Losing Livorno

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We slept well after our day ashore in Rome. Our plan was to meet Ruth and her friends around 8 AM in the Main Lobby, and join them for a tour to Lucca and Vicci scheduled to start at 8 AM ashore. Ruth figured the guide would wait we could blame it on needing to wait for the elevators to get the two scooters down and she didn’t want to be rushed. I told Sharon that we should probably get there before 8 PM or Ruth would be telling the guide that they had to wait for us! Sharon said no, so we took our time in the Lido getting our typical Lido breakfast. When we got to the Lido we noticed that we were still at sea, and our daily planner said that would should have arrived in Livorno around 7 AM. The announcement confirmed our fears: We would not be getting into Livorno today. During the night we felt the third and fourth engines kicking in, and the Captain had said the night before that he would be doing this to arrive in Livorno ahead of a front that was moving in. However, the storm system strengthened overnight and moved ahead of us, causing high winds and 30 foot seas as we’d experienced the night before. The port, pilot and captain all concurred that it was best for the port to be closed, a decision shared by another captain on the Nieuw Amsterdam’s sister ship the Rotterdam who was also heading into Livorno. So it looks like we’ll be having another Sea Day.



We headed up to the Explorer’s Lounge and did our daily Sudoku Challenge. I completed the Easy Puzzle a full twenty seconds before Sharon. The Hard Puzzle gave us both fits, and Sharon used her second sheet to try and cleanup some of her annotations. I struggled on with mine, and although mine was fully annotated, I was having trouble making any progress. Sharon then conceded that she’d made a mistake somewhere, or just could decipher her scrawling, I don’t know… but I went and got a couple more sheets, one to clean my sheet up, and the other for Sharon. This did help me, and I was able then see a couple of obvious cells, which allowed me to run the remaining cells.



We headed to the Lido and I ordered my mushroom pizza with white sauce, basil and arugula. We find ourselves again in the situation of needing to drink quite a few sodas to get all of the value out of our $50 soda card (You get $50 of soda at a cost of about $2 per drink poured in a glass with ice at a discounted cost of $25 for the card). While I was waiting for my pizza we were approached by someone hoping to solicit people for the Tamarind restaurant. We’d planned to go on to this restaurant; so, we figured tonight was as good as any to give it a try. We got a reservation for 6 PM. Sharon got her burger and fries and took them back to the room; and, when I finished my pizza I brought her dessert (No, not me… chocolate chip cookies and chocolate ice cream).



Trivia was not scheduled today, but got penciled in at 2:30 PM in a rash of addendum activities for this impromptu sea day. I was kicking myself for not coming up with what a group of hummingbirds is called. One of the things that come up in these trivia games is such collective terms, and I have words like mob, and gam, and pod, and army all jumbled together in my mind. Someone came up with hummer; but, that wasn’t it either. The best I could manage was twitter; alas, the answer was “charm”. Dave also hit us with “What is the capital city of Honduras?” I didn’t feel so bad not being able to remember Tegucigalpa because I don’t think I ever knew that capital. I’m pretty sure this is not the first time that we missed “What country drinks the most wine per capita?” By telling you that we missed this “again” you can cross off “France” as the answer… it wasn’t right the first time we used this answer and evidently nothing has changed since then. It sort of seems obvious when you hear the answer is “Italy”. A lot of people missed “What city is farthest south of London, Moscow, or New York City;” but, it seemed obvious to me with Europe being farther north than the U.S. in general. Then I was kicking myself for not having listened to our friend Linda in California, for not having ever started watching “Game of Thorns”. We had visited Dubrovnik earlier on this cruise, where some of this show is filmed, and one of the tours focused on the filming of this series. The question was, “What is the motto of House Stark on ‘Game of Thorns’?” I’m sure that Linda would have come up with “Winter is coming.” And I’m afraid I went against Sharon for coming up with the number of ghosts that visited Scrooge in Charles Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol”. She correctly answered four but I wrote down 3. Then Dave hit us with another Boy Band question: “Name the members of the Boy Band 1 Dimension (first name only)?” One of our teammates came up with Harry and Zane. The actual answer is Niall, Liam, Harry and Louis. Zayn is one of the founding members, no longer in the band, but Dave gave 1 point credit for him as well. We missed by 3 points of tying the winners, so even if we got the 2 points for the bonus question about Scrooge we still would have lost. But I think Sharon may hold this over me for a while.



We stayed in the Crow’s Nest to play a special session of Bingo being held here after trivia. It was awkward for us to see the small portable 50” flat screen monitor used to display the numbers from where we were sitting; but, we made do. We both got to stand, but in the end, someone else invariably called “Bingo”.



We went up a bit early to sit in the Tamarind bar while we waited for 7 PM to roll around. I asked Sharon if she wanted a soda; but, she didn’t. I was looking at the drink menu and the bar waiter asked if I wanted anything. I said I was just looking. The menu had many drinks special to the Tamarind, and one called the “Snow Tiger” sounded good, so I went over to the bar and ordered that. It is a combination of coconut rum, chocolate syrup and white crème de cacao. It is served in what looks like the top part of a martini glass (without the stem or base). This rests in a wide rimmed round glass filled with ice. The inside of the partial martini glass has a spiral pattern of chocolate and the remaining spirits appear to have been shaken with a small amount of crushed ice. It’s pretty good.



We were seated and I had the Jewels of the sea soup. I talked Sharon into getting the chicken and rice soup. We both enjoyed the soups. The waitress had offered us a sample plate of sushi (I think she thought that we would share them, but who am I to correct that misconception). There was a great assortment of different types of sushi rolls; although, I needed to request ‘much’ more wasabi. I also had the Peking duck crepes; but, couldn’t get Sharon to get those as well. I think that she would have liked them as she had enjoyed that dinner in Beijing. I had the wok seared Maine Lobster; which, seemed to be the most ordered entrée that others were also eating. Sharon had the wasabi soy crusted beef tenderloin (sans wasabi). I ordered the steamed veggies and jasmine rice. We both enjoyed the Tamarind chocolate dessert.





It was about 7:30 PM when we finished and we stopped by to visit with Ruth and her friends before dinner. Afterwards, we went to the 8 PM show where this evening’s entertainment Andy Bunger was a multi-instrumentalist. He gave a very entertaining, enthusiastic and totally captivating performance on instruments such as the drums, pan flute, string instruments and marimba instruments. He played with a great deal of energy.

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