands while talking about the Catalan issues in Barcelona, whether or not Brandon was missing us (he’s in Florida working catastrophe duty from Irma and hopefully making a lot of money), and the stock market run up while we were out of country!!  

We walked down the main pedestrian walk and commented on how much these city’s spend on their streets, the walks are all made of marble stones, it must cost a fortune, but is beautiful to look at and quite nice under foot.  From there it was back to the bus and back to our home away from home for the day, perhaps tomorrow I’ll cover our stateroom attendants, Rene and Ian, both good guys that work extremely hard.  Until then…

P.S.  Since I heard there is a food watch as well as an injury watch I thought I would add a couple of my own…

Casino Watch:

Blaise Up $1.67 thus far

Ami Down $20 after a windfall to make up for the $40 she was down from the previous night.

Prune watch will begin in earnest if things don’t change radically and soon…