Cancelling Corfu

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The today ON LOCATION predicted “Thundershowers” for our stop on the Island of Corfu in Greece today. From the Lido things didn’t look promising and there were still 5 to 10 foot seas. Several squalls had passed over us during the night, and another was approaching for later this afternoon. I decided to have scrambled eggs with link sausage and they had Sharon’s favorite multi-colored pan-fried potatoes (potatoes, sweet potatoes and I think even some blue potatoes… or maybe they were just burnt). I’m kidding about these being Sharon’s favorite because I can see her heart sink when they have nothing but these. During our meal in the Lido the captain announced over the P.A. system our position, weather conditions, course and speed, and oh yes, no port of call today. All tours have been cancelled and will be refunded to the room account. That will be two sea days in a row, and tomorrow is the scheduled sea day. A later announcement said that the Holland America home office was frantically trying to find another port of call for us tomorrow, possibly Sicily. I’m not sure what else there would be to keep us on schedule for the remainder of this cruise. Sharon said that she would have eaten something besides potatoes (which she only picks through to get the real potatoes) and white toast.

We went up to the Crow’s Nest to do our daily challenge and stake out a claim for playing Team Trivia at 9:30 AM (before our originally planned docking later in the morning). Few people had found their way here yet, and we sat pretty much wherever we liked. A freaky thing happened during our Sudoku Challenge, Sharon won both games. Enough said about that! Our team has morphed a little bit and we haven’t seen the Scottish couple for a while.

Dave started trivia, by asking as he always does, “Is there anyone here who hasn’t been to a trivia hosted by myself?” Several people raised their hands, and Dave continued “Then we need to go over the rules!” The first rule is that the Cruise Director is always right! The second rule is when asking a question, you must defer to Rule Number One. He then clarified, “This is because, after hosting Team Trivia for quite some time, he’s found one thing to be true…” And those who’ve heard this spiel before chime in, “Some people take team trivia… Way… Toooo… Seriously!” And Sharon is pointing at me! What’s that all about? Most of the first fifteen questions were pretty straight forward, like “What city did Jack the Ripper terrorize?” or “What country gave the U.S.A. the Statue of Liberty?” We were pretty sure that the type of poultry that we’d be eating were we to eat either Mulard or Muscovy would be duck, and we were right. And we knew which, rods or cones, in the retina allow humans to see color. (It is cones.) Not many people knew that the positive terminal of a battery is called, which surprised me. It is the anode. And I also knew what the two letters are that have a point value of 8 in the game of Scrabble (“J” and “X”). Dave accepted two answers for the name of Dennis the Menace’s dog, the British name “Gnasher” or the American name “Ruff”. It was one of the comic books a read many issues of in the third grade. We missed “What symphony instrument has a crown and a pedestal?” We went with bass; but, the only two things right about that answer were the number of letters in the answer and the vowel. Dave says that he’s always getting two answers for “Which is the only animal with four knees?” Those are elephant and camel. If you don’t know, and you play a lot of trivia, you’ll discover that there are certain questions that come up a lot: Grand Slam Tennis Questions, Olympics Questions, Disney Questions, James Bond Questions, Human Senses Questions, Shakespeare Questions AND Elephant Questions. The bonus questions demonstrated this in spades where three of the four fell into these categories: What is Shakespeare’s longest play? Name the 4 Grand Slam tennis tournaments? Name the four tastes that can be sensed with the tongue? The final question was to name the Arabic queen that stayed alive for 1,001 nights by telling intriguing stories. I went with the “Disney Rule” and answered Mulan… But this was not a Disney question: Scheherazade! We’d done well with the bonus and with 24 out of 27 we were looking pretty good until the dust settled and someone else had 25 points. In fact two teams had 25 points and Dave did a tie-breaker. “How many pounds of dead skin will a person shed in their lifetime?” The teams answered 8 pounds and 1,000 pounds. The team that said 8 pounds was closer to the answer: 40 pounds.

With a Sea Day to fill, we went to the Dining Room for lunch. There was a New York strip steak with French fries for Sharon. I had the bacon and cheese soup which was very tasty. I had the prosciutto and cheese with tomato grilled on a ciabatta-like roll which was nicely prepared. One of the couples clarified why Holland America stopped giving Holland America gift items (such as baseball caps, drinking containers, coffee mugs and such) for prizes of Team Trivia and gone mostly with HAL pins. The following was related to our fellow diner from several staff members on a previous cruise some years back. It seems that there was one couple who had sailed on many cruises and ‘remembered’ all of the answers and would usually win. They would always play by themselves and when winning their prizes, they would put up a stink if the cruise director tried to give them just two of the prizes and insist on getting all six (for giving to a team up to six). If that wasn’t bad enough, they would then turn around and give the prizes that they’d strong-armed out of Holland America and give them in lieu of tips to the crew and staff. So that has also changed, and tips are now deducted daily from everyone’s room account. I guess it takes all kinds! And perhaps, some people have taken trivia way too seriously!

