Mon, 3/17/25   At Sea

Day 71 - Monday, March 17th, 2025 – Day at Sea

I decided to go to breakfast. Mary bought me a bottle of Frank’s Red Hot Extra Hot hot sauce in Cape Town. It is stuff we can buy in the states. It's not Tabasco. It's a little less spicy than Tabasco. I had that with my poached eggs. It spices up the bland eggs. It's a good combination.  

Our next port of call is Mindelo, Cape Verde Islands. At 11:00 they have a presentation where a person called the destination expert gives a talk on the port. This is an hour long presentation about what excursions there are, where you can go on foot, the history of the island, etcetera. We were interested in how close to the port is in shopping. We already knew that there are no accessible excursions or taxis available. We researched this to the Nth degree. It just ain't gonna happen here. Not a big deal. It is a small island. It appears that there's a shopping center about a 15 minute walk straight into town. We will see. If we go up to the left there's supposed to be a nice beach. It seems like every island in this area has something to do with the slave trade. It is sad to think that the island you live on is mostly known for its part in the slave trade.

One of the specialty restaurants that they have maybe once a week is called the crab shack. It's a seafood based menu. The appetizer is hush puppies. You then are given a choice of three different stews. And then for your entry you are given the choice of two different pots filled with different types of seafood. I included a picture of the menu. And then for dessert you have a choice of two things. There's a surcharge of $45.00 for the lunch. Mary does not eat seafood, so I only paid $45.00. We had the guys deliver a pizza from next door to where I was having my seafood. It worked out well that way. I had the Alaskan shellfish chowder. It was really good. It was very heavy. It was cream soup with crib, shrimp, mussels, clams, potatoes and bacon. For my entree I have the seafood boil. It had some of the same ingredients as the chowder, but this was steamed without cream. It was seafood. It was good. Mary had to ask the waiter how to cut open the crab legs. After a brief instruction, Mary got it. She actually dug a lot of crab out of the crab legs. As most of you know, for every 5 lbs of crab legs you get about half an ounce of crab meat. And that's without much of an exaggeration. For dessert they had the Key Lime Pie in a jar. It was good, but overly sweet. So my lunch was good. There was too much food, especially with the heavy cream based chowder. The dessert was so so at best. It was a good lunch. Was it worth the $45.00 extra? Probably not. I wanted to do it just to experience it. Now I can check the box and move on.

Mary had the pizza brought over from the restaurant next door. We had the pepperoni pizza before. She really liked it. She only ate about half of it though because it's a decent sized pizza.

After lunch, I went outside and pushed. Mary walked around twice while I pushed for an hour or so. The weather was perfect. I still don't want to overdo my hand, so I was only out there for an hour. We went inside and rested until about 630. We wanted to go the 7:30 show. It was called something like Rock Production. We got there early so we had to sit and wait for almost 30 minutes. Not a big deal. It's a perfect people watching spot. At 7:30 the cruise director comes out and he stresses that there should be no pictures or videos taken. That's why I don't include any here. Although I think Mary did take some pictures. Please don't turn her into the Princess Sheriff's Department. For the next hour, we listen to a group of 10 or so young people singing and dancing to various songs. The time frame seems to include the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. They are popular songs for the most part. Most of them are well known. They are a little too pop like for my tastes, but it is what it is. At the end of the day this show was good. I'm glad we went.

On the way back to the cabin we stopped at the crown grill bar. They had their Saint Patrick's Day drinks on display. We decided to try one period. I had something called “top of the morning”. It was whiskey based with some other ingredients in it. Way too complicated for the way it tasted. It wasn't bad, just wasn't anything special. Mary had Jameson and diet sprite. We both have two of them listening to a jazz combo dash singer and piano. The singer played the flute also. It was a pretty good show for about 30 minutes. We then headed up to the room. It had been another good day.