World Cruise - Day 27 - Feb 8 - At Sea

The beauty of sunrises is that they are always something different:

I like the way the photo captured the sun’s rays as they emanate out from behind the clouds, just after it breached the horizon, although the sun itself cannot be seen except as a glimpse through the cloud edges.

We are now just over 25% of the way into our journey.  Last night at approximate 2:30a, we crossed the equator.  The joke onboard this morning is: “Did you feel the bump last night when we crossed the equator?”

We did OK at morning trivia with 15 out of 20, the winning team had 16.  Here are some that we got and missed: Who was the American artist and film maker who was shot in 1968?  Andy Warhol (we put Roman Polansky).  What is someone who is philophobic afraid of?  Love (we put learning, we really should have gotten that one).  In what country is the Welland Ship Canal?  Canada (we put Germany).  Which country has the shortest coastline?  Monaco (we got that one).  Who was Woody Allen’s wife in Manhattan?  Meryl Streep (we put Diane Keaton).  How many is a tern in numerology?  3 (we got that right).  What type of acid is produced in the muscles during exercise?  Lactic (we got that right).  What is the tenth character in the Greek alphabet?  Kappa (we got that right—compliments of my one year in a frat house).  How many hearts does an octopus have?  3 (we got that right).

We got 15 out of 20 in trivia in the afternoon, 18 won it.  Here are some of the questions: Who played Morpheus in The Matrix?  Laurence Fishburne (we got that one).  How many pyramids at Giza?  3 (got that one as well).  Where are you going in South America if you have GIG on your luggage tag?  Rio de Jeniero (we put Santiago).  Which is not a chile pepper?  Bella Donna, Jalapeno, Pobeuno, Scotch Bonnet?  Bella Donna (got that one).  Which actress has a Marilyn Monroe tattoo?  Megan Fox (we put Madonna).  Which beer introduced the greeting “Wassup”?  Budweiser (we got that).  What type of fruit is a drupe?  Peach (we put date).

We found out that February 11 will not exist onboard this ship.  We will go directly from 11:59p Feb 10 to 12:00a (midnight) Feb 12 with the crossing of the international dateline.  The interesting part about this for us, since we are Sabbath keepers, is that this essentially wipes out Saturday on our schedule.  So we will begin the Sabbath on Friday evening, Feb 10^th at sunset, as usual and will simply continue Sabbath observance for the next 24 hours until sunset, which in this case will be Sunday evening, Feb 12^th.  It is an interesting Sabbath-keeping question that we discussed with others before we left.  While it’s relatively easy to understand the keeping of this particular Sabbath, the more interesting part (and less easy to understand) is that there will only be 5 full days (instead of 6) from the end of the Sabbath this week and the Sabbath the following week.  This is due to our gradual changing of the clocks by one hour as we move time zones heading in a westerly direction.  While it makes logical sense for the international dateline to be somewhere in the Pacific (rather than the Atlantic), the actual placement of the dateline is somewhat arbitrary (as evidenced by Samoa’s recent decision to move to the west side of the dateline).  Anyway, by the time the next Sabbath arrives, we will be in New Zealand, where we will clearly located in a region where the Sabbath starts earlier than Jerusalem (due to being essentially east of Jerusalem), while the Sabbaths preceding were all at a start later than Jerusalem (due to being essentially west of Jerusalem).

Rebekah, you would probably find I don't know how she does it interesting due to the investment banking similarities, although it wasn’t a very good movie overall.  Sarah Jessica Parker isn’t very good in the role of being a loving mother wanting the best for her kids.  You should watch it, just don’t expect one of this year’s best.

Julie, most of the trivia questions that I list are the harder ones (either the ones we missed or ones where only one or two at the table knew the answer).  There are other questions (like: “Which president founded the Peace Corps?”  John Kennedy.  Or: “What kind of cats sing in Disney’s Lady and the Tramp”?  Siamese.  Or: “Where is Amazon.com’s headquarters? Seattle—no kidding, that was one of the questions) that most at each table know the answer.  Or the Budweiser question above.  It’s fun to play trivia and you always learn something new.  It’s very rare that we get all of the answers correct and even when we do, there are at least a few that we are guessing our best guess.  Krissie doesn’t play trivia, but she does play Scrabble with another “trivia widow” whose partner plays on our trivia team.  Scrabble is her game.

