Day 25 - Wednesday, January 29, 2025 – At Sea

I'm sure it's no surprise if I tell you that we had breakfast downstairs on seven. It's the same breakfast we've been having all along. Kind of boring I know. If you remember, we booked this trip through a travel agency called the Cruise Specialists. The company has two representatives on board and they have a regular meeting. When we are at sea, they are in the wheelhouse bar from 10:00 to 11:00 in the morning. Mary had met them before so I wanted to meet them. We went down there and we met Kim and Caroline. Kim is actually a guy from Australia. Carolina is from London. The company owes us some money because they paid for one of their excursions. Because none of these excursions were disabled friendly they were going to give us some money back. Kim promised that they would take care of it. After that we talked about different places in New Zealand and Australia. Kim provided a lot of information about Australia. We sat there for an hour and talked about this and that. It was nice to meet them. We will probably go down there maybe once a week just to see if anything has changed.

We headed back to the cabin for a few hours. We both sat outside on the balcony for a while. It had to be 75 and perfect. We were not in the direct sun so we didn't have to worry about getting too hot. We sat out there until Mary had to go to her acupuncture appointment. I decided to go down and push on 7 while she was at her appointment. I pushed for a good 90 minutes or so. For whatever reason, my watch is not counting my pushes correctly. I think it has to do with the bouncing of the ship. Not a big deal. I used to track them but I don't any longer. I would guess I got somewhere near 3000 pushes in.

Earlier we had decided to go to Sabatini’s for dinner. We have a free specialty restaurant coupon burning a hole in our pocket. We made reservations for 6:00. This is the same restaurant where we have breakfast every day so we were seated at the same table where we sit every day for breakfast. They might have to put a bronze plaque up near it soon. The 1st order of business was wine. Even Mary had a glass. I include the picture of the wine menu below. In the red section, Mary had the third up from the bottom. From my first glass I had the second up from the bottom, the Cabernet. Later, I had a second glass which was the bottom one. I'd have to say I like the Cabernet better than the second one. Mary liked her so much she actually had a second glass. I thought I would show you the menus and the actual food so you get a better idea of what our choices are. We both got the same appetizer which is the cheese balls, for lack of a better term. You can see in the picture of the menu what is really called. We both have the salad. For the pasta course I had lobster tortellini. Mary had the spaghetti and meatball. For our main meal, I had the fish called Brazino, or something similar. Mary had grilled chicken breasts.  I've been known to say the only thing I don't eat is eggplant. On the menu there was eggplant parmesan. I decided to try it. I was pleasantly surprised. I actually liked it. I don't know that I would order it, but it was pretty good. I always like trying something new. The food in the main dining room is very good, but the food at the specialty restaurants is even better. It's hard to put your finger on it exactly, but there is a clear difference. I could have eaten my fish all day long. The lobster tortellini was excellent too. Just good stuff. For dessert, I had a mint chocolate martini. I'm not exactly sure how they made it. I probably don't wanna know how they made it. It was good. Mary had the fruit plate. It was an amazing dinner. We still have two more coupons for specialty restaurants. They have a steak place which we have to try. We only have about 80 days to go…

By time we finish dinner, it was almost 9:00. We went down to the explorer’s lounge to listen to a comedian named Steve McCool. We got there a little early so Mary ordered a soda and I had a rusty nail which is Scotch and drambuie. I did not drink it immediately because if I had one more drink I would be asleep and miss the comedian. In hindsight, it might have been better to fall asleep. I don't think I laughed once during his 40 minute gig. I think part of it was i just couldn't understand him. He had an Australian accent that was really difficult for me. The thing I noticed though was there were very few people laughing anywhere. The comedian finished his show. I've finished my drink. We headed back to the cabin and called it a night.