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My Quiche Lorraine

December 12, 2006- Tuesday

Today didn't start out too auspiciously. First Bob showered - that went OK.

About 8:30 we started out for breakfast. I decided to go to the dining room rather than go through the buffet line, and they put us at a table for 10, and eventually 6 others joined us. We gave our order, and then waited. And waited. And waited. We got our juice. We got coffee or tea. But it took us over an hour to get our food. We missed the 0915 presentation. I could see Bob's cereal over on the counter, but the rest of us had ordered various items - one person had kippers, two had eggs Benedict. I had just ordered fried eggs, bacon and toast.

We got our food about 9:55. They gave me the eggs and toast, but forgot the bacon. Their excuse was that 300 people all came into the restaurant at once and they weren't prepared. But it is not as if they didn't know we were on board. The cruise is fully booked.

Bob ate and left to go on the kitchen tour at 10:15 (which met right outside the restaurant). Afterwards he went to a demonstration by the chef of the Pinnacle grill, where they demonstrated salmon with lemon glaze and rosemary crumbs and three-grain pilaf with olives. They gave him the recipes. Meantime, I went up to the internet cafe to get email. I was having trouble sending email although I could get it OK.

It was now just before noon, and so we went into the dining room for lunch. The boat was rocking a bit, and I didn't want to stand in a buffet line with a tray. I didn't bother to go back to the room with the computer.

This time we were at a table quite near where our dinner table was with two other couples. Bob had cheddar and crab chowder and chilled pear soup. I had Thai Curried Chicken Salad (which came in a compote type thing with a lot of lettuce on the bottom), and a Quiche Lorraine which was quite thick. Then I had a Caribbean Pineapple Sundae (with coconut ice cream) for dessert.

The captain announced that we had gotten underway late and still with only one engine. He said the engineers worked all night and they finally fixed the electrical fault (I guess in the generator) at about 0100. So we were going as fast as the Maasdam would go (20+ knots), but we would not get to Half Moon Cay (which is down south of Eleuthra) until 2:30 tomorrow. Therefore all shore excursions were canceled, and money would be refunded.

We should go ashore to the cay and book additional excursions at the kiosk there on the cay. I'm not sure if I want to do that or not.

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Elevator rug

Immediately after lunch we went up to play team trivia. We joined two couples - the men were brothers from Toronto. Joyce and John; Carol and Bob. It's too bad we aren't Ted and Alice. They asked us for a team name, and I suggested the Canadians, and they said no. So my next suggestion was "Brothers and Others", which they took. One of the couples we lunched with was also there, and also Al and Linda from dinner.

There were 15 questions plus a bonus question.

Answers to the questions that we knew included 1) Bill Gates 2) Lox, 3) Forest Gump 4) Top Gun (where does Tom Cruise say "I have a need for speed") 5) How many pills a day do you take when a doc writes QID on your prescription (4 - the Q is the Latin for four), and we got the bonus right which was "What is the 'royal disease'?" (hemophilia)

One that we/I guessed at was the name of the breed of dog which originally was bred to flush woodcock (cocker spaniel - I said that I couldn't think of a dog with 'wood' in the name so it had to be 'cock').

We got wrong "Hang 5" because none of us had heard of it and we changed our answer to Hang 10. We got wrong the burial state of Bruce Lee and Jim Hendrixx (Washington state). And the Canadians got wrong the referee's gesture indicating 'holding'.

One group got them all right (16 points). Three groups including the one with Linda and Al had one wrong (15 points).

After the trivia (which took a little more than half an hour, and was in the Crow's Nest on the top deck), we came down to the room, and I wrote up the trip to date, and Bob started to read the NY Times digest (which is apparently free), Reader's Digest and watch TV and then fell asleep. We missed going to tea.

Today's elevators said "Tuesday" on the floor.. Yesterday they said "Monday". I guess you could match them to your underwear.

I went to the central atrium on our floor to see if there was a hot spot there. There were two wireless networks, but I couldn't log on to either of them. So I went up to the 7th deck, and managed to log on, but not send email.

