Fri, 2/21/25 At Sea

Day 47 – Friday, February 21, 2025 – At Sea

Because we gained an hour, we were both awake early. Because the ship was pretty quiet Mary got me in and out of the shower first. This means we were both ready by about 8:50 or so. We wanted to get down to the casino to sign up for the 10:00 poker tournament. When we got there a little after 9:00 we were already in the eighth and ninth position. Had we waited much longer we would not have been able to play. It sounds like there might be a 1:00 tournament too so that's good.

We went back up to seven for breakfast. Mary stuck to her fruit and bagel. I tried the lox and bagel again. I like smoked salmon, so this is almost a no brainer. I had it expresso again. It is still not the taste I’m going for, but it seems to be the best and most consistent. I will keep trying. We worked on the puzzles for a little bit. Mary was buried in her phone. One of the doctors she worked with died unexpectedly and she was trying to find out more details. She will have to call someone in Chicago. No matter what the answer, it doesn't sound like a good thing.

We headed to the poker table. Mary made it to seven. I made it to six. Mary got hurt by having two pair lose to three of a kind twice. I got hurt twice because my kicker was one under theirs. For example, we both had a pair of kings, but I had a 7 kicker and he had an 8. Lastly, I have ace and ten. The flop is ace, something, 10. The other guy rivers a flush. I go home. I'm not complaining because I know this is how poker tournaments can go. Had any one of those 3 turned positive for me I could have made it to the bubble or better. Ohh well.

We came back to the room. Mary made some phone calls on her doctor friend. She also made a couple of excursion calls. She seems to have a pretty solid lead on a lift equipped taxi that we can use in Perth. I spent the time updating this log. As I am writing this, I am no longer behind. I still want to go outside and push. It's a little after 3:00 in the afternoon. We have a special dinner tonight called The Chef’s table. I will write more on that below.

I decided to go out on 7 and see if I can push at all. The ship is rocking pretty good. There's a pretty steady wind outside but it's not cold. So, we head the seven. We went out on the port side, and it was just too windy and cold. Mary put me on the starboard side and I was able to push there for about 40 minutes. It was one of these deals where I pushed forward three feet only to be pushed back two feet by the wind and the rocking ship. I did not make much progress, but I did feel better about being outside. I'm hoping that the ship's mellows as we round Australia. There was one guy who was trying to explain why of the ship was so rocky underneath Australia. It has to do with the water on one side from the Pacific and the water from the Indian Ocean on the other side. They meet underneath Australia in what they call the Tasman Sea. That's where we are now. What do I know?  Sounds plausible.

We had no idea what the Chef's Dinner was going to entail. It is one of the countless special dinners they have. Of course you spend extra money on it. ($100) It gives us an opportunity to try something other than the dining room and specialty rooms. We meet outside of the restaurant on five. There are 5 other couples. We have to sign a form saying that we are not sick before going in. They don't want sick people in the kitchen. Kind of makes sense, I guess. We are paraded from the front of the restaurant to the back. We go into an area they call the galley. It's basically the back of the house where everything happens. This is where the waiters go to get the food and everything. We were given a tour of the various aspects of the kitchens including the freezers, the butcher area, where they put the dinners together, cetera. We're back there for about 20 minutes. It's kind of cool to see what most people don't see. It is a huge area with probably 100 waiters wandering around getting this and that. Behind the various stalls are the cooks. In one section, you see the butchers. There are four guys there that are taking various cuts of meat and making them portion size. Without much exaggeration, the one guy must have had 100 lbs of chicken in front of him. There were guys in the back that had probably 100 lbs of meat which they were making steaks out of. I cannot imagine just cutting off beef, chicken and fish for umpteen hours a day for days on end. They were all friendly.

The head of the restaurants, Silvio, and the chief chef of the ship, Andreas, lead the group out onto the main dining room.  We have our own special table in the back of the restaurant. I will not go into detail here. I will say what follows for the next three hours is basic gluttony. I will show you the pictures of the food. I will show you the menu. If I counted correctly, there were six or seven courses. Each course was explained. If there was a wine change, the wine was explained. The wines were top end. The champagne we drank was $108.00 a bottle. I did not get the price on the Chardonnay, but it wasn't cheap. The Cabernet we had was $157 a bottle. These are obviously inflated restaurant prices, but they were high end wines. We even had a late harvest Sauvignon Blanc for dessert. It was good. By the end of the meal no one could move. I have to admit, had I known it was going to be like this I would have done things differently. I pretty much ate everything that was put in front of me. I would have been more selective and not eaten everything. When we signed up for this event, Mary explained that she does not do fish or seafood. So courses that had fish or seafood, they made her interesting substitutes. In one course where we had oysters she was given a vegetable sushi of some sort. Where we had shrimp she was given chicken. They did a very nice job.

The dinner lasted 3 hours. When it was over there was still time to go to the Princess theater and see the show. There happened to be a singer who did Karen Carpenter music. We went there. I think I listened to a song or two before falling asleep. Mary listened to the whole thing. (I will have to do a better job of capturing these people's names.) The lady was pretty good. There were a few songs I didn't recognize, but I'm not a Karen Carpenter fan. Karen's brother Richard is still alive. I always wonder how the lead singer can sing Karen songs if Richard is still in the picture. I'm not expecting you to answer this. Just the idle thoughts of someone who ate too much and drank too much.

We rocked and rolled our way back to the room. The ship has been on a nonstop rocking and rolling fest for the last two or three days. I think I mentioned it before, but the creaking of the ship is crazy. I wanted to take a video, and I might still, where you can see the drapes swing back and forth from the wall of about 5 or 6 inches sometimes. That would demonstrate the rocking and rolling. The other fun thing we have going on is the bathroom door didn't lock properly. Throughout the night every couple of hours or so, the door would let loose and slam open. Now this door has to be about 150 lbs. It's 8 by 6 at least and two inches thick. When that baby lets loose and slams you have to pick me up off the ceiling and I don't have my hearing aids in.

We called it a night. It was a very successful day. I can officially add glutton to my resume.