The skies were cloudy and rainy when we woke up this morning. It looked foggy, but that was due to all of the rain. Since the weather was bad, we were not in any hurry to get up and get going.
I went to the International Cafe and got us two breakfast sandwiches and a coffee to take back to the room for breakfast. The sandwiches are not as healthy as the yogurt parfaits we sometime get, but much tastier. Bringing breakfast back to the room also keeps us from getting too much to eat at the buffet, the sandwiches limit what is available whereas the buffet just seems to grow into quite a large plateful of food.
By the time we ate and finished getting ready, there were actually some patches of blue sky showing through the cloudy weather. We headed out to walk around and give our cabin steward time to clean the room. We went to the stern of the ship on Deck 16, and could see that the weather was actually clearing in the direction the ship was going. It was not long before the sunshine won out and we were getting the best weather of the trip so far. The wind was not bad, and the temperatures actually go into the mid 70’s.
Stephanie read her book in one of the comfy lounge chairs at the tables in this area of the stern There are other tables and chairs set up outside that a lot of people bring their food to from the buffet and eat in this area. I sat at one of the long bars and worked on the blog posts.
At noon, the Captain made his daily weather and position report, and gave us an update on what is now Tropical Storm Nicole. We were not going to be that close to the storm, about 500 miles, but he indicated that the winds and waves w0uld start to increase over the day and be the worst early tomorrow morning, approaching 15-18 feet. After tomorrow, they should subside.
Since it was really sunny and warm now, we went back to the cabin to apply sunscreen, and put on our bathing suits and head out to the pool deck. We did not want to eat lunch too late, so we went to the buffet first and had a light lunch before going out into the sunshine. Tonight is a formal night, and we are planning to go to the Elite Lounge for shrimp, and then have some canapes delivered to the room at 6:15 PM. We have never ordered the canapes before, this is only available on formal nights and for Elite members of the Captain’s Circle Club. Tonight is also lobster night, so we will be going to the dining room for dinner.
It was nice out in the sun, actually getting a little hot in the areas protected from the wind. As the afternoon progressed, the wind did start to pick up, and was shifting more around to the south, and becoming a headwind.
At about 4:00 PM, we went down one deck to the Seaview Bar and had a beverage and visited with Rommel, one of our favorite bartenders. This was the first day it was really warm enough to sit at this outside bar and be comfortable.
We headed back to the room to get ready for the formal evening. Our plan was to head to the Vines Wine Bar for a glass of wine to go, then head to the Elite Lounge for some boiled shrimp. We were hoping that the shrimp was going to be of better quality than the normal boiled shrimp served in the buffet, which is always overcooked and soggy. We were disappointed to see that there was nothing more than the typical soggy shrimp being served at this event. Luckily, there was also some sliced cheeses to eat, along with some olives. We did not stay long, the quality of the shrimp was not worth any more of our time.
We headed back to Vines for another glass of wine to take back to the room to have with our delivery of canapes. We were a few minutes late, but had never had any room service delivery be prompt, so we did not think we had missed them and there was no notification that they had been there. When we had left the room earlier, we had put out the privacy notice on the door, mainly so that our room steward would not be cleaning when the canapes arrived. We waited for about 15 minutes and then Stephanie called room service to check on our delivery. They indicated it was on the way. A few minutes later someone slipped a notice under our door indicating that the delivery could not be made due to the privacy notice, which we had removed when we returned for the canapes.
Apparently, the original delivery had been on time and attempted before we had returned to the cabin. We were really confused as to why we were just now getting the notification slipped under the door, some 20 minutes after we had returned to the room. I was tired of waiting so we headed back to Vines for some tapas. The tapas were really good tonight, there was some ahi tuna that was really good. We decided to go to dinner, so we headed across the atrium to the dining room. There was quite a line waiting to be seated. We waited to put our name on the list and took our pager. We headed back to Vines to wait for an available table for dinner.
We waited about 35 minutes and then our pager activated, so we headed to the dining room. We got a good seat location, a two person table that was fairly isolated from all of the commotion and noise of the serving stations.
The wait staff was good tonight, but the food was disappointing. It was lobster night, and as usual, the lobster was really small. It came with a small crab cake and asparagus. It was a little funny since the lobster came with the shell, and the shell seemed to make it look much larger. After our waiter removed the shell, it was the smallest lobster tail I had ever seen. Since Stephanie is not a lobster fan, she got gnocchi with a mushroom cream sauce, which was actually pretty good. I immediately ordered another lobster, but it took awhile for it to come out from the kitchen. It was a little larger this time, but overcooked and tough. The best part of the entire meal were the desserts we had, which was a specialty chocolate mousse for me and the cheesecake for Stephanie.
After dinner, we headed to Bellini’s and ran into our normal crowd there. We ended up talking with one of the regular couples we had briefly spoken to before, but had not really talked with at length or officially introduced ourselves to. They were Bob and Sarah from Philadelphia. Bob was a bankruptcy judge and was interesting to talk to about that. They were both Catholic, and we shared stories of our visits in Rome before this cruise.
It was getting late, and so we headed back to the room. We were quite surprised when we found a room service tray sitting on our table with our mysterious canapes.
We had a couple of them, but some were meat and shrimp, and had been sitting out for some time, so we were leery about eating those.
Now that we had a taste for a late snack, we put on some casual clothes and headed to the International Cafe to satisfy that urge. They are open 24 hours, and had some really good looking sandwiches. We got two sandwiches, heated, and some bottled waters and enjoyed our late night snack before returning to the room for the night. The seas were already starting to get rougher, but at least the worst was supposed to occur while we are sleeping, which lessens the effects from the motion.