Kiel/Hamburg - Guten Tag Lubeck

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My foot seems to be doing fine, and the weather looks nice for Sharon getting off the ship in Kiel, Germany. We dined up in the Lido, and Sharon is much more optimistic about her journey to Lubeck to try their world renowned marzipan. I had been looking forward to this, and I had almost decided to keep this ticket and not turn it in when my big toe went south on me; but, you never know. Sharon was beaming, “There isn’t a single palace stop planned on this tour, and I won’t be asked to walk through a single palatial garden!” I decided to try the French Toast that Sharon has made one of her mainstays, and I must admit, it tasted good.

This is Sharon’s third solo trip ashore; while, I must be content with watching a movie (I’m thinking one of the James Bond film’s that are being offered), play a little Sudoku, catch up with “My Friends” playing Word and Word Crack to use up some of our extra WI-FI minutes onboard, eat some pizza by the pool. “Oh, in other words your just going to do what you do at home!” Sharon admonishes me. “Well, I never, I mean never eat pizza by the pool at home!”

As I’m looking to put on my James Bond movie, Sharon refuses to stay in the cabin to listen to even a single moment of that. I tried to tell her that the opening sequence is always one of the best. She still hasn’t forgiven me for making her watch “Dr. No” when we decided to watch my collection of 007 films, primarily to help with the many James Bond questions that get asked on Team Trivia. We still haven’t finished watching the “Road to Avonlea” series that we started to watch five years ago for one of our New England cruises (that visits Prince Edward Island, the locale of the series).

Sharon’s Tour – I was in the world stage early for my tour to avoid John’s movie that he couldn’t wait to start until after I was scheduled to be gone. The priest was walking by waiting for the panoramic tour he was going to be an escort for so we chatted for awhile. He’s from Malta and the same priest that was on one of our Mediterranean segments 2 years ago when we missed 3 ports. My group was finally called and I was the last sticker for bus 29 so got the back seat which really isn’t too bad. A couple that got on the wrong bus (we were tour 30 but bus 29) ended up joining me in the back and we had a nice talk on the 90 minute drive from Kiel to the medieval city of Lubeck which is a UNESCO Heritage site which was the Hanseatic League and a very wealthy city in its time. We had only an escort on our bus so she didn’t say much but did announce when we drove onto the autobahn. Our tour guide met us in Lubeck and after some confusion on station #s we finally got all the “whispers” working and headed toward the entrance gate. She pointed out 6 of the 7 spires saying she learned they were the city of 6 churches and 7 spires when she was very young. However 2 churches have 2 spires each and one has none. We had a 2 hour walking tour around the city and it’s historic buildings on a beautiful but bit windy day. Some of the buildings had to be refurbished after the war due to bombing damage. We ended the tour at a marzipan café where we got cake and a choice of coffee, tea, or hot chocolate. It took awhile to get everyone served which cut into our free time but I still got to walk around a bit before we headed back to the bus for the return trip to the ship in Kiel. Many people took tours to Hamburg but they didn’t seem too impressed so I don’t need to give John too hard a time for this one.



I turned off the movie when they came to make up my cabin, and went up to NY Pizza. Maybe I was feeling a little hungry today, and I decided to get a burger after eating my pizza at the pool, and take it back to the cabin to finish watching “Specter (007)”.

Sharon was back from her tour, and at least she wasn’t greeting me with a growl. So we were off to Team Trivia. Steve has been notably absent, and we’ve been missing a question or two that he probably could have helped. Jackie was pretty sure of her answer “D.H. Lawrence” for the author of “Howard’s End” and “Passage to India”; but, Joan was pushing for “Kipling”. I wasn’t any help; but, it didn’t matter. The answer was Ian Forrester. My “tennis watching” helped with “At Wimbledon, what dessert are you likely to have with your Pims Cup?” The classic Wimbledon treat of course is Strawberries and Cream. Christina then hit us with a “Phobia Question”. “What would you fear if you have ‘Aulophobia’?” Jackie wanted it to be a fear of gold (because the word started with “AU”). We couldn’t do better; but, it was actually the fear of flutes. Most of the questions were pretty easy, straight-forward, or you could deduce the answer. The bonus was to name the “ABC Islands” in the Caribbean (which was really an altered repeat of one of Becka’s earlier questions in the cruise) so we easily got those 3 points and finished in first with 16 out of 18 possible points.

For dinner we dined at the Sel de Mer restaurant featuring ala carte sea food appetizers, entrées and sides; although, there are also a few land-lover dishes so Sharon was okay with her steak and mashed potatoes. I started with the Classic Baked Escargot, you know the one, that comes in the shell and you get to pry out the tasty juicy morsels holding the shell with your special tong shell-gripper. I think Sharon really enjoyed watching me struggle with this; but, it was well worth the reward. My entrée was the Salt Crusted Baked Brazzino (or sea bass) and I think I chose wisely. The alternative was to pick the lobster; but, I was fearing that they might not be as accommodating as they are in the dining room where the steward will remove the lobster for you. I could just imagine myself trying to crack open a particularly uncooperative claw. I got some creamed cauliflower which was delicious; but, I couldn’t get Sharon to try a single spoonful. No surprise there, I guess! We both got our own chocolate pot de crème; and they were perfect individual servings.

For Evening Trivia, it was a team effort, and we came close. When Becka asked “The Bumble Bee” question, I instantly recognized that this was a repeat question, and was then trying to recall the answer. Jackie had already written down the answer, and Joan seemed to agree that the number of wings that a bumble bee has is six. And so I didn’t think about it any more. I’m not sure that I would have recalled that it was “four”; but, I just assumed that they’d heard the question before too and knew the answer. From personal experience I knew what organ the gall bladder is connected to. How could I forget the doctor explaining to me how I was still slightly inflamed in the area of the operation were he would need to locate the “T” shaped tubes that connected the gall bladder to the liver, and that he would need to snip the trunk of the “T”. The inflammation makes this somewhat problematic; but, even if he snips in the wrong place, it would just mean a much longer recovery period for me. Well everything went as it was supposed to, and now there was an additional Trivia benefit some 22 years later. We failed on the “Beatle Question”. “What Beatle’s tune stayed at the top of the pop charts the longest, staying there for 19 weeks?” Jackie wanted “Yesterday” and Joan suggested “I Want to Hold Your Hand”. I had written down my answer “Let It Be”; but they weren’t warm to that choice. I mean let’s face it, these two veterans taking Music Trivia advice from me is something akin to asking the Pope a question about Baseball Trivia (not that I would presume to compare myself to the Pope). I’m just saying. Anyway, eventually Joan warmed to my idea, and none of us could come up with anything better. We were really missing Steve and Tina who would surely have known the answer. Heck, they probably would have sung the song. During the shout it out round, there was one team that did know the answer, and give us his rendition of the first verse or so of “Hey Jude”. Despite knowing the color of the beginning belt in judo (white belt) we wound up with 13 of 17 possible points. The team with the singer got 14 points, and the victory.

We hurried to get seats in the Show Room to watch the performance by the ship’s dancers called “Musicology”. The show, with the impressively used surround screens was quite visually stimulating. Christina confided that this was her favorite onboard show by HAL’s cast; but, that we shouldn’t tell the singers that this is so. I’ll just say, they danced their hearts out and we were rewarded with some great entertainment.

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