Advertisement
We had another lazy morning, with no scheduled tours today. I went to the gym and had a workout on the treadmill, and five of the machines for exercising the arms. We arrived in the Dining Room just before they finish seating at 9 AM. I got a bowl of oatmeal with bananas and opted for the Eggs Benedict; while, Sharon had the American Breakfast with scrambled eggs and bacon. After we ate, we checked the dining room menu for this evening, and Sharon was happy, so I guess we won’t be doing Canaletto this evening, the optional Italian restaurant offered for a $10 surcharge. With her 4-star status, Sharon should qualify for half-price when we do go.
We went to the library and did the Daily Sudoku puzzle. Neither of us made any mistakes today; but, I finished just ahead of her on the Easy puzzle. Again, the Hard Puzzle didn’t require any advanced techniques, but there were no starting numbers in the center cage. I finished about 3 minutes ahead of Sharon, who was unable to successfully defend the championship title she stole from me yesterday.
We decided to go ashore right away, after returning to our
cabin. The room had not been made up yet, despite the “Service Please” card we’d placed in our key slot. We suspect our stewards were involved in the crew safety drill that was being conducted at the time. Sydney seems to be a sleepy seaside community. We took a picture of the extremely large violin standing tall beside the Maasdam on the pier. We walked into town and were seeking out different churches. Saint Patrick’s, an aging stone church along the shore-side, is now a museum, and there were pictures of it serving as a military hospital during World War I. Inland a bit we saw another Anglican Church (St. Andrews). And then we came across Sacred Heart, a Catholic church that recently was forced to close because no priest was available. We asked the attendant inside, who was assisting tourists who still come to see the old church, where we might find a place to eat. She directed us to Charlotte Street. We saw a few places, some not yet open at about 10:30 AM so Sharon suggested that we walked back along the shore (one block over). We would have settled for a McDonald’s and maybe tryout their
Lobster Roll, but all that we could find was an advertisement on the inside of a bus stop. We found a shop with fudge, and knew we must look inside. On our previous trip we had bought some maple fudge, just not enough of it. This time we bought a 6-piece sample box that had 2 pieces of maple fudge, a piece of amaretto fudge, a piece of dark chocolate fudge with salt, peanut butter and chocolate, and why we got some S’mores fudge, I’ll never know. Okay, so Sharon likes S’mores! We saw a restaurant located near a Holiday Inn on the other side of the street by the sea. Then we saw The Governor’s Pub and Eatery a block away on our side of the street. It offered inside and outside seating, a pub upstairs, and best of all, it was open. And they had Lobster Rolls too! I ordered mine and was allowed to substitute a cup of their seafood chowder for fries. Sharon ordered a burger and fries. The chowder had plenty of seafood, including bay shrimp and also had smallish chunks of potato. The Lobster Roll was priced at $15, and came in a homemade
Hoagie (the same size as the one from yesterday), but this sandwich clearly had more lobster salad in the sandwich. Opening the sandwich showed that this did indeed have lobster in the salad, and just a very small amount of celery and enough mayonnaise to bind it together the way it is supposed to have; however, the lobster was mostly tiny bits and slivers of lobster and just a few tiny chunks. The taste was good, and the overall serving size I think was perfect as a single serving for one person. I’m tending to rank today’s lobster roll as a tie with the one from The Water Prince Corner Shop on PEI: The Sydney Lobster Roll had the portion serving right, while the PEI offering had large chunks of lobster in the roll, just not us much to make the portion perfect. The taste of both clearly emphasized the lobster within.
We strolled back to the Maasdam, boarded and returned to our cabin to sample some of the fudge that we just bought, and the maple fudge is pretty darn good. I watched a bit of Wimbledon to see Federer through to the semi-finals over his compatriot Wawrinka.
Angelican Church -
didn't go in this one after Quebec City I joined Sharon in the Crow’s Nest for the Team Trivia Challenge. Our newest team members were already there, and they said that they missed us the previous day. Sharon knew the only continent that didn’t have a volcano… no, not Antarctica as I would have guessed. Who would have known that they had an eruption just last year? They wanted to know who it was that died in 1927 and who had been born with some name you wouldn’t recognize. Well Sharon guessed Harry Houdini and was right. And our new partner who is supposed to know sports knew that the city known as the conk capitol of the world is Key West. I knew which knife is issued to all astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle; although, they’re not flying anymore. It is the Swiss Army Knife. We should have guessed which country produces the most beer (It isn’t Germany)! My contribution was the first movie to win best picture and it isn’t “Gone with the Wind”… My mind blanked at first; but, I eventually came up with “Wings”. We knew that the longest fjord wasn’t in Norway (the obvious choice); but, Sharon thought it was in Chile. Should
she lose a point for that pick? I guess not, we all agreed to it; but, then we never even considered Greenland. But it was the bonus question that did us in (We’d have won if we’d gotten that one right). What bank accepted deposits for the first time in 1964? Seems pretty straight forward. Our teammate from Israel came up with the right answer, and I think it’s the second time she’s had an answer we haven’t gone with. The answer isn’t Savings and Loan. The answer isn’t Credit Union. That’s not thinking out of the box enough. Here’s some help… It’s not even a Blood Bank. Are you getting the picture now of what kind of bank we are talking about? Sharon had to rush off to mass before the scores were tallied. We got “11” and the winners got “13” so we needed that bonus. I thought the answer our teammate had written down was “Savings” (Well, that and the answer both start with “S”).
