27) A Few Days at Sea

27. A Few Days at Sea

With our next port not until Montevideo, we have again, time to do nothing.

I don’t mind doing nothing, it means walking around the decks, chatting with people, trying this and trying that. 

The first night after we left Rio we had another Formal Night. I believe it is the 4^th such event since we left Fort Lauderdale. You get all dressed up but where do you go from there?  By now you know it’s a ship, it’s the same dining room you ate in yesterday in just a shirt, but today you need to be ‘formal’. 

I guess some people love to dress up. For me, I have seen too much of it, know much of it is just pretense.  I looked and learned that behind the scenes clothing alone does not make the man. Sure, it is nice to see people dressed nicely but even having a dress up night, a formal night, does not help some people. They just don’t get it, or have the wrong education to know what dress up means.

The Ship’s entertainers gave a special performance. Every formal night the Island Princess Vocalists and Dancers gave a 30-minute show. ‘I Got Music’ was tonight’s theme. Carol loved it, me…meh! Not my kind of music. I felt that the performers (a lot of them) had real talent, but were  not given free rein during their performance. I blame a lot of this on the entertainment director, a nerdy guy, a dork who should not be on this job.

The Captain told everyone that he would be transferred to another ship once we arrived in Buenos Aires. We all prepared and waited for his speech. It was announced in the ship’s daily newspaper, the Princess Patter, that the Captain would give a farewell speech. It was also written that about 400 people would leave the Ship in Montevideo and we would get a bunch of new folks, too.

So the Captain (a popular guy on board) was going to say good bye to the folks leaving. Maybe even a quick explanation as to why he was being transferred. A lot of the passengers collected in the atrium to hear his speech but there was no Captain for about 30 minutes. So we waited.

Finally, he arrived and spoke for about 3 minutes, said very little, and that was that. What?

You got us out here for that?  I think it takes a lot of nerve for the administration on board to set up such a dull, dopey ‘Captain’s Speech’ meeting, making it sound like he would declare he found the Holy Grail, then he did not show for a while, then he said, “Good bye, it was nice meeting you all” and that was it?

It was a bust!

All Dressed Up

Carol by the way looked great. For the formal night she visited the beauty parlor, she wore mostly gold and black and it suited her, she was the queen of the table that night…. Carol takes good care of herself. Thank you.

But, we had a dull table during dinner. One woman talked incessantly, and it was all about her grandchildren…. wow, how could you be so boring?  Phew, am I glad I only saw her for these few minutes at dinner, she would drive me nuts. Carol took it more in stride, but she agreed this table was a dud table.

The food onboard is good, not very good, but good. The choice of food is not very varied, I had hoped that we would get more ‘local’ cuisine, more items eaten in Brazil, or Trinidad, or any county we visited. But no, it’s a very moderate, a very non-original menu. We cannot complain, really, it’s just not ‘haute cuisine’ on board. 

I am looking forward to getting off the ship in Montevideo. 

Just a slow day off ship is good, too!