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King Crab legs

This was a formal night, and all of a sudden there were multiple couples in formal gear - it was only about 4:30. I think they were going to the Captain's reception. About 5, I remembered that it was formal night for us too, and went back to the room. Bob was already dressed. We went up to dinner about 5:30.

Bob and I both had shrimp cocktail (4 jumbo shrimp). Larry had the fish cake (which looked nasty to me). For the salad/soup course Bob and Rona (who seems to be an old picky eater) had the mango gazpacho. She complained because it wasn't red and didn't have any tomato in it. I had the arugula and frisee salad (Al had asked me what arugula was, so I asked the waiter to point it out to me, and I showed him what it was).

For the main course, three or four of the others had the salmon filet, and Bob and I had the king crab legs. They were cold (over cold water), and didn't have any butter with them, so I was kind of disappointed. For dessert, Al had the crepes Suzette (which were just ordinary pancakes, Bob had the hot fudge sundae (which just had chocolate sauce and not fudge), Rona had mango sorbet (which she just picked at), Linda had the double strawberry cheesecake (two strawberries on it), and I had the Cappuccino Bombe. This was coffee ice cream coated in bittersweet chocolate and was very good - kind of like a coffee Good Humor.

We were done by 1915, and went back to our room because the early show didn't start until 2030.

The show was called "Gold", and it was a show tune retrospective. These are comparisons to the shows we saw on the NCL Crown. Maasdam's stage is bigger, but there was no live orchestra.

The theatre itself did not have any kind of stair step seating, so the people in the back could not see the stage if there were people seated in front of them. This is a great big black mark on Maasdam AFAI am concerned.

The lighting was crappy. People on our side of the stage that were out in front of the proscenium on the apron were often in shadow. I see no reason for this. Sometimes the spotlights created the illusion that the dancers had no feet, as their lower legs were cut off. I didn't notice the lighting on the Crown - in retrospect that was probably because it was good enough not to draw attention.

The 'special effects' which weren't that special. Occasionally a little mist or smoke, and one dance which was done with black light.

The costumes often were IMO ill-fitting and unflattering. I thought the dance troupe on the Crown had sexy and attractive costumes. The stage set was amateurish - musical notes distributed in various places.

The show itself was a retrospective of show tunes. There were four people with mikes on their heads - two girls and two men. One couple (the brunette and the larger guy) were primarily singers. The other couple (the blonde girl and the smaller man) both sang and danced. Then there were one or two other men and four other girls who were primarily dancers.

I didn't think the dancing or the choreography was worth much. There was a nice ballet type duet (dancing - no singing) to Moon River, and I thought the ensemble to 76 Trombones was good. The rest of it just wasn't very special. I really like the dance shows on the Crown better.

Afterwards, I figured out how to send email, so I went up to the internet cafe and did that.

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Water sloshing with waves in the Lido pool

December 13th - Wednesday

Woke up this morning (Friday the 13th is on Wednesday this month) and looked out our window (which is a large two pane window with curved ends) and saw someone standing at the rail looking out to sea and smoking a cigarette and periodically taking pictures of the sunrise.

We got our breakfast delivered this morning. It was what we ordered and when we ordered it. I thought the room steward would deliver it, but it was someone different. I'm not sure whether we should have tipped him or not. We were supposed to call for pickup of the tray, and they never came, so when the room steward finally got to us, the tray was still there.

We are supposed to get to Half Moon Cay today. I looked at the map, and it is down below Eleuthra. But since we started out from Norfolk late, we won't be there until 1430, and they decided to have the bbq that would normally have been on the beach up on the Lido deck where the covered pool is.

So we went up there, but ate in the Lido dining room instead of doing the BBQ. For dessert we had some of HALs famous bread pudding which was excellent.

The boat seemed to have slowed down some. We went out to the Lido deck pool after lunch. The waves were making the pool water really slosh around in the pool. I was surprised they let people into the pool. I took some pictures of land to the west of us which I assume was somewhere in the Bahamas - probably Eleuthra.

