TC1 Days 8 & 9: At sea

The days are starting to blend together.

The big event for me on Day 8 (Tuesday) was my first beer on board (not counting the beer tasting on Day 2).

I read on the aft deck for much of the afternoon, finishing Speaking in Tongues by Jeffery Deaver (described in the previous post). I worked on the second puzzle in the late afternoon and it was nearly complete when I left.

I had a jumbo shrimp cocktail and french onion soup for appetizers, both mediocre. The entree was a seafood macaroni, which was interesting but I wouldn’t get it again. We watched more Downton Abbey after dinner.

The seas on Day 9 (Wednesday) were the roughest yet. The ship rocked-and-rolled pretty energetically. The good news was that I felt fine. No seasickness whatsoever. I was even able to read on the deck without discomfort.

The captain gave a presentation at 9 am on the work done during the two weeks of dry dock work that immediately preceded our cruise. Unfortunately, I didn’t see the notice for this talk until I got out of bed at 9:30. However, I learned a lot about the work done from others who attended. As expected, the Deck 10 lounge and coffee bar are brand new. Also, I correctly surmised that our mattress was new. But so is everyone else’s – every passenger mattress was replaced. That was 17 cargo containers of mattresses.

I got to the port talk before dinner, but discovered that it was the same talk that I had heard a couple of days earlier. So I skipped out and instead went to the service desk to buy $200 worth of euros. The current exchange rate is $1.34 per euro.

Dinner was formal and we actually attended this one. Good thing because Dave skipped it, so if we hadn’t shown up Jeff and Judy would have been all alone. We all had the filet mignon (excellent) and I had a lemon mousse with a custard sauce that was the best dessert yet.