Julie, Chef’s Table is offered only twice per segment, so once every two weeks or so.  Or whenever they have 10-15 people signed up.  They do offer some behind-the-scenes tours throughout the cruise, there is no cost for it on this ship (although other ships we have been on have started charging for these tours).

Julie, Krissie just took up painting on this cruise.  She hasn’t painted since grade school.  I think she has a real talent for it.  She has done four paintings so far, here is the most recent one, in case you missed it on the prior post:

Click on the pic on the blog to see the detail of her brush strokes, although this pic on the blog does not do justice to the real thing.  Yes, Rebekah, she will be keeping them and bringing them home.  I really like her paintings.  She will probably do more when we have more sea days after Pago Pago.

Speaking of Pago Pago, does anyone know why it’s pronounced “Pango Pango”?  That’s the way to properly pronounce it, although I have no idea why.

We had our Cruise Critic meeting for Pago Pago today with about 60 people in attendance.

Princess lets you bring on two bottles of wine per cabin in each port.  That’s plenty for Krissie and onboard this ship, most people just bring their wine with them to dinner or a show.  On some cruise ships we’ve been on, it’s frowned upon.  On this ship, they greet you at the entry to the dining room and carry your glass on a platter to your table.  Princess also allows each cabin the purchase of 2 bottles of duty free alcohol at the end of each segment.  Some people still prefer to just buy their drinks from the bar, but most people just bring their drinks from their room.  It certainly helps to keep costs down, especially when you are onboard 107 days.  Just spending $9/glass for wine (like we did on a recent Celebrity cruise) would run up a $1000 bar bill for the world cruise, just for one glass of wine at dinner each evening.  And that would be the most basic wines.  Krissie has been able to buy nicer wines in port than she would normally buy while onboard, still way cheaper.  Also, she’s a classic glass and a half of wine at dinner, so she usually has a half glass of wine before we go to dinner, then brings a glass to dinner, which works out fine for her.  If she orders two separate glasses at dinner, she rarely finishes the second glass.  Having her own bottle of wine allows her to use just what she wants.  Yes, I know she could order by the bottle in the restaurant, although they usually have the tendency to automatically fill an empty (or nearly empty) glass.  This way Krissie takes only what she wants.  And the frugal part of me likes that we’re not paying $1000 bar bill at the end of the cruise.  I think I talked about this before, sorry for the repeat, just thinking about it as I am waiting for Krissie to get ready for dinner.

You might wonder when I have time to write in the blog.  I usually write while I would be otherwise waiting for Krissie.  Writing in the blog keeps me from being impatient waiting for Krissie.  It keeps me occupied until she is ready to go.

At our dinner table, we usually have a small bowl of fresh garlic each evening that 5 of the 8 at our table share.  Krissie doctors it up with oil and vinegar, then we put it on our bread, in our soup, on our salad and sometimes (depending on what we order) on/with our main course.  But then we all have garlic breath, so we have to be careful how we speak to people after leaving the restaurant.

Usually I only take pics of sunrise, since we are usually at dinner when sunset occurs.  However, now that we are moving further south, sunset is taking place later and later.  Tonight I was able to get these sunset pics from our balcony:

I continued to take pics as the sun went down, hoping to see the green flash.  The green flash occurs when the color spectrum separates right at the last bit of sunlight.  It doesn’t always happen and you usually need to be clear right at the horizon with some cloud above.  I actually saw the green flash and thought I snapped right at the same instant (it was very fast).  So here is what I was able to capture:

Can you see it?  Here is a cropped close-up of the sun right before it disappeared from the horizon:

It’s not very clear, but you can see the green (and yellow) flash starting to form.  It actually went (very fast) in a quick burst up to the clouds, this was the best I was able to capture on film.  I know photographing the green flash is very difficult (just seeing one is pretty rare), so I’m happy that I was at least able to get the color change at the horizon as it happened.  Small stuff like that makes the days at sea more exciting.

I don’t think I’ve posted any dinner menus yet, so following is the menu from dinner tonight:

Not sure if you can read it, but Krissie and I both had the fruit cocktail appetizer, roast onion soup and mahi mahi entrée.  We also ordered the blue cheese tart as an extra entrée to be shared at the table.  Here is the dessert menu:

I had the roasted pineapple and Krissie had the plum sorbet.  You can get a pretty good idea of what type of things are offered with these two menus.

The entertainment tonight was sleight of hand from Brent Webb.  He is very good and often very difficult to figure out.

Tomorrow is our last sea day before Pago Pago on Friday.