Sea Day to the North

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This final full sailing day of our cruise falls on Saturday; and, the scheduled morning mass as is typical for a sea day was moved to the late afternoon slot to serve as a “legitimate vigil mass”. The priest had offered cruisers the relief of counting the morning mass (if they hadn’t been able to change the time slot) as a vigil mass, which counts as Sunday attendance which would otherwise be impossible for the many disembarking and travelling on Sunday. It was however necessary to move the mass from the larger Wajang Theatre to the smaller Hudson Room. Sharon underscored for me that the “color of the day” was red, and obligingly I selected my red polo shirt and, yes Erin, my “red hat”. Although, I’m not sure that Sharon exactly had “that” in mind.



We headed to the Rotterdam Dining Room for breakfast, where I had one of my favorites the Frittata and a cup of Swiss muesli; while, Sharon got the French Toast. Perhaps she was getting ready for the “Cooking with Chocolate” education seminar from America’s Test Kitchen. The demonstrated how to make the best brownies from scratch, every bit as good as the chewy ones that come from box mixes. They also demonstrated some sort of Chocolate Pots which looked good too.



We had accepted our invitation to the sparsely attended Mariner’s Society reception. There were a couple bronze medals awarded. A lady we had chatted with during the reception and before the awards began got her picture taken with the captain, having the most sailing days on this cruise at over 500. We went down to the luncheon and sat in the downstairs center section at a large round table. Everyone who got the beer-cheese-dumpling chowder thought that it was great. The pot roast was also quite good; but, I’m suspecting that I should have gotten the salmon which everyone said was excellent. The captain’s noon cruise update came on during lunch, and Sharon and I both strained to hear the clues we might need for the Bonus Question at Daily Trivia that we hoped to attend at 1PM. All I picked out was “Gulf of Alaska” until the captain mentioned a system they used to navigate efficiently from Glacier Bay to Seward, which he identified as SPOS: Shipboard Performance Optimization System. Sharon and I both made a mental note of that, giving each other that “Eureka Look” and grin. Later, when the Cruise Director Jordan summarized the afternoon activities the captain came on and added a comment on how Holland America now solicit comments by email, and how important our honest responses are towards recognizing excellence which determines promotions and recognition. Then he told the story that the cruise director normally tells. “We recently received one comment from a woman. She wrote: ‘I just felt the need to write about one of my experiences on a recent cruise. I was on the elevator when a young ship’s officer got on, and we chatted a bit, and when we arrived at the Crow’s Nest he asked if I’d like to go back to his cabin. I declined and got off. Two days later we met in the elevator again, and this time he was holding a bottle of champagne. Again, he invited me to his cabin, and again I declined. On the last night of the cruise he popped in the elevator behind me and this time he told me that if I didn’t go back to his room with him, that he’d blow up the ship… So, I thought that you should know that on the last night of the cruise I saved two thousand passengers and crew… twice.”



I rushed off to Trivia before dessert came to be “on time”. Sharon said that she would follow. Our team mates were relieved to see me. We failed to identify the largest of Canada’s provinces. We went with Saskatchewan. It is Quebec. We were trying to come up with, on average, how many out of every ten people who snore are men. Sharon reasoned that it must be an odd number from something the cruise director said (e.g. 6 out of 10 would have been 3 out of 5 instead). We went with 7; alas, it was 9! When he asked what Spanish city is home to the cathedral that houses the remains of Columbus? I looked at Sharon and said, “We were there.” We got that one: Seville. And the bonus question was indeed SPOS, and we wrote down the answer with confidence. Our graders only gave us 3 out of 4 credit for the bonus because Jordan had said “Ship” instead of “Shipboard”. I asked Jordan to come over, and told him that we’d heard the captain say “Shipboard”. He thought about it a minute and agreed that he’d allow our answer because the captain may have used those words; but, assured us that “Ship” was the correct response. Still that only gave us 26 points and we needed 27 to tie for first. Jordan had said that the reason he gives two points for each question is so that when a team only gets five questions right, that they feel better about themselves by at least reaching a double-digit score.



Sharon decided to have one last go at Fisherman Bob. And as on the first day Bob was good to her. He teased her with a couple of Bonus Games; but, as on the first day she got a pretty decent payout when the first three wheels came up with wild cards. This recouped what she was down over the previous few days when Bob gave Sharon the cold shoulder.



We started packing, got our suitcases on the bed, and started filling cubes. Sharon went up to the Hudson Room for mass, while it was my turn to pack. I joined her there and saw a jam-packed Hudson Room. In a room that holds maybe fifty seated people comfortably, seventy or so had seats, many stood, some were seated on the floor and others stood in front behind the priest (The count according to Sharon was more than 120 since they had counted for determining the number of hosts to use and more came in after that). The service was approaching an hour when Sharon finally emerged from the Hudson Room. I suggested that we eat after Evening Trivia. It would give us a chance to say goodbye to our teammates; also, there was just one show at 9:30PM so there was no need to try and make the 8:00PM show.



We went up to the Crow’s Nest and got a couple of sodas, and I ate most of the nuts our drink steward left for us. These were mostly peanuts and honey roasted peanuts; not the variety of exotic nuts available at the Mariner’s reception where I had enjoyed several Brazil nuts, cashews, almonds and macadamia nuts. It makes a difference if the captain is in attendance. Our teammates arrived just in the nick of time. It was our last chance to score a victory. We knew that we were in trouble when we didn’t know what type of dance has steps like: double-buffalo, maxi-fours, cramp rolls and swamp wings. Sharon and I would have leaned towards square dance; but, our teammate knew that that wasn’t right. I forget what we did come up with (Line dancing); but, I know that it was not the correct answer: tap dance. We did come up with the right answer to a large number of questions that we didn’t know or previously hear. Questions like: What fashion designer has the logo of a stylized Medusa head? Where would you find the Hillary Step? (And no, it’s not any reference to the former first lady) Where would you find osteoblasts and osteoclasts? What chemical element is also the name of a discontinued Dodge sedan? Sharon blurted out Mercury, which seemed good; except as our teammate observed: That was a Ford. I’m reviewing the elements in my very fuzzy mind and scribbled down “Neon”. Angie did come up with Versace, though. And we came up with “Bones” and “Mt. Everest (Nepal)”. But we seem to be relegated to second place. Sharon cheerfully noted that we probably had the highest overall score; because, no one team seemed to win more that once.



We went on down to the Rotterdam Dining Room for our final dinner onboard. The room was not crowded and many may have opted for the Lido. We dined with another couple younger than us. He declared that he wasn’t sure how to eat his appetizer, the pan fried soft shelled crab that I had also gotten. “Just cut, eat and enjoy,” I said, and demonstrated with some gusto. Sharon didn’t care for her chicken bouillon soup. I enjoyed my curried vegetables with forbidden rice, which was absolutely yummy. Sharon had the pepper encrusted beef roast; but, forgot to order her baked potato. I had the caramel pudding with chocolate sauce and washed it down with my sixth cordial of the cruise, an Irish Cream, completing my collection of shot glasses. They’ve gotten quite lax about the “Cordial of the Day” rule that requires you to get the specific specialty cordial, usually made from mixing two or three liqueurs, in order to qualify for the glass, which suited me because after the first couple of days they start straying from the chocolate and coffee liqueur offerings.





We went to the final show and had to go down to Deck 4 to find seats together. Of course, this put us at risk for being selected by either of the performers this evening, first the magician and seconds the comedian. Both did a great job and it was a nice way to end the cruise. We went back to the cabin and got our two big suitcases our into the hall by midnight to be ported ashore while we slept.

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