World Cruise Day 74/152 - Sea Day - An homage to fromage

Cruise day: 74/152

Ports days: 24
Sea days: 50
Countries: 10
Continents: 4
Ports: 17

 

We hit sea day #50 today.  Wow, that's a lot.  But, looking ahead to the rest of our voyage, including the Viking Homelands extension, we only have 21 sea days to go.  With 78 days left in our entire trip, you can really get a sense of how we will be pounding the ports for the entire second half of this cruise.

Sea day usual again today.  Bridge lessons, playing bridge for an hour and then failing miserably in trivia again with 9/15.  For you math nerds, that's 60% - a D at best. The goofs:

• How many pairs of wings does a bee have?
• We thought it was a trick question and said one - nope, two
• In the book, The Jungle Book, what kind of animals raised Mowgli?
• Wolves
• On what month and day did Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon for the first time?
• July 20 - It was 1969 for the record, and I was off by one day at July 21
• What country was the famed Pied Piper from?
• Germany
• What iconic Australian landmark is the world's largest war memorial?
• The Great Ocean Road - even the Aussies in the room didn't get this and question its authenticity
• Coulrophobia is the fear of...what?
• Clowns

The chef prepared a French-themed lunch with fois gras and eclairs as featured items.  Later in the afternoon, the art instructor had an art show featuring the works of the guests.  Arlona's art was on display and it was fun seeing everyone's interpretations.

Tonight's dinner featured a wide selection of cheese along with cleverly carved blocks and wheels on display.

Arlona got especially creative with dinner tonight, creating a salad, but then shredding three crab legs for the perfect dinner crab salad.  I thought it was plated well enough to appear on Food Network.

We are sailing directly east at the moment, so tonight's sun farewell was straight off the ship's wake trail and looked especially nice.

We headed down for a mixology class on aperitifs and digestifs.

We learned about aperitifs, designed to open up your palate and prepare it for dining.  Drinks that are less sweet and lower in alcohol, like Aperol, Campari, and others fall into this category.  Mid-level drinks like vermouth and Limoncello cross over and can go either way.  Sweeter low alcohol drinks like Disorono are digestifs and help your body perform the digestion process.  Aperitifs can be used as digestifs but not the other way around.  It was very interesting and informative.

We wrapped up the evening with a new entertainer, comedian, Jeff Stevenson. He hails from London and was quite funny.  He was topical and also worked the room well.  I love a good comedian who can think on their feet and adapt and he did that well.

Tomorrow, we dock early in Sardinia (Cagliari), Italy.  We have to be up at the butt-crack of dawn to get dressed and eat before our 7:45AM excursion.  For all you east coast US readers, that's 1:45AM your time.  We'll be back on board after our 4-hour excursion before many of you are awake!