I met Sharon back at the cabin after mass, after I’d started today’s blog. She wasn’t impressed with the few sentences that I’d already written when she returned. We went off
to dinner. Did I mention that I’d thought it would be a good night to be going to Canaletto’s? We were the last seated at a table for eight in the center section of the Rotterdam Dining Room, the first time that we’d not been seated on the outer perimeter. There was the two ladies from Toronto, the young couple from Southern California (young because he’d been born after the Sylmar Quake), and the couple sitting opposite us from some place called Kentucky. I should have had Sharon order me the special chef’s salad for today, with chopped olives and apples and the lime cilantro dressing. She only ordered one thing besides the entrée, the blue berry soup which she liked, and needn’t have worried about it having too many seeds as it had once before. She really liked it a lot. She ate that while I worked on my crispy crab egg roll with its special sauce and I even detected a bit of zip in it. Very nice. I had the carrot soup which I enjoyed a lot, and I’d ordered myself the salad, but had to wait a bit for it to come. I guess they weren’t
expecting me to consume the soup quite so fast. I was working on my third bottle of Pellegrino for the cruise. Fortunately, they’d brought the bottle cap with the first one liter bottle on the first night and I’d saved it. Unfortunately, it’s not the screw on type; but, the old fashioned one that requires a bottle cap remover. Still, it wasn’t bent too much and still snaps on. By the second day when I finish the water it is a bit flat. Many at our table ordered the turnkey dinner with all of the fixings, and Sharon had requested white meat only. I tried the mustard barbeque pork rack and received a perfectly cooked thick bone-in pork chop with spinach and potato pancake, which was quite good. We both had the Chocolate Avalanche cake, mine with vanilla ice cream and Sharon with watermelon sorbet. She had debated over the watermelon cake dessert; but, it was made with raspberry ice cream and is presented on a plate looking like a slice of watermelon. Sharon had had that before and liked it; but, thought that it should have been made with the watermelon sorbet instead. We’d been a bit later getting
to the dining room after mass which starts at 5:00 PM on port days, and we had just twenty minutes to get up and see the 8:00 PM show. Although, I felt that maybe it was a little slow for me to get my salad after my soup, I was the only person who had ordered four things from the menu. Whatever problems the Maasdam had experienced during our first 48 hours onboard with slow service in the dining room seems to have been fixed, and things have been moving along quite nicely ever since.
We went up to see tonight’s guest performer, Michael James, a friend of the magician/comedian a couple night’s earlier. He treated us to some bounce the ball juggling where he kept 5 balls bouncing back and forth between hands at one time. Holding up the 5 brightly colored balls for us to see, he asked if we’d like to see him get seven balls in the air at once. He had to ask the question a second time to get the more raucous response he was looking for; and, then holding the five rubber balls, three in his right hand, two in his left
hand, he did a little hop and smiled as the giggles trickled through the audience. He then pointed at his head and said “Eyeballs… this is a family show.” He then did his next “Most Difficult” trick, which is juggling three dissimilar objects: a cantaloupe, an egg and an apple. And he promised to eat the apple while juggling! And he proceeded to get into the rhythm, quickly taking a bite of the apple as he handled it briefly, at times shredded apple flying from his mouth… that is until he mistook the egg for an apple and wound up with egg on his face (and beard). He uttered, “I can’t believe I did that… again!” I’m sure he’s probably done that at every show! He then brought out his unicycle, with which he had a wonderfully entertaining dialog with the audience, and as he’d promised before working up to it, he managed to skip rope while on the unicycle, at first two bounces for each rope skip and then quite rapidly with just one bounce for each rope skip. He then went out into the audience and selected a volunteer to join him on stage. There were at least
a dozen kids eagerly waving their hands from below and from the balcony where we were safely seated. There really is an advantage the have a level of stairs between you and the stage. He picked a grandmotherly type of average height and build, and escorted her onto the stage. She clearly was a bit intimidated, and although he’d hinted at what he was going to do, everyone, including the volunteer I’m sure, were thinking, he isn’t going to do “that”. With her facing the audience, and him several paces behind her, he said, “Now, please spread your legs apart.” Which she did, and he smiled wryly, “Hmm, Well, “that” was easy.” He’s got his shtick down pretty good, and maintained a good rapport with the audience, not to mention our undivided attention. He continued, “Just a little bit more.” Then he said, “If you don’t mind, I’m just going to stick my head in there…” Before she could offer any objection he was standing there on the stage, and she was up on his shoulders. “Just put your hands on my forehead and hold on tight.” She looked absolutely terrified. As he walked over to flip up the unicycle
