Cruise - Day - 7 At Sea

Today our our journey heads us back to where we started from. And while most of the ship is crying tears of sadness, we are crying tears of joy and can hardly wait to reach steady ground and solid food.

Although… the liquid food has been pretty tasty I must admit - minus the Sangria.  Our first day on board in Barcelona, when we sat down to eat, we saw a bunch of waiters serving cola and juice to the kiddies.  We ordered 2 beers.  There were waitresses in short skirts waling around with trays of Sangria.  They looked really tasty - the Sangria.  Then I notice the waitresses weren’t really serving the Sangria.  They were just walking commercials.  But it worked.  6 days later those sexy oriental legs sold me and Jens a disappointing  sour and bitter Sangria.  Risotto Sangria, I wondered? 

 

Notice there are a few pictures of this Spanish cocktail. Mix it right and your guest will order gallons of it and throw up everywhere.  This one glass for each of us lasted through several shots and several decks of aimless wandering.  The bitter drink lasted forever.  Oh but don’t get me wrong.  We managed to suffer all the way through to the bottom of the glass.

Here we are in one part of the ship that we found ourselves in often.  It was one of the few places you could smoke. The brochure said smoking was allowed ONLY in the cigar lounge. There were however a few other places where it was legal and this was one of them.  It was nice because it had big windows to look out of and towards the end of the area, it was open air.  This allowed us to sit outside-ish but still be protected from the wind and the rain.  Wish I could write the heat and the sun. 

But 2 problems:  it’s right next to the window where they sell gelato – mommy mommy I want that flavor and that soda and that candy - boo hoo hoo - waw waw waw .  AND - 5 language advertising in the tin-can speakers over head.  When the commercials weren’t running, it was music from the 80’s.  Hello – it wasn’t even good in the 80’s and now you wanna blast it through tin-can speakers again.  Gimme 2 scoops of ear-plugging banana!

 

We walked a little here and a little there.  We’ve seen all of the ship – or at least we thought we had. We took it easy in our room and then took it easy on deck.  Suffered through a warm Margarita - no crushed ice, not even a single cube.  We force fed ourselves another tasteless buffet lunch.

This afternoon there was a special meeting for those checking-out tomorrow.  On this ship you could check on and off at any one of its destinations.  We got on in Barcelona so we get off in Barcelona.  Jens and I had to go to a meeting to learn how to check-out.  O M G ! ! you have to go to a meeting to learn how to check-out?  What kind of shi…………….   Let me tell you I was angry and wanted off now!  No I'm not gonna jump ship - don't be crazy.

Ok - so we show up to the meeting on time but we thought we were late because a film was already rolling.  It was a commercial (or maybe a warning)  of all the destinations around the world where you can catch a MSC cruise.  Now the film was over and the woman told the audience thank-you and good-bye.  It turns out we caught the tail end of the meeting for the French speaking guest.  “The English version will start in 5 minutes” we were told.  Which means they were running 20 minutes late.  So now comes the bla bla bla in English  and then a “Thank-you” film showing workers in all the department of the ship and "Good-bye" in 205 different languages flash across the screen.  There were workers from all over the world – but mostly Asia.  It’s a nice n’sweet emotional film but I just wanted to tell them the 206^th way to say good-bye which is F U with a one-finger wave.  When the MSC-cruise-around-the-world commercial started again in the English version; Jens and I got up and left.  What a sleeper!  What a killer! 

Tonight is the last dinner and the last of the 2 formal dinners.  I couldn’t really understand why some guys would show up for dinner in their very fancy designer suits – they looked so smart – but yet they wore their shirt open.  They just needed to put on a tie and they would look like a 10.   Next to 2 casual guys like me and Jens, the only difference was we had on ties but no jackets.  So we fit right in.  I think it was more the open shirts that stood out than the lack of a jacket.  But then maybe that was the point.

Oh - so what was funny was we got lost again on this giant size monster of a ship and somehow ended up in this room that we hadn’t seen before.  It really was like a little floating city.  A floating city with lousy restaurants – oh sorry.

You know me – I’m always taking pictures of everything I eat.  My good friend George taught me that.  How many pictures of food have you seen on this holiday cruise?  Out of 635 pictures about 4 or 5 are of food - and I took my camera every night with me to dinner.  Ok - I guess I have overstated my point so I will just shut up about the food.

 
 

Everybody was attracted to these amazing diamond stairs.  I want stairs like this to our apartment. I bet the idea came from Liberace.

This is tonights warm up act - It got my blood boiling.

They're so cute I could just give each and every little pirate a squeeze and hug to death.

 This little pirate was more bored with her own performance than I was.

 

Ok – tonights entertainment – Pirates – loosely based on the Disney film.  It was a lot of fun and very entertaining.