After lunch, we met again for trivia and did absolutely horribly. We had correct answers for only 9 out of 16 questions. We did not know what the SOS on the Brillo pads stood for (Save Our Saucepans), or that the banana was the cheapest and most popular fruit (we said apple) or the name of the Las Vegas casino with the skyline of NYC was NY, NY or the name of a group of bears was a "sleuth" of bears. We didn't know the name of a song of Brian Adams was "Summer of 69" - I'd never even heard of him. The other people convinced me that the planet with an orbit of 84 years was Pluto and not (as Bob said) Uranus. And they thought that the country that many countries in Africa severed relations with in 1974 was South Africa, and it was not - it was Israel.

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Looking down on the tender

We did get to the cay on schedule, but since we were only going to be there until 1700, I decided not to go ashore, but wait until next time. We went down to our deck (deck 6) and I took some photos of the boats which were taking people ashore

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Photo from the bow

Then I went up the stairs at the bow to deck 7 and out on the bow, and took some photos from there. Bob had gone back to the room, and he saw me on the bow camera.

For dinner, I had Oysters Rockefeller and Bob had a watermelon fruit cocktail. Then we both had a sirloin and twice baked potato, which was very good. I had berry crisp ala mode for dessert, and Bob had tiramisu. Rona again ordered one desert for herself and one for the table for everyone to taste - this time it was Chocolate Avalanche Cake.

Afterwards we went to "Battle of the Sexes" which we thought (incorrectly) would be the newlywed game, but instead was men against women in a kind of team Match Game. It was mildly amusing. The women lost. The main attraction tonight was a comedian named Noodles something, and he was very amusing.

The 14th was another sea day. I decided to try the Lido for breakfast this time, so we made our way up there. Bob doesn't think it is laid out too well as you have to wait while everyone gets their waffles or omelets cooked instead of having those things off in other stations.

Bob sat down at a table with a lady already sitting there and she didn't say anything to us, but when her husband came along, we found out that she was blind. We had a very interesting conversation.

The TV has caught up with the correct time (it was a day late yesterday), but it said that the winds were 26 knots, and waves were 7 to 20 feet. I tried the 6th deck atrium to do email, but eventually had to go up to the 7th deck.

The Trivia was before lunch this time, and we were again in last place although we got 10 right this time. We didn't know the Greek word used by psychologists for cleansing (catharsis), we didn't know that jai lai came from Spain, or that there was a 1000 ft deep lake in Guatemala named Atitlan, or that Walt Disney's first Mickey Mouse was in 1928. We did know that a dory was a fish, and I (at any rate) knew that a stomata was in the leaf of a plant. The sea was really calm and things were sunny.

We went to lunch down in the main dining room and I had the squash apple soup and Bob had the Bahama banana soup. The two couples with us were from Mass. and VA near DC. Bob had a hamburger, and I had spaghetti. I had praline ice cream and he had a banana sundae. While we were at lunch we went though some very nasty rainy weather and the waves have picked up.

Afterwards we went to a talk on the tropical rainforest, which unfortunately concentrated on the plants so Bob had to poke me to keep me awake.

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Towel elephant

The steward has been doing what I assume are towel animals, but until the 14th, I couldn't tell what animal they were. On the 14th, he did an elephant, which I recognized, so I put it on my night stand.

For dinner on the 14th, we both had Antilles Shrimp Cocktail, which was tiny shrimp on a cantaloupe slice, and then Bob had Green Pea Soup, and the peas in it were really green and not yellow-green, and I had a nice salad of Bibb lettuce, olives, hard boiled eggs and tuna.

For dinner, he had a roasted turkey dinner, and I had cheese manicotti. He had a raspberry sundae for dessert, and I had chocolate mousse in a hard chocolate shell basket.

The entertainment tonight was a pianist who took requests at the end and made them into a medley - which included the 1812 Overture, Scot Joplin, Nola, God Bless America, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and the Flight of the Bumblebee. I came in at the end, as I had been doing computing until then.

We set our clocks ahead an hour and then went to bed. I can't set the minutes on my watch for some reason.

Tomorrow - St. Thomas