Sharon went to the casino but had trouble getting near her machine, and when she did, it wasn’t really happy to see her again: In other words Sharon didn’t win!

We stopped by the Queen’s Lounge to see “Dancing with the Stars at Sea”. They were doing the waltz. We couldn’t find a place to sit. All of the tables and chairs normally on the center floor had been pushed against the front row of benches so there was no sitting there. And the single row of curved booths all had a few people monopolizing each booth, so we went up to the Crow’s Nest to wait for the extra round of Trivia that had been penciled in for this impromptu sea day.

Our whole team showed up for trivia at 3 PM; but, the only place we could squat on to sit was the bench behind the bar. There were some defacto “gimme questions” such as the model of car in “Back to the Future”. Or where is the bumpiest part of the plane: front, middle or back? Or, what is the name of Microsoft’s web browser? Then came some serious questions: “What group of islands is about 350 miles southwest of India?” One in our group came up with Seychelles. “What metal is used in the Etch-a-Sketch to render the black on silver pictures?” A popular answer (not ours) was iron. I think everyone missed aluminum. A member from the end came over to me and asked how far those islands were from India and I told him, and he suggested to change our answer to Maldives (which was the right answer). Then came a bunch of easy questions, “What creature can jump 130 times its body height?” “What is the largest penguin?” (You know Sharon is not going to miss this one, if you know Sharon!) Or, “What is the fastest growing plant?” Fleas, Emperor and Bamboo. Sharon came up with the name of the performer known as the King of Pop. And now a couple of those “sensory questions”. What sense is most linked to memory? What sense are you most likely to lose (for a little while) should you be struck by lightning? Would you like a hint? Let me give you the hints that Dave gave us when someone asked: “What sense is most linked to memory?” and “What sense are you most likely to lose (for a little while) should you be struck by lightning?” But I’ll do better than that, neither answer is sight, touch or taste. You might not hear too well right after you are struck by lightning. We were into the bonus and came up with how long Sleeping Beauty slept (100 years). And Sharon knew where the largest rodeo is held (Calgary). I was leaning towards the right answer for “What is the only player to play on the winning team in three World Cup championships?” Names like Maradona and Beckham were considered. This player did this about fifty years ago: Pele. Sharon came up with the artist that released “Fame Monster” with songs like “Bad Romance”, “Telephone” and “Alejandro”. Sharon only knew this because she didn’t like the final song by Lady Gaga. And then came the Disney question, Name the two princesses in Frozen. I immediately knew Elsa. When I looked to my teammates all I got back was blank stares. I did know it was a normal name, not something out of the ordinary like “Elsa” or “Scheherazade” or “Mulan”. And then it hit me: “Anna”. And these were worth 2 points each! We thought that we did well enough to win with 23 out of 27; but, another team got 24! We lost by one… again! This is getting old.

Sitting just behind the bar we could see them getting ready for the “Open Bar” hour starting at 4 PM. Due to missing 2 ports, the captain had authorized free “selected drinks” during the normal Happy Hour period. The selected drinks were red wine, white wine, fruit punch with rum, and sangria. Soda was also available. At 4 PM these were brought around and given to people along with cocktail snacks of nuts, pretzels and goldfish. I had a couple of the punch drinks, which weren’t bad. I knew enough not to take the sangria.

The dinner menu didn’t look particularly good for either of us so we went up to the Lido for dinner. I think this was the first time that we did this, and were surprised to find it easy to find a place to eat. I ordered a pizza with ham, sausage, mushrooms and tomatoes. Sharon had some roast lamb and potatoes. I enjoyed a cup of creamy onion soup, very close to the Walkabout Soup that you could once get at The Outback. We both enjoyed the sugarless chocolate cake.

We stopped by to see Ruth and some other friends at the bar they enjoy frequenting before dinner. We will be having dinner with them at the Pinnacle tomorrow night. I was worried that this would be the other formal night, but that is not the case. I guess sometimes they don’t fall on sea days!

We went to the Show, and Ruth and company went off to dinner. The show featured Annette Wardell, a soprano with a fantastic voice. She demonstrated her full vocal range, including a piece by Mozart featuring some of the highest notes written for the human voice. She did a number of opera pieces.

The two of us went to the Piano Bar just in time to catch Damien on the piano starting his “Name that Tune” challenge. He awarded one point to name the song title, and one point to name the Broadway musical (unless they are the same and then you only get one point). We played by ourselves and got 26 out of 39 possible points. Sharon did very well picking out the tunes. And given the tune, I came up with a couple show names that she didn’t know. The game started with “Memories” from “Cats”. I knew that “My Fair Lady” went with “I could have danced all night.” After seeing the play at the dinner theatre this year I should have recognized “Bali Hai”. Maybe I am tone deaf. Sharon keeps saying that I am! Sharon got some I’d never heard of before. Still, I think we did pretty well! We did get the bonus question which was “Any Dream Will Do” from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream coat. Since that was the show we saw the night before I proposed to Sharon 6 years ago next week it was a good thing we both knew it.

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