with his foot, we really did think to ourselves, “Nah, he’s really not going to do that!” Okay, Sharon turned to me and whispered, “He’s not really going to do that, “is” he?” A couple seconds later, there they were going about the stage atop a unicycle, she atop him. Once they were done, and she safely down again he asked her how that was and she replied “I was scared to death.” He responded, “Well, I’m sorry for that; but, I’ll bet you’ve never ridden a man like that before!” The audience gave them both a standing ovation. You might have thought that the show would end there, but for the next part he offered to climb an unsupported 8-rung ladder… okay, it really was a 10-rung eight foot ladder in which the second and third rungs from the top are missing. You really do need to see this to believe that it can be done, much less on a pitching and rolling ship, and for the first time on this cruise we could feel the motion of the ship. Not a lot, but enough that we noticed the movement in the Dining Room, and we definitely could feel it in the Showroom. With a lot of banter and “close calls”, at times appearing to be in danger of falling into the audience, he worked his way up the ladder’s rungs, eventually placing his feet atop the very top rung. He maintained his balance by keeping the ladder in motion, rocking it from one side to the other so as to be supported by one leg at a time; except, when both legs were on the floor at once as he rocked from side to side just slightly. This allowed him to move all over the stage. He then started down, but wound up with each leg on either side of the top rung with each foot standing on the rung below that, and the audience was thinking what he uttered: “Uh-oh!” He then demonstrated being atop the ladder without touching the ladder with his hands, which were now free juggle the three machetes that his assistant brought him, which he did atop the ladder. The show was very entertaining, and if you get a chance to see Michael James who has also performed in Las Vegas and the Ringling Brother’s Circus, you won’t be disappointed.
After the show we went to the casino, Sharon to try her luck on the video poker, and I got my favorite seat at a jam packed table. The cards were running pretty nice for me and the table, and I’d worked my winning 6 hands in a row parlay up to a $20 bet, when I got a pair of eights facing dealer’s King. I hate paired eights with a passion. But I split them. And got a third eight. I got an ace, which isn’t bad, considering; but, dealer still has that King. Then I got another eight, so I split the third time giving me a forth hand and no a total of $80 on the table. “Dealer cautioned me, “That’s the last time you can split.” Looking at my dwindling stack of chips, I’m thinking “You’re telling me!” I got a face card for the second hand, then a ten for the third hand, followed by a six and then a four for the last hand giving me “19” on the first hand and “18” on the other three. The others played their hands. As promised, dealer turned over a ten, and the table groaned because we all lost. I really hate paired aces now! I still managed to recover from that setback, and a $35 bet with Ace-Four facing dealer’s Six. I was tempted just to hit, but I put up the chips to double-down. I got a seven, which was no help at all; except that dealer turned over an eight and the seven would have given him “21”. Nobody else at the table had his a card, all of them standing on stiff hands; except, the player at the other end of the table that had gotten a blackjack. The dealer obliged all of us with a nine and busted. During the game, I was asked if they could get me anything to drink, and I asked for a bottle of water. I thought it was funny that they asked me for my room key. Soon, one of HAL’s big bottle of waters appeared. I tipped the steward who brought the water and glass of ice. He thanked me profusely as if it was unexpected, then handed my room key and the bill for $3.75 plus an included tip for the steward. Now, in a casino at a table where I’d been playing for an hour, now that was unexpected. Near the end, it was just me, and the player next to me who had just gotten a pair of aces. He split them and gotten “19” on one and “21” on the other, and the dealer busted, paying us both. I always love the way dealer’s bust when you have a really good hand! Two hands later that same player got a pair of aces again, and again split them. This time, he won one, and pushed the other hand. The player then complained that “Splitting aces is a bad bet.” And he did this while doubling down with a hard five (a two and a three) against dealers two. Needless to say, he had a hard time keeping his chips. It was about 10:30 PM, and I had recovered about half of what I’d lost the day before, so I decided to call it a night.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.083s; Tpl: 0.021s; cc: 13; qc: 30; dbt: 0.0471s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
