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Friday
Friday was a sea day, so there were no stops. The ship had a few things planned to entertain us, but actually fewer things than I would have expected. Nevertheless, it was a fabulous day -- relaxing, mellow, and full of good talk and pleasant bonding.
We started the day off with breakfast and since there were actually teen events planned, Becca ditched us and went up to deck 14, the highest deck on the ship, to hang out with the teens.
Chris and I went to a demonstration of how to make animal shaped loaves of bread, which was something I was actually really interested in finding out more about, since my limited success with the bread bunny at Easter. It wound up being very short, but he showed us how to make a turtle and a frog.
They were doing a tour of the sip’s kitchens at 10:30, so to kill some time, we checked in on Becca and saw that none of her stuff had actually started yet. Chris went back to the room and grabbed the postcards, and I went off to the kitchen tour.
Which was packed! I would guess that there were two hundred people (out of about 1200 passengers) crammed into the atrium of the main dining room. I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and abandoned that plan, grabbing my laptop and finding Chris up in the Crow’s Nest.
I have to admit that I was feeling a bit intimidated by my blog. I was two days behind and I knew that Bergen was going to be a _very_ long post. But I hunkered down and got started and had them whipped up in about three hours. We took a break for lunch and Chris went off to a towel folding class. I finished up and got my blogs posted. I had e-mail from work about those used games and had a horrible time getting one of the attachments to open up, but finally got it. I’ll work on pricing those up and getting back to folks tonight hopefully.
I finished up just before 2:00 pm and went down to the casino to see if there was a poker tournament happening. There was, so I sat down for that. We had seven players and I wound up finishing in 4th place after trying to bluff someone out who had amazingly hit trips on the flop. Oh well.
Chris met me there and then we went across to the martini bar where they were teaching a drink-making class. I signed up for that while Chris went off to check on Becca.
The mixology class was a blast and there are two more scheduled that I plan to attend. We made four drinks and while the teacher’s English was pretty bad, he was a ton of fun and insisted we call him Dr. Love, because he loved us so much as to use premium liquor and to put way too much of it in the drinks.
The excitement of the class was when he was teaching us to use the Boston Shaker -- the metal cup and glass cup combo that fit together to shake up the drinks. There’s this move to do to separate the the two cup where you get them just right against you hand and they release their hold on each other. Well, the guy next to me hit them really hard and the glass cup shattered, throwing glass shards all over the teacher’s supervisor, who was standing there watching in his dress whites.
After that, Chris told me that she had gone up to The Loft to check on the girl, only to be told that she had gone back to the room because she was feeling little seasick. One her way back down to our room, she had come across one of the stewards cleaning up a puddle of sick in the hall.
So we went back down and saw our daughter, who was feeling pretty rotten and just wanted to sleep. So we joined her and took a two hour nap. I woke up first and took two loads of laundry down to the coin-op machines. Once we moved the wet clothes into the dryer, we went up for dinner, Becca decided just to stay in the room.
Dinner was fabulous: Beef Wellington and the most delicious strip steaks. After dinner we retrieved our laundry and then went to the Thermal Suite. And after that, drinks down in the library. The whole time -- dinner, spa and drinks -- we talked. We had talked on the first at sea day too, back on Monday, and this was a continuation of that and the big talk on the Thursday before we left.
Good talk. Relaxing talk. Both of us really being able to express what we’re thinking and feeling. Feeling very close. Closer than we have in months, maybe longer. Not perfect by any means, but we’re getting better, seeing improvement. Being able to hope.
We decided to retire about 11:30 pm, but not before going up on deck to see the sun. It was still above the horizon, behind some thin clouds that gave the whole sky a beautiful orange hue. We took some pictures and turned on the date/time stamp so that we could prove we’d seen the Midnight Sun.
I had trouble sleeping, maybe too much napping (?), and so I got up again at 1:30 am and went up to the top deck to take more pictures. Sun still up, still orange and gorgeous. With some rocky crags of islands on the east horizon. But I couldn’t enjoy it much, because it was 48° out with a 22 MPH wind that we were sailing directly into, so the effective breeze was about 40 MPH, and I had not grabbed a jacket.
Today is Tromso, but you’ll have to wait to hear about that . . .
