by Rebecca on 2008-12-04
Today was our first sea day. I was worried that we wouldnʼt be able to find things to do all day, but we did! Rebecca got a pedicure at 9:00 from a girl from Liverpool. Her accent was so thick that we couldnʼt understand much of what she said. Maybe the most interesting thing about her is that she went to school with some of the players on Liverpoolʼs football team.
We also visited the regular hot tub out on deck, and man, it was cold. But there were a lot of people sitting outside enjoying the sunshine, even though it was probably about 55 degrees, plus the wind. Our next stop was the indoor salt water hot tub, which felt a lot better. There were so many splashy people in the water, though, that Rebecca had to take another shower and get ready for the second time that day.
At 1:15, we went to a cooking demonstration presented by a chef who used to have a show on Food Network, Marc something. He wasnʼt Mario Batali, and he didnʼt look at all familiar. But he made a Caesar salad and sautéed salmon. The Caesar salad was quite tasty, but the salmon tasted like something we couldʼve made at home. He told us that he was going to spend 3 days at home with his family in San Diego and then fly to Iraq and Afghanistan to help make 25,000 Thanksgiving dinners for the troops there.
We also played shuffleboard in the evening. Two other couples joined us, one from Baltimore and one from England. The English couple was especially interesting. They probably had a bit of a hard time during the war, because the husband was really goofy. But we had a good time laughing at everyoneʼs lack of skills.
This was also the first formal night, which means that the ladies put on sparkly things and the men put on their suits and tuxes. The people on this ship are pretty dressed up all the time, and formal night was no exception. The eveningʼs entertainment was a Cirque du Soleil-type show called Elements. The most amazing part of the show was the acrobats. One of the acrobats did her tricks suspended from a hula hoop and then a rope. She made everything look so easy.
After the show, we wandered around the ship, letting people see how good we looked and waiting for dinner to start. They had photographers set up throughout the ship, so we had our picture taken at least four different times. Dinner was not quite as fancy as I thought it would be, but it was still delicious. We both had steak and potatoes. Mmmm. And that was formal night. We couldʼve stayed up all night dancing to James Bond music (not making that up), but the next day would be an exciting one, so we just went to bed.