April 21, 2024 Sea Day #7

There was no rush to get up this morning. The waves were less than one meter swells. There was a light breeze, broken cloud and the morning temperature was 14°C.

We arrived in the dining room just before the closing of breakfast service at 9:30 a.m. After breakfast we walked more than 30 minutes during the “On Deck for a Cause” 5 km walk to support Ukrainian refugees. If you donated more than $25 you received a themed t-shirt.

The Mariners Lunch was today. In the past everyone at the lunch, people with any of the loyalty program levels of 1 to 5 stars received an authentic Delftware coaster when leaving the meal. Last year and today, the tiles were left in our room after the morning tidying by the stewards. At the lunch, we sat with Mary, the first passenger that we met on day 1; Sandra from Calgary and Patty and Preece from Seattle. Sparkling wine was waiting on the table for the toast at the beginning of the meal. The menu had three starters - we chose the lobster, pomegranate, pear and goat cheese salad; three entrées - we chose Barramundi with spinach, asparagus and peas or or beet falafels with carrots, beans, asparagus & zucchini plus dessert which was called Triple Chocolate Delight.

The captain’s noon message gave the ship’s position at about half way between Ponta Delgada and Brest, France. The sky was cloudy, the temperature was just 15°C. The weather forecast for overnight called for rougher seas. The captain had mentioned this yesterday for tonight.

The clocks went forward another hour at Noon which will equate to British time, and will again tomorrow to agree with western European time for when we arrive in Brest, France.

At 2 p.m. in B.B. King’s Blues Club was a presentation by Paul Eschenfelder titled Henry, Pepper and the Moon Shot. It was about a Portuguese explorer prince in the early 1400s, who financed Portuguese exploration along the western Africa coast in search of a sea route to India for getting into the spice trade.

Afterwards, Larry was looking forward to an Asian Beer Tasting but changed his mind when he was told the bar was low on Asian beer and had substituted two of them for Budweiser and Blue Moon. One of the two remaining Asian beers was Sapporo which he had already tried in Japan last year. He joined me by the Lido pool where we played a few Five Crowns games.

Before we went to dinner, we filled a laundry bag and completed the order form for our room steward to take to the laundry. We should have it back in a few days.

We had a 6 p.m. reservation for the Tamarind Pan-Asian Cuisine restaurant on Deck 10 for an early anniversary dinner. It can be reached easily using the aft elevator or staircase, however we noticed several couples, entering quite wind blown from a 100 meter outside walk from midship. They probably had not checked the deck plan for direct elevator access and arrived at the Tamarind doors from the exterior deck. I assume that they had taken the centre elevators (very few people use the stairs) and realized that there was no interior corridor on this deck to go to the restaurant.

There was a good choice of starters, mains and dessert. After we ordered Elly, our waitress brought some light and fluffy rice crackers accompanied by a tiny pot of soy sauce, tiny bowls of sweet & sour sauce, a green spicy salsa and a red spicy salsa. For starters we both chose the satay sample with chicken, shrimp, pork, lamb and beef skewers to dip in peanut sauce, then Thai Citrus Scallops and lobster & shrimp potstickers. We chose different entrées: Thai Basil Szechuan Shrimp or sweet & sour vegetable tempura and sides Asian eggplant with spicy coconut centre, Dungeness crab fried rice and Sake-braised oyster and shiitake mushrooms. There was just a bit of room for dessert. Our choices were Mango Posset and Exotic Fruit with green tea-lemongrass syrup & mandarin sorbet. A cup of English Teatime tea to finished the delicious meal.

It was too late to go to the 7:30 p.m. show with pianist Brett Cave, but we went to the 9 p.m. show. Usually the 7:30 p.m. shows are packed, but most of the seats were full for the later show too.

This evening the wind was east 27 km per hour and the ship’s course was NE 53.26° at a speed of 15 knots (about 28 km per hour) which would probably produce a wind effect of 55 km per hour. The ship’s path will take us across the western side of the Bay of Biscay which is a notoriously rough.

Total steps today were 9,714