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
4th 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!