Friday was a sea day, so there were no stops. The ship had a few things planned to entertain us, but actually fewer things than I would have expected. Nevertheless, it was a fabulous day -- relaxing, mellow, and full of good talk and pleasant bonding.
We started the day off with breakfast and since there were actually teen events planned, Becca ditched us and went up to deck 14, the highest deck on the ship, to hang out with the teens.
Chris and I went to a demonstration of how to make animal shaped loaves of bread, which was something I was actually really interested in finding out more about, since my limited success with the bread bunny at Easter. It wound up being very short, but he showed us how to make a turtle and a frog.
They were doing a tour of the sip’s kitchens at 10:30, so to kill some time, we checked in on Becca and saw that none of her stuff had actually started yet. Chris went back to the room and grabbed the postcards, and I went off to the kitchen tour.
Which was packed! I would guess that there were two hundred people (out of about 1200 passengers) crammed into the atrium of the main dining room. I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and abandoned that plan, grabbing my laptop and finding Chris up in the Crow’s Nest.
I have to admit that I was feeling a bit intimidated by my blog. I was two days behind and I knew that Bergen was going to be a _very_ long post. But I hunkered down and got started and had them whipped up in about three hours. We took a break for lunch and Chris went off to a towel folding class. I finished up and got my blogs posted. I had e-mail from work about those used games and had a horrible time getting one of the attachments to open up, but finally got it. I’ll work on pricing those up and getting back to folks tonight hopefully.
I finished up just before 2:00 pm and went down to the casino to see if there was a poker tournament happening. There was, so I sat down for that. We had seven players and I wound up finishing in 4th place after trying to bluff someone out who had amazingly hit trips on the flop. Oh well.
Chris met me there and then we went across to the martini bar where they were teaching a drink-making class. I signed up for that while Chris went off to check on Becca.
The mixology class was a blast and there are two more scheduled that I plan to attend. We made four drinks and while the teacher’s English was pretty bad, he was a ton of fun and insisted we call him Dr. Love, because he loved us so much as to use premium liquor and to put way too much of it in the drinks.
The excitement of the class was when he was teaching us to use the Boston Shaker -- the metal cup and glass cup combo that fit together to shake up the drinks. There’s this move to do to separate the the two cup where you get them just right against you hand and they release their hold on each other. Well, the guy next to me hit them really hard and the glass cup shattered, throwing glass shards all over the teacher’s supervisor, who was standing there watching in his dress whites.
After that, Chris told me that she had gone up to The Loft to check on the girl, only to be told that she had gone back to the room because she was feeling little seasick. One her way back down to our room, she had come across one of the stewards cleaning up a puddle of sick in the hall.
So we went back down and saw our daughter, who was feeling pretty rotten and just wanted to sleep. So we joined her and took a two hour nap. I woke up first and took two loads of laundry down to the coin-op machines. Once we moved the wet clothes into the dryer, we went up for dinner, Becca decided just to stay in the room.
Dinner was fabulous: Beef Wellington and the most delicious strip steaks. After dinner we retrieved our laundry and then went to the Thermal Suite. And after that, drinks down in the library. The whole time -- dinner, spa and drinks -- we talked. We had talked on the first at sea day too, back on Monday, and this was a continuation of that and the big talk on the Thursday before we left.
Good talk. Relaxing talk. Both of us really being able to express what we’re thinking and feeling. Feeling very close. Closer than we have in months, maybe longer. Not perfect by any means, but we’re getting better, seeing improvement. Being able to hope.
We decided to retire about 11:30 pm, but not before going up on deck to see the sun. It was still above the horizon, behind some thin clouds that gave the whole sky a beautiful orange hue. We took some pictures and turned on the date/time stamp so that we could prove we’d seen the Midnight Sun.
I had trouble sleeping, maybe too much napping (?), and so I got up again at 1:30 am and went up to the top deck to take more pictures. Sun still up, still orange and gorgeous. With some rocky crags of islands on the east horizon. But I couldn’t enjoy it much, because it was 48° out with a 22 MPH wind that we were sailing directly into, so the effective breeze was about 40 MPH, and I had not grabbed a jacket.
Today is Tromso, but you’ll have to wait to hear